Happy New Year!!

Happy new year to everyone!

We spent new year's eve working on drywall at the addition job...

At the beginning of the day the boys got started on the sheet-rocking.

For the first half of the day I was the supervisor/mudding guy.

Mudding is the best part, in my humble opinion. I don't know why I enjoy it so much, but I do.

So, we had a contest to see if I could keep up with the mudding as the other guys hung the drywall.

It was a pretty even competition for a while... until Dad arrived in the afternoon and started helping :)

Then I started getting behind :)

All in all, though, we had a really great time!

I ended up loosing to the drywall hangers... 

I was about 1 hour's worth behind them, in the end...

Great job guys!

We're working a half day tomorrow, so hopefully I can catch up then!! :)

We came home and were greeted with a tasty snack-supper.

The girls and mom prepared all kinds of goodies for a new-year's celebration.

A couple random shots...

After supper, Sam had something to show Dad on the computer...

And the girls were still munching :)

Tonight Emily and I decided to stay up and usher in the new year... everyone else is going to bed!

After work tomorrow we're having a skating party at a local fish pond, with a chili supper afterward at church. We're all really looking forward to that :)

God's blessings to you all in the new year- may your lives grow closer to Him and deeper in consecration to His service and kingdom!!

-nate

One job down... several to go!

As goes this time of year, we have been right back into the thick of it with work. 

We took about 2 1/2 days to build a deck and install a few windows in a house about 15 minutes away. 

Simultaneously, Dad and Ben worked at another job, putting insulation in at the big addition.

Unfortunately, all I had was my phone's camera.

But, this is the deck... around lunch time the second day.

It continues to be COLD. Yes, COLD.

Saturday (after we finished work on the deck and windows) we went over to the big addition to unload the drywall... ah, yes, lot's of weight in there :) 8', 10' and 12' sheets.

Can't wait to start mudding all this stuff- it'll be fun :)

Also on Saturday I helped my cousin Ben pull his car home- his serpentine belt broke, so the car wouldn't run. I rode in the dead thing and he towed with his pickup :) We had a grand time :)

Today the church service was a blessing. I had the opening devotional and preached out of 1 Corinthians 13, talking from what God has been speaking to my heart this week: having true, God-given love in our hearts. Then Dad preached about what it means to call one's self a Christian.

Well, it's getting late, so I'd better close. Lots of drywall to mud tomorrow :)

God's peace be with you!

-nate

A favorite quote...

Some of you have undoubtedly seen me post this quote before, but I am greatly encouraged by it and wanted to share it with you again.

It was very instrumental during a difficult time in my life, a time when things just didn't make much sense and seemed impossible.

Perhaps you're going through something that doesn't make sense, something you can't explain, something that (to all human reasoning) just couldn't ever turn out right- dear one, this is the time to trust Him; this is the time to wait on Him; this is the time in which you can prove Him and find Him faithful... Remember that we are not promised a bed of roses as Christians- actually, reality is that, we will probably have more trials and tests on earth than people outside the kingdom of God... but what we have (the thing the world doesn't have) is the wonderful assurance that He knows all and will see us through. Don't be discouraged- trust Him and be encouraged!

"One of the greatest elements of the Christian's life is that of FAITH: it is that thing which trusts and holds on to the will and promises of God, no matter what circumstances and emotions try to dictate and always leans, trusting, upon the caring arm of it's God, for He "knoweth all things"- Anonymous

Let us continue entrusting our lives to Him, as unto a faithful Creator and believing in His goodness and purposes...

Peace be with you all, dear ones!

-nate

The cold sets in... the days progress...

Yes, it's been COLD here.

But, the days continues nonetheless...

Yesterday Josh, Ben and myself worked on "the siding job" (as it's wont to be called) in Griswold, installing facia, gutters and window trim.

Installing the facia on the east side of the house.

Josh did the aluminum bending for the day; inside the trailer he had a space heater rigged up, so he kept pretty warm most of the day :P The rest of us... well.....

Today we started building a deck in a little town nearby, called Elliot.

