Finishing up at San Dimas

Today is Thursday, Mar 31, which is our last day working at San Dimas UMC.  It is a historic church, built in 1901, which was expanded in 1924 and suffered a fire in 1998.  They have a small, but very welcoming congregation.  They fed us snacks and lunch every day we were working here (4 days per week, and 3 weeks duration).  Our team of 4 couples did some landscaping, a lot of painting, some carpentry, and some stucco repairs at 3 locations: the church, today’s parsonage, and the original parsonage (which is 1880’s vintage and too small for today’s usage). 

We have had a great team, had a lot of fun, and got a lot of work done too. 

As we said in our last posting, this our first back-to-back scheduling, so we are ready for a break. 

Last weekend Paula was in town and we got to see her at Tomie’s apartment.  All four of us took the time to explore Marina del Ray, Venice Beach, and the neighborhood of Venice.

We will be staying here for an extra day (Friday) to do laundry and slowly repack, then move to an Escapee campground south of here (for the weekend) before heading to Yuma AZ for a Freightliner rally next week.  After that we plan to take a couple of days to head east toward Big Bend and hill country in TX, before turning north again.

Nomads’ Third Period is Complete

Our work here in LaVerne is done and the rest of the team is moving on. One motorhome left earlier today, headed to Texas, and two others plan to leave tomorrow, going only to Pomona.  We will be staying right here for the next 3 weeks with a new team of volunteers.  Two things will be different: this will be our first back-to-back projects (6 weeks straight) and we have worked with all of the other people coming for the next project at least once previously.  During our next 3 weeks, we will be commuting all of about 3 miles to a neighboring church in San Dimas.  They have no room for us to park there but it is not far and it is a pleasant drive.

While here, we scraped and painted at least 9 lampposts and 4 wrought iron gates

Facia boards on their two out-buildings were repaired, scraped, and painted.  Over a dozen 4x6 columns were jacked up for repairs and repainting.  Quite a few smaller plumbing and furniture repair odd jobs were also completed.  We cleaned up a rusty old folding chair as a present for the church's project coordinator.

We didn't get bored.

This is the second time we’ve done a project here.  We were here 4 years ago also.  This is the church featured in one of the final scenes of the movie from the late 1960’s – The Graduate.  We had a chance to reconnect with many of the church members from our first project.

 

The members of the church brought in snacks and lunches almost every day.  The lunches were often huge and included various Phillipino recepies.  There is a large Phillipno presence at this church.  We didn’t expect so much food, but we did appreciate it.

We had some time to go exploring during the weekends.  There was a trip to Studio City to see Jeff and Jamie and their two daughters.  There was one motorcycle trip to Angeles Crest Highway only to find it closed for repairs.  We still got to ride about 10 miles of its west end, before pulling a U-turn and seeing it from another perspective. Last weekend we tried to see the ocean and the southern metro beaches, but traffic was so horrendous that we gave up and returned home.  Twenty miles per hour is about average for these 8-lane parking lots.