seniah8

November 09 update

2009-11-23T08:33:00.007-06:00

Hi everyone,

What a summer and fall we have had.

It has been quite a time. Sorry we have been out of touch. We are all on facebook, and we invite you to find us there as well.

Some of the highlights of recent days include:

Nicholas, now 18 was awarded the Boy Scout Eagle rank, a high honor. It is Boy Scout's highest rank, and less than 4% earn it. He is still in his senior year in his home school. He is beginning to look at his options for his next season of life, doing things with computers seems to be his main interest.

Our family just framed up a 1800 square foot house, plus the 24x24 garage, and porch.

In just 16 days, we had it framed, sheeted, doors, windows and overhead door in, metal roof installed, soffit installed, and all interior framing complete. We will be doing the drywall in a couple of weeks, after the electrican and plumber are finished with rough in.

Joshua(16) has been working hard on music, it is his primary interest. He led our church's youth service from the guitar, and did a great job. With Samuel playing his bass like a pro. The youth did a human video as well. It is awesome and I challenge you to see and hear it on our church website www.abbynrc.com

Joshua and Samuel both share a dream to attend Hillsongs college in Sydney Australia to pursue music and ministry. Hillsongs college is responsible for a lot of today's comtemporary music.

The boys are all studying and working hard. We are very grateful for their hearts and attitudes.

Ethan(7) and Rosa(3) are a joy to us every day. Of course so are the other four.. they wanted to make sure I pointed that out.

Our church is thriving in all areas, this past week we had a record attendance of 47 kids in Awana, and a record attendance of 147 in the Sunday service.

Brian, Charlotte, Joshua, and Samuel play in the Sunday worship team most weeks. It has been a blast leading and teaching the church in worship, the congregation has been so gracious to us, and God has been glorified.

Brian, Joshua, Samuel and some others will be attending a worship seminar in Wisconsin Rapids this Saturday. It is being put on from a leader from Hillsong college.

Brian has booked a music concert for our church for this Sunday night, we are looking forward to this, it will be our church's first real concert. It will be a coffee house style concert, and the artists, David and John Yonker are great.

We have been hired by the Colby School board to install the theatre audio system. It has been a interesting process, and has provided us a incredible opportunity for our future.

We have learned that there are very few sound consultants in our greater area, and it seems most have a high budget mentality.

We are working with one of our areas largest music stores, Brian has known the owner since his early teens, (like 30 years). We have learned that this store does not service on site consulting needs, only because he has no one to do the work. We have talking about a win win situation here, and the owner of the store is nearly as excited as we are. Our business is CWC Inc. (doing business as Central Wisconsin Construction, and have added the name Consulting With Clarity for the sound consulting branch of the business.) It is exciting to have the opportunity to take your hobby and be hired as a pro to help others in need. Our heart in this whole thing is to provide excellent service at common sense prices. It seems as the need is quite high, how exciting.

We have booked a trip to Florida for vacation in January and will spend some time in Biloxi MS on the return side of the trip. We will assess our work load at that time and decide how to spend our winter months. Right now it seems we have work in WI. It has been our prayer that if it is God's will for us to be up here in the frozen tundra, God would need to provide open doors for us.

Most of us would rather travel south, but we want to be in God's will.

Charlotte's sister Peggy and her husband Michael have moved back to California. Michael's job in St. Paul ran dry and he got a great job north of L.A.

Amanda and Nathan, Charlotte's sister and brother-in-law, are expecting their first little blessing from heaven. No, our families don't peek, so we know she is having a baby... but we will have to see in January if we have a niece or nephew. This will be the first time for us to be an auntie and uncle. So exciting!

We will spend thanksgiving with Charlotte's family at our home this year.

We will try to do a better job with updates.

God bless you all!

The Haines family

Time flies when you are having fun

2009-10-07T21:49:00.002-05:00

Hi everyone,

Wow, it has been a long time since we have posted.

Things have been CRAZY......busy this year.

I do not even know where to start, so I will just start.

Charlotte has taken on some hefty responsibilities. She has taken on the main role in the Tiger den of Cub scouts, this includes recruiting and training.

Also, she has taken on the leader role for the Cubbies group in Awana at our church.

