My dear Sisters,
It has been so long since I have written that people are actually asking me to write! It being such a cold day today (27degrees) I thought that it would be a good time to sit and write.
Of course there is a lot to tell.
Paul is still here. He did not buy a house or leave on “the great adventure.” He is still working on getting sponsors. He did take a trip up to Ohio to spend time with his son. Ryan is now over 6 foot tall. Wow!
Nathan is closer to getting the promotion that he wants. He is doing the job, and the office has put in a request to the corporate office for permission to give him the title and pay that goes with the job. Nathan has a new group of boys in the band and is quite pleased with the way it is coming along.
Richard accepted Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior. He decided that going God’s way might be easier than his own. He is currently renting a room near where he works. All of his plans with his old job fell through and his car was repossessed. So he is walking to work. He is actually working 3 jobs and sleeping very little, but he plans to quit one as soon as he has made the last payment on the credit card. We are trying to find him a job in the Chester area so that he can live with me and kind of start over. He would like to get some more education and there is a community college less than a mile from my house. Please keep praying for him, especially that the Lord would put a burning hunger in him for the word. As you know, the more Word that gets in the better. He is not yet going to church, but I am happy to see the changes in him. He smiles more now.
Sean is on his own again. I haven’t seen him in weeks, since before Christmas. He was sleeping in our shed, but he didn’t even obey the simple rules we made about that. No guests, no loud noises at night, no trashing the yard. He disobeyed all of them of course, and we were afraid the neighbors would call the police. I heard that a family down the street was letting him live with them, but he has not come and taken his clothes. They are sitting in plastic tubs and bags on the front porch. It is so hard to wait for God to make the changes. But everything that I have tried to do has failed. I just keep praying. I know that God is able to redeem the lost!
Karen did get her driver’s license! She past the driving test the first time! She paid for two weeks of private instructions. The last 2 days they did in my Jetta, which is what she took the test in. I am allowing her to drive the Jetta as she continues to save money for her own car. She wants to not have to make car payments. She will buy an inexpensive, probably slightly used car. She is still living in my house (in Chester.) I am keeping tight control on how much she may drive and where. I can see that her skills are improving week by week.
Because of the terrible rainy weather just at the end of September we didn’t get the trailer moved to the new park until October. It took a few days to get it set up on the cinderblocks and get the plumbing set up. Then we ran into a big problem. The trailer’s electric box had a larger demand than the wires leading to it could handle. It seems that someone changed the breaker box and did not change the wiring leading to the box. That had to be paid for. The electric box at the new park had to be updated too. New wires had to be run to the trailer. That was $1500 more than we expected to have to pay!
The next project we had to tackle was the new skirting. The man that was supposed to put it on wanted way too much for labor and he had told me the price of the materials was $600 but when I priced them at Home Depot I found that it was half that. So Tim and I decided to tackle it ourselves. That meant 2 weekends instead of one day’s work but the savings was $1100. Tim put down the track and I cut the skirt with the saw. At first we cut it by hand because the skirting chipped when we tried to cut it with the rotary saw. But after an afternoon of struggling with the cutters, “It came to me “ that when we cut the Formica counter top we put the saw blade on the saw backwards so that we did not chip the Formica. I am not sure why that works but it does. We had followed someone’s directions for that job. Once that “Came to me” things went a lot faster. I can’t say that it was God’s voice that told me to do put it on backwards, but I can say that “It came to me.” I usually credit God with sudden flashes of memory. We were quite proud of ourselves.