Lunch time... I'm examining the ingredients of the pretzels we consumed...

Ry, contemplatively munching on some sort of sustenance.

The temperature here has been in the single digits at night, then usually "warming up" to mid twenties during the day. It makes working slightly laborious working in thick and heavy coveralls and coats, cumbersome gloves and frumpy hats. But, at least we're warm- for the most part :)

The next few days we'll be running like crazy- we need to finish the siding and deck within the next week, then drywall and mud at the addition job... :-/ As usual, we're behind on work. I'd really like to have someone explain to me how that happens- but it does. Maybe we schedule too much in too short of a time? :) Oh well. It's nice to have lots to do.

Well, it's supper time now. 

God bless!

-nate

Christmas eve...

Christmas eve found us waking up at the crack of dawn to go to... WORK.

 Yep. That's right- we had to work on a holiday.

But that was ok- it was enjoyable to try wrapping up several large projects the day before Christmas, so it was worth it. We got to the job around 7:30 in the morning and did our best to finish the following:

1. Insulate the inside of an addition

2. Put a steel roof onto the same addition

3. Clean up the inside of the addition after insulating

4. Tearing a hole in the wall of the addition, joining it to the exiting house

5. Going over to another job and cladding 10 windows

6. At the same job, putting facia up

We got all done except 3 windows and the facia on the other job. The boys did a fantastic job working hard. It made relaxing today even more worth it :)

On the way to work-

I was late because one of our work trucks had a flat tire :P

Ah, yes, the first job...

The boys were hard at the steel roofing when I got there.

Inside the basement was nice and warm.

My cousin Ben, opening a new bundle of insulation.

By 3pm the roof was done!

Our work trucks...

On the way home at night...

Butchering, working and caroling!

Yesterday was full of activity- first off, we had a cow delivered to our house in the morning and butchered it... the Chupps and some Pratts came over to help and we got it quartered before lunch time...

Dad, skinning the beef...

Don Chupp helped for a couple hours.

...and KK watched :)

After that we headed over to the roof job...

Unfortunately the sun was too soon in setting... we had to hurry to get done.

The boys worked hard but we only got metal on the porch roof...

Once 5:30 rolled around we packed up and went back into Griswold for some caroling!

We had our big dump trailer hitched up to our truck and lined the edges with hay bails. Almost everyone from church came, so we all packed in there and drove around, stopping at various friends' homes and singing for them. I won't say we sounded really good, but I think people were blessed by the old fashioned caroling! Wherever we stopped, we gave people cookies and tracts.

After singing and freezing, we got back to church and enjoyed hot chocolate, coffee and tea :) We had some good fellowship and went home with full hearts...

Tonight we're having an early Christmas celebration at Gram's house... Ry and Kels are going out to NE for Christmas day, so we're doing our celebration with them early. I'm looking forward to it; family gatherings are always so fun.

Well, it's almost time to leave for church, so I'd better close :)

God's blessings to you all!

-nate

Snow! (Updated with video)

(Updated with a video at the end)

Last night a "blizzard" came roaring in from the west. Today we're just taking it easy around here; nobody went to work and we've just been enjoying time with each other :)

Abi, taking a picture of Dad, sleeping :)

After the "blizzard" last night, the boys and I went out to town.

You can see that the "blizzard" actually wasn't too bad :)

We got about 3 inches of snow, if my estimations are correct...

The blowing wind is the worst part.

We followed a plough truck on the way home.

Me, driving...

KK, riding, making a funny face :)

Josh was the photographer.

An older Chevy truck that followed us for a while...

Nice touch, Josh, taking the picture using the mirror :)

Here's a nice little video of us driving along...

A few different things...

Good evening to one and all, dear ones!

Tonight I lay on our couch, awaiting my fate- there is a flu bug going around here and my stomach is feeling a bit rumbly tonight, so I have been quarantined to one select area, in case I am a carrier. Exiled in my own home, a blizzard wind roaring outside the window, I await further symptoms to develop. Thus, my evening dwindles shorter and shorter my the hour, by the minute, by the second, until the time for bed comes; whether or not I will go to sleep in peace or struggle in the throes of sickness into the early hours of the night, I cannot tell... only time with reveal my fate this evening...