The Boy Scouts have also been busy this year. In addition to our usual summer camps, the scouts also had a regional event this year, celebrating 100 years of scouting. Charlotte, Nicholas, Joshua, Samuel and Andrew attended this event at the EAA grounds in Oshkosh, WI. Over 10,700 attended.

We spent a weekend camping at Medford this July to celebrate the 4th. We were given news that Charlotte's youngest sister Amanda is expecting a baby due about Jan. 1.

We purchased a downtown Abbotsford building this year and have added a third apartment. We invested much work into this project, including updating many issues with the building.

The whole family is working hard on music. We play regularly on the worship team at church. Joshua had the opportunity to obtain a awesome guitar this week. He is now playing drums, keys, and guitar.

Work has been plentiful. In fact, we are running hard to keep up. Since finishing the apartment, we have done several window jobs, restored 2 distressed garages, and completed a roof job.

We will be framing up a house soon, we have been hired to partner with a person desiring to be his own general contractor. It is a 1800 square foot house with a attached garage and large porch.

Just this evening, we have been approved by the buildings and grounds committee as the recommended bidder for the theatre audio project for the Colby High School.

We have booked a vacation for January in Florida. We are planning to visit south Mississippi on our return.

We are all healthy, and blessed.

The kids are growing so fast, even baby Rosa is already 3.

I apologize for being out of touch, life has been so crazy.

I pray you are very blessed as you read these words.

Brian

Finally, the pictures we promised!!

2009-08-17T21:11:00.003-05:00

Hi everyone,

Wow, a month has past since the last post. These are pictures of the completed church, including ministry in action. Enjoy!

The Haines family

June update

2009-06-24T21:35:00.007-05:00

Hi everyone!

Wow, we are finally almost finished with the church remodel. We have been hired to do numerous extra projects as we were well under budget. It turns out we were able to recondition almost the entire basement, which was not part of the original plan.

We have a couple of weeks left, however.

We plan to go to the Boy Scout family camp in a couple of weeks. We are all excited to have the opportunity for a little rest an relaxation. This will be Nicholas' last year camping as a Scout, as he turns 18 in July.

Joshua and Samuel spent last week at the Scout Northwoods challenge. Joshua served as a leader.

Andrew and Ethan are attending the summer school program and are enjoying it.

We made the trip up to Rhinelander this past Saturday to enjoy the doings and the trip.

It FINALLY warmed up this week, in fact highs are over 90 these days!

We have a lot of work waiting for us, in fact it almost overwhelming.

We mentioned in the last post that Brian has an interest in offering sound consulting, design and install services. He provided this service to the church and has an opportunity to do the same for the public school in our theatre. He will be turning in our bid tomorrow and are very excited about the opportunity to provide these services to our own community. He feels strongly that he has a far better proposal than the competing bids. The contract will be awarded to the best bidder on July 20 at the school board meeting. Pray for us to have favor with the school superintendant, Terry Downen, other advisors, and the school board. It seems as though there is a great need for consultants in this speciality field.

We will soon be adding an apartment to a building we recently purchased.

Our church is doing great. We had our building dedication service on June 14. We had 140 attending the the English service, the most ever.

We followed that service up with a picnic at a nearby city park. In addition to our Church, we joined up with the Hispanic church and had nearly 300 attendees. It was a very great day!

We will upload some pictures of the recent weeks.

Thank you for checking in our page.

May God richly bless you this week according to HIS riches in Glory!!

In Christ

The Haines family

Pressing on

2009-05-26T21:44:00.004-05:00

Hi everyone,

Sorry we have not posted much lately, but we are kind of stuck in a rut. Work at the church, eat, sleep, work at the church.

We are taping the drywall in the fellowship hall. The room is 1800 square feet, the size of a larger 3 bedroom ranch house.

Everything is going very well, the building is turning out nice, services are being well attended, and growing. We are healthy. The kids are growing up very fast.

Our cub scouts had their soap box derby last Saturday Ethan got to race for the first time. All 5 of the boys are now in scouting.

Rosa turned 3 on May 8. She is such a big girl already. We are so proud of her.

Charlotte and all the boys marched in the local Memorial Day parade with the scouts.