The next step was to get the porches back on. The front porch sits on a pad, so we were able to use it without digging a foundation to set it on. But the trailer was about 8 inches higher than it was at the old park. Which meant that after the deck was in place (The neighbors came out and helped move it into place.) Tim had to jack it up, put blocks under the legs and then put on more wooden legs of the right length. The trailer was not level when the deck was built so now that the trailer is level that added a bit of complication to the leveling of the deck but Tim managed to figure it out. Prince George County has very different rules about decking for trailers than Chesterfield County does. In Chesterfield one can let the deck legs sit on the ground. Not so in Prince George. We have to dig 18-inch holes for the legs of the back porch. Of course the legs are not long enough for that! So that porch will require much alteration. Also the rules about the steps’ construction are very strict. We have one set for the front nearly finished, but the railing isn’t. The front deck has 2 sets of steps and Tim is about to put them together. We hope that during this four day weekend we will get more done. But it is so-o-o cold.
The trailer does not have much heat either. We have 2 portable heaters keeping the pipes from freezing. The man that is supposed to put in the heat pump may do it this weekend.
Two weekends ago we had the roof resurfaced with nice silver stuff that will reflect heat in the summer. We still have not finished the flooring in the laundry room area. The floor is done but I have to put new flooring down. Since the heat pump is going in right next to the laundry on part of the new floor, I decided to wait until the electrician was done with that. No since messing up a new floor!
Karen and I tore out a lot of the paneling in the back bedroom two weekends ago. We plan to insulate and put in new thin sheet rock as soon as we have heat in the trailer. Eventually Karen will be able to rent out that room for enough to cover her pad rent. I have enough furniture to furnish the room. Before Karen moves in though I want to get the new windows in, if that is possible. I am not sure if it is advisable to put in vinyl windows in this cold.
Another problem that we had to deal with was the 2-story shed that was Karen’s pad when we bought the trailer. The new park would not allow it there, so we had it moved to my house. Well, it wasn’t that simple. The second story had to come off before it could be moved. So Tim went over and carefully removed the roof and covered the shed with a tarp. He saved as much of the wood as he could. Karen and I pulled out all of the nails so that it could be re-used.
Many of you heard about my fall. While Tim was on the roof, I was there in case he fell off, to call emergency. I got bored. I decided to go in the trailer and get some paint and work on the trim. The deck was already moved about 2 feet from the trailer. I decided it was easy to step over the gap. I got the paint and came out the door, forgetting the gap. My left leg went down into the hole and my body kept going onto the deck. I screamed bloody murder! I couldn’t quit screaming but I was praying for Tim inside my brain, that he would not fall off the roof as he came to my rescue. I didn’t break my leg, Praise God, but I had a bruise that was as big as a turkey platter. I was pretty much bed ridden for a week. It took over a month to get rid of the bruise. And my leg is still sore. That happened the last week of September. I keep remembering Wile E. Coyote and how he would run off a cliff chasing Road Runner, Beep Beep. I may someday walk on water but I didn’t do to well walking on air!
We had the shed delivered to the driveway and put into position to roll up against the house. The roof and back siding had to be put on before we could roll it back into place. That took a couple of weekends to do also. We ended up hiring a guy to help do the shingles. It was too much for Tim and I. But the shingles got done in one morning. Now it is ready to jack up and then lowered on to PVC pipe. We will roll it Egyptian style into place. Then we will try to get the PVC pipe out, or not. It is a very tight fit. The old shed was smaller. We had to cut back the hill on the front of the house to make room for this shed. That meant removing the retaining wall, cutting back the hill and then putting the retaining wall back. Tim and I did that last weekend.
Weekend before last, while I was mowing the leaves to chop them up and put them into the compost pile, the mower broke –the little gizmo that one adjusts the height of the wheel. It was $40 to fix it. Wouldn’t you know though that it would break while I was using it? Praise the Lord though; I had just finished the FRONT yard. The back looks terrible, but the front is not too bad now.
Most of you know that on November 13th Tim’s mother died. He had not seen her or his brother and sister for 10 years. The doctor gave her 18 months to live when they discovered that she had liver cancer. We were trying to arrange a visit. But she only lived a week. Her kidneys failed. So we dropped everything and flew to Shreveport, La., rented a car and drove to Magnolia, Arkansas. Again God was blessing us in the details. As soon as I heard I got on the computer and started checking prices of airfare for Tim to go. As you can imagine last minute airfare was outrageous. But then I checked the last minute deals. There was a deal for 2 to fly to Shreveport on that day (Thursday) and come back Tuesday, including car rental, that was less than one flying alone. So I was able to go with Tim. The memorial was Sunday afternoon so that package worked perfectly. I had just enough in the checking account to pay for the trip and the next day was Tim’s payday.