:)

Anyhow....

Today we got the J-channel up on a siding job we started on last week, so once this blizzard blows its self out and we get dug out we'll be slapping siding up. Hoping all that goes well...

In other news: we purchased a replacement truck for our old, green F-250 we had. The new one was purchased with cash and windows- we traded some work for part of the price, which was a great deal. I say it's a "new" truck, but it's about 11 years old, so it's not really "new" per se...

Bible study was cancelled tonight because of the blizzard, otherwise we'd be there right now, singing and then listening to Ryan preach on the last chapter of the book of James. We've been going through that book as a church, and tonight was to be the final study. Ry is really good at Bible studies, so I was looking forward to it. He'll do a great job wrapping the whole study up. Can't wait...

I'm ordering a new charger for my camera. The other day (after some digging around in a bunch of my junk) I found the extra battery, but still no charger. Hopefully I'll have some pictures for you after I get the charger again :)

Well, that's all my fevered mind can think of to write about right now...

God bless you all! Peace be with you!

-nate

Back again...

After much delay and business, we're back on track here on the blog :)

The time in Haiti was wonderful- makes me want to spend more time there, but we'll wait on the Lord for that...

As of right now, we're really busy with work, but I'm hoping to get some blogging going again. My camera's charger is lost, the extra battery with it, and the remaining battery is dead :( So, no pictures for a while :)

We're going out to NE this weekend to do some caroling and fellowship time with the Smiths. It'll be nice to see their family again... haven't had time with the guys since our tent meetings right after I got back from Haiti, so it's high time to see them again :)

I'll see how much blogging I can do on the road tomorrow. Should have plenty of time to write. Hopefully we'll have good safe travels... it's always nice to have that :)

God bless you all...

-nate

Haiti...

Following is an email I sent around yesterday... Looks like I'm going back to Haiti for a month to help rebuild after hurricane Sandy!


***
Greetings to each one in Jesus' name!

The other day (Saturday) I received a request from the mission in Haiti to come down on a small, 3 man rebuild team to help after hurricane Sandy. The departure time? This Friday (the 2nd of November). After talking with Dad and Ryan about it, the whole thing seemed impossible because of our work load. But on Monday Dad asked bro. Elson if he would be able to help in our work load so that I could go. He very graciously said he would, opening the door for me to go help down in Haiti. So, after some more hurried schedule shifts I purchased my tickets last night. I'll be leaving Thursday night from the Omaha airport.

I know this comes as a surprise to many of you and I'm sorry we didn't have time to tell everyone in person- we were not sure about the whole thing and it was looking like I wouldn't be able to go. It wasn't until last evening that everything was actually confirmed. This is the nature of catastrophes- they come suddenly and unexpectedly. Thus, at times, in order to react to them, our schedules sometimes suddenly change!

Please do pray for the Haitians- report has it that the destruction is far more widespread this time, compared to hurricane Isaac. Not only the roads, but houses, schools, crops and lots of property has been destroyed. And it isn't like that JUST in Haiti, either- Jamaica, Cuba, many smaller islands were all swept over and leveled. Pray the Gospel would have free course in this time of need!

I will be in Haiti a full month before coming back- I will be flying back into Omaha on the 4th of December. If you would like detailed flight info, let me know and you can have my itinerary. For those of you who had access to my Nate in Haiti blog, I'll be firing it back up to keep you all informed.

God bless you, dear ones! Thanks for your prayer support!

In Christ's love and hope,
-Nathan

A few things amidst a busy week...

We've been burning a large pile of junk recently.

The pile sits inside a large hole we dug :) It's pretty intense :)

We got to work on Thursday and started work on framing up the garage.

By the end of a long work day it was pretty much closed up- tarpaper on the roof, OSB on the walls.