Nicholas has been busy trying to earn his Eagle Scout rank. He has taken on the updating of the old historical marker in Colby. There were old overgrown shrubs that needed to be updated.

He and the other scouts have replaced it with a new landscape garden. The jobsite part of the project is now complete, and hopefully he will meet the rest of the requirements to acheive this rank. Only 2% of scouts reach this high honor and he is very close now.

One thing maybe exciting is that Brian has been interested in offering services to the public in sound consulting, designing, and installation. He has been frustrated with a consistant problem where people are spending huge sums of money on gear, and have no ability to use it correctly. He has had professionals in related businesses, such as music stores confirm this.

He has over 25 years experience in sound, from the early years in the rock band, d.j. service, many years at Beleiver's church, Nightmare, and now North Ridge Church.

Our church trusted him to design, obtain, and install the sound system. It turned out great, and a very modest budget was used.

We noticed in our local newspaper that our high school is doing a sound system in the remodel of the school theatre, the very room our church was birthed. It also listed the budget, which was triple what we spent at the church. The system needed there is similar to the system needed for our church. We contacted them about our interest in bidding on the project, and they are interested! It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Brian will be doing sound for a wedding at the Marshfield North Ridge Church for a friend from the years at Believer's church.

We will post some random pictures of life here at this time.

In Christ

The Haines family

Big Tree, Little house

2009-05-02T20:02:00.004-05:00

Hi everyone,

Just a quick update, and I am going to load some pictures.

Last weekend we had some thunderstorms in our area. In Spencer, a large maple tree split and fell on a small ranch house. We were hired by the owner's insurance company to do the repairs.
We took a leave from the church job on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
We had to repair a number of broken trusses, a number of sheets of plywood that were damaged, subfascia boards, and a ridge beam.

As of today, we have all structural repairs finished, and the new roof is on. We will return in June to finish the fascia, gutters and interior repairs. There are a number of cracks, a limb pushed into the bathroom and the dining light was pushed through the ceiling.

The church has hired us to finish the basement of the church. This will be a large drywall job, and a large ceiling job.

We have a deadline to meet as there is a wedding dinner in the basement on June 6. The church also plans a grand opening celebration on June 14. We should be able to meet these deadlines.

Nicholas spent the weekend camping with the Boy Scouts.

Our family has been working hard with music. Charlotte has been playing keyboards, and Joshua
will play lead guitar tomorrow.

We have been keeping busy with all the usual things, schooling, scouts, church and work.
If you are in the area, stop by and see the church, it is turning out very nice.

Thanks for checking our blog.

In Christ,

The Haines family

Remembering Kristi

2009-04-18T15:07:00.003-05:00

Hi everyone,

I am typing in front of open windows, it is over 70 degrees for the first time in many months. It is so refreshing.

Our hearts are heavy. Charlotte's cousin Kristi passed away Monday at the age of 24. She contracted a case of pnuemonia, and somehow a bloodclot related to it got into her heart.
She was sick over the weekend and her caretakers decided to take her in to get checked.
Kristi walked in to the Stanley hospital, then was airlifted to Marshfield where she passed away in the ICU.
Her parents drove fast from Stanley to Marshfield and did not even make it there in time.
The funeral wake was Thursday and was well attended. The funeral was Friday and was well attended. Brian served as a pallbearer. The weather was so pretty, it seemed odd to do a funeral. Every person released a helium balloon at the burial site. It was cool symbolism.

We are still mostly busy with the church remodel. Things are going great. We celebrated Easter along with our hispanic congregation and had 154 in atttendance. Praise be to God!

We have been installing the technical details, mounting the projecter, speakers, things of that nature this week, and installing windows.

Easter was celebrated at our home on Saturday before Easter with Charlotte's parents, Michael and Peggy, Nathan and Amanda, and Becky.

Nicholas and Joshua are now doing behind the wheel training.

Brian, Nicholas, Joshua, Samuel and Andrew along with 8 others from the youth group went to see Pillar and Fireflight at Rhinelander on Wed. night.

The Boy scouts did roadside cleanup. It is the 2 miles south of Colby on SHW 13.