Tim was able to reconcile with his sister and brother. His mother had told them that the reason we had not visited for 10 years was because we did not want to be around them! Not so at all! Patsy was a wonderful lady in lots of ways, and I loved her. But she could get an idea twisted in her mind and be quite stubborn about it. She severely hurt Tim’s feelings 10 years ago when she refused to allow him to visit after he had to change the date of the visit. It took a lot of professional counseling to get him to finally write her and resume contact with her a couple of years ago. By that time our finances were in such ruin that we could not afford the trip. We couldn’t afford it now either, but we went anyway.
We were already 6 weeks behind on our mortgage. This put us behind too far to catch up. We will lose this (the Fairfax) house. It was an easy decision for me. Family comes first. It was difficult for Tim, of course. It is him, who loses “face.” But he is very glad that he went.
The day after we got back, Tim found out that two jobs that he is qualified for are coming available at Fort Lee, near my house in Chester. He has applied for one of them. The other has not yet opened the selection process. He really wants the one that is not yet open, but he applied for the first one. Hopefully he will get the job before we have to move. In the meantime I have been taking a full van each trip to Chester so that we will not have so much to move.
When we must move, Nathan will get an apartment. Some of the furniture will go there. If Tim does not have a job at Fort Lee by then, he will share with Nathan. We do not know yet what Paul will do. But if it comes to it, there will be room for him in my house until he finds a place of his own.
Tim and I have not yet found a church to belong to in the Richmond area. We have even thought of starting a small group from Truro there. There are a number of people in the Richmond area that have attended Truro in the past…. Who knows how many would like to meet together? But I trust that God will lead us in the way that we should go. I want to stay a part of Daughters and of CANA.
That makes it difficult to figure out where we should worship regularly. Please keep praying for Tim and me.
A job, working on the house, the trailer, relocating Nathan and Paul, a place to worship, and of course finances are all prayer concerns. I believe that God has a plan. About finances, Tim got a raise effective his next paycheck, too little, too late, but it is a blessing nonetheless.
The house is not finished but we can live in it now as it is and keep working on it. At least we won’t have to drive 2 hours to work on it. It doesn’t take an hour for Tim to get to work at Fort Lee either, so we can have more time together.
I will miss all of you a lot. I am hoping though that some of you will come to visit, especially in the spring when the garden is really pretty. But you will be welcome in any season. Hopefully we will soon have Karen moved into her trailer and be able to turn our attention back to our own home. I will probably keep mailing out these long letters and I will make it up here for some of the meetings. After all Nathan will have an apartment. So don’t think that you will actually get rid of me.
Last weekend Tim built me shelves in the closet for my shoes. It was part of the process of my giving up closet space so that there is room for him. I have had the entire closet space to myself. He only kept his work clothes there.
My bedroom isn’t done yet but I am comfortable in it. My bed is actually 2 of those special Ikea beds that go up and down like a hospital bed. We have them screwed together. We use one king sized headboard. The headboard and footboard are made of wicker, but I made covers like pillowcases for them out of a matching bedspread. There is a shelf behind the bed for our stuff, like pills and drink of water. Swing arm lamps give us reading light. My treasures are in bookcases on the left of the bed and his are in bookcases on the right. We still don’t have a door on the bedroom. But if we have no kids or guests what is the rush? I hope to have that done by spring.
Well this has been an unusually long letter but I hope that you like the pictures. Remember that the inside of the house is not my favorite part.
The garden is where I spend most of my time.
God keep you well, and strong.
May you know how deep and wide is His love for you.
Your sister in Christ,
Rebecca