We've had an invasion of mice in our home recently...

We've waged war with them and have already slain 5 with traps...

Concrete...

This week has gone by like a whirl wind- lots of work going on, physical and spiritual both! Ryan, Josh and I finally got the cement pad poured for the garage we've been working on. Thankfully it was without any serious casualties- save for Ryan's poor finger, which got caught in the metal grinder as he cut rebar... it cut through his glove and, as he looked at it, blood started to dribble out :) He said his stomach began to do some very interesting gymnastics :) He ripped the glove off and there, staring up at him, was a nice, deep gash, pouring forth blood. He came walking up to the trailer (where I was gathering up some tools) and showed it to me. Yes, it was pretty gruesome. We thought it might need stitches, but he insisted that he didn't have time to get it checked out. The cement truck was supposed to arrive in 5 minutes :) He's too much like Dad :)

So, some paper towels, some electrical tape and he was ready to go! The cement truck arrived in due time and we began the process of pouring the slab.

When we neared the end, it was unfortunately realized that we would be short a slight amount of concrete- thus, we simply "borrowed" from other places and made up the difference all across the board. Having finished the screeting we then waited for it to set up enough to use the "power trowel" (a  machine which smooths the concrete automatically, instead of kneeling and finishing it all by hand- which is kinda tiring :)

Ry had an estimate to do, so he left Josh and I to finish.

We waited quite a while and decided to try the power trowel. We picked the beast up and settled it down onto the semi-firm concrete's surface- it looked like a large fan, set on its face, with a 9hp gas engine setting on top and long handles protruding out the back. The thing must've weighted 150-200lbs or something like that. It was a beast.

Josh started it up (he has used one before- I have not, so we thought best to have him run it :P ) and turned the blades on- and promptly turned them off; it began to chew and chop its way down into the concrete, instead of gracefully floating on top!!

We looked at each other. This would not work. The 'crete must be too wet still. It was cold and windy, so it probably didn't dry fast enough. Out with the power trowel- humph! Out it came, with a few grunts and a sucking noise as we lifted it up out of the mess it had made.

Josh smoothed out the hole it made and we waited.... and waited.... and waited...

The sun would be going down in about 2 hours and we really didn't want to be doing it in the dark. We tried the power trowel again... unfortunately the same results ensued as before...

Out it came, again. I grabbed the hand trowel and started smoothing a corner. This was more like it- no silly equipment to mess things up- this worked fine for me.

It then dawned upon our tiny brains (and mine a half-brain, at that) that we could just do it by hand. I was more experienced in that method, and really enjoyed it. So, with that settled in our minds, we set to work.

Josh made me some "duck feet" (two 2x6 boards cut at 3 1/2' length, upon which you kneel as you finish the surface) and I got to work. Josh made sure the cement's surface was worked enough and we really went to town.

We finished up in about 45 minutes- maybe not as shiny smooth as the machine would have made it, but it was done- we were very thankful :)

So ended our adventures that day... :)

Today we just kinda did various and sundry things around the house, measured up a roof for an estimate and did some stuff on the computer- and tonight I'm studying for a sermon in the morning.

God bless you all!

-nate

Laying block, having fun :)

Today Ry, Josh and myself started laying block on a garage addition we're building. We dug out the foundation and footer the other week, so now we're working on the walls.

Some advertising for our company... not that any of you would need our services... :)

Ryan started the footer digging...

I joined in later on... :)

Digging...

This is called a transit... it beams a lazer around the job, keeping everything on a level line.

After all the real work was done the little guys got to dig around a stump...

With Ryan's help, of course :)

Ry took this shot of me as I laid block for the first time today- it was really fun, and it turned out not to be very difficult at all! :)

We have had Edward Martin's children at our house for a few days, while he and his wife have a few days off in celebration of their anniversary.

Tonight we had a spontaneous towel fight :)

All the little guys got into it and we had a grand time :)

It lasted for about 10 minutes, before Dad said his famous phrase "Ok boys, that's enough." and it all stopped as fast as it started... :D