Nicholas is working on his Boy Scout Eagle project, it has to be complete before he turns 18 on July 23. He is coordinating improving the historical marker site in Colby about Colby cheese.

Thanks for checking in on us.

In Christ

The Haines family.

Almost ready for Easter!

2009-04-10T04:54:00.002-05:00

Hi everyone,

The last 2 weeks have been push weeks at the church project. There was much to accomplish, but we have been able to meet the goals! We are moving into the remodeled sanctuary this weekend, in time for Easter. There are minor projects remaining on the main level, but nothing to prevent us from using the building.

We have funds remaining and will be able to do some improvements to the lower level.

Again, our church has had it's needs met. To accomodate the children's church during the lower level remodeling, the City of Abbotsford has agreed to let us use the vacated city hall chambers, just across the street, rent free!

You are invited to join us for Easter service, 10:00 A.M.

Services will resume at 9:00 A.M. next week.

We are looking forward to a little more balanced life in the near future, it has been too much work and no play lately. Spring is in the air, it makes us anxious to enjoy the outdoors and time with the kids.

We are anticipating a very busy summer, we have numerous offers for work.

Our family is well, it our prayer that yours is as well.

Thanks for checking our blog.

In Christ

The Haines family

Easter is coming, lots of work remaining

2009-04-03T21:58:00.002-05:00

Hi everyone,

How time flies. We noticed we have not posted in about a month, the longest ever.

The last post was about the battle of the bands. We did not win, but gave the winning band a great challenge. We had a blast. Brian wound up doing the sound for all of the other bands, and we were left without a sound man. We learned some good things at the seminar.

We also mentioned having a week off. We were blessed by Nathan and Amanda offering to watch all 6 children for spring break. This enabled us to have a whole week off.

We spent the week in downtown Minneapolis. The family and the church respected our time off and we were left completely alone. No phone calls even. In fact no one even knew where we were.

We had such a blast. We never get time alone. One highlight of the trip was an outing to the Waubasha cave in St. Paul. On Thursday evenings, they have a swing dance. It is amazing. There were hundreds there, and to our suprise, the majority under the age of 30. The crowd was there to dance, most only drinking water. If you are ever in the Twin Cities, check it out.

We have been working long days on the church remodel. We are about 3/4 finished with the project and the plan is to move in April 12, Easter. The church has now hired us to do the windows. We are very excited as we have accomplished more than what was planned, and completely in budget.

Our family is also very involved in the worship band. With the Silva family currently in Brazil, Brian is the full time worship leader, Joshua is either on drums or keyboard, Samuel is on bass most weeks, Charlotte is on keys some weeks, and Nicholas is involved with sound, overheads, and recording.

Ricardo taught us a lot. We have been able to press on with an awesome worship band. We practice 2 nights every week, plus Sunday morning.

We would be honored to have you as our guests. We will meet one last time at Colby High School this Sunday at 9:00 A.M.
Easter will be at 10:00 at the church in Abbotsford.
Our church website is www.abbynrc.com We have services posted online.

We are sad we never made it to MS this winter, but feel we are in God's will.

The kids are all growing up so fast, Nicholas will be 18 in July. Wow.

Thanks for checking in on our blog.
May God richly bless you according to His riches in Glory.

In Christ,

The Haines family

Battle of the Bands

2009-03-09T19:37:00.003-05:00

Hi everyone,

We are trying to keep the blog up in between all of the craziness going on. It seems like there is more to do all the time.

Nicholas and Joshua have their driving temps and are enjoying learning. Mom and Dad have a little more gray hair.

Our excitement for the week is revolving around an event being held in Rhinelander. A church there is holding a worship seminar, which Brian, Samuel, Jesse, and Dwayne are attending.
The day concludes with a battle of the bands and the winner will front for Pillar and Fireflight on April 15 at the Rhinelander High School. It was too cool to pass up. Some think we have a chance at winning, but let's face it, they are our friends, ha ha.
We are excited to have our new sound mixer now, our old one is pretty tired.

We are working hard at the church. We have the drywall taped and are ready to spray texture, primer and ceilings.
The church is hoping to have an Easter service in the new sanctuary. I am feeling the pressure!

We have been very busy in the rentals as well, several have changed hands lately. We are helping with Peggy and Michael's duplex and Nathan and Amanda's house as well.
Today we wrote an offer on a nice Abbotsford duplex.

Nathan and Amanda have offered to watch our kids during their spring break, so we are considering doing something spontaneous next week.

Brian, Joshua, and Nicholas have provided the worship at the Withee church the last 3 weeks, but will have some weeks off now.

We are so looking forward to spring, but are grateful that daylight savings time is back.
We will try to post pics of the kids and more sometime soon.

Thanks for checking our blog, our prayer is that all is well with you.

In Christ,
The Haines family

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A mission trip

2009-02-21T07:29:00.002-06:00

Hi everyone,

It has been a crazy month. We have been working hard on the church remodel. Gary and Jesse helped a few weeks. Now it is pretty much our family. We have had heating and plumbing subcontractors in and their rough ins are complete.

The drywall is all up and we are taping it.

With the missionary family having to go home for now, we are stepping up to help out filling some of the needs that the church now has.

Brian will be the worship leader now for Sunday services. He will also lead worship at the Withee church some Saturdays. We are thankful for all of the teaching we have received from Ricardo the last 14 months, as we feel equipped to take on this responsibility.

We also had to deal with the house that was rented to them. Things turned crazy there too. The day before they needed to leave, they planned to carry out their belongings to storage. Their son and daughter-in-law from Stevens Point came to help. Their daughter-in-law was 7 and a half month pregnant. Fifteen minutes after arriving her water broke, and they all headed back to Stevens Point to have the baby. At 7:00 A.M. the baby boy was born. They returned to Abbotsford at 10:00 A.M. and headed out for the airport at 11:30 A.M. That is amazing timing.
The house was rented back out in one day on a month to month lease so they can have it back when they return. We had to deal with the mess the last people left behind to make room for the new renters. The plan had been to do it in the spring.

As you all know, we had full intention to spend the winter in MS, but we have pretty much resigned to the fact that God had a plan for us to be here at this time, to help build his church here at this time in more ways than one. What a journey it has been, people are being added every week. We had 5 adult men baptized last week in the Hispanic congregation. This is amazing in their culture, where men are even more macho than in our culture.

Pastor John's son Rueben, from Stevens Point will be the new Hispanic pastor. He has a Evangelical Free church their and has his residency complete. They will meet Saturdays at 11:00 A.M. in the church basement.

It has been amazing to God's perfect plan working out in this whole new church. We have people showing up to meet needs at the right time, for example we are here instead of MS when Ricardo needed to leave, and we have a new piano player here only about one month now. Holly even teaches piano. The school we meet in will be closed for remodeling this summer, but we will be in the new building by then.

We will continue to meet at the Colby School at 9:00 A.M. on Sundays. We would be honored to see you visit, even just to rejoice with us to see what God is doing.

Most of our family got some sickness the last 2 weeks. Joshua, Ethan, and Andrew got hit the worst. Ethan hit 104.7 temperature once. Fortunately Brian was spared.

Thanks for checking the blog, sorry we have not been consistant on updating.

In Christ

The Haines family

Church remodel pictures

2009-02-15T20:20:00.003-06:00

These are a variety of pictures of the church remodel.

An unfortunate setback

2009-02-03T07:31:00.002-06:00

Hi everyone,

It has been a very busy week as we find ourselves completley busy in helping build our church as well as completely busy remodeling our church building. The building project is going very well, we are doing HVAC, plumbing and electrical. We should be ready to start drywalling within the week.

A major reason our church has the forward momentum that it has is the full time effort of our hispanic pastor and his family. Besides Pastor John and Rosangela we also have their 2 adult sons. Ricardo is our full time worship leader and Junior is our youth leader. Rosangela and Junior also are a part of the worship team as singers.

Due to an immigration system that obviously is broken and our local Assembly of God district's inexperience with immigratioin and Hispanic ministry, they can not get their visas finished without returning toBrazil, their homeland for some months. The timing of this mess is unfortunate as their work is finally bearing much fruit. With their help, both the English and Hispanic churches are vibrant and growing.

The good news is that they have sown much into a lot of us. Ricardo has developed all of the musicians and singers much this past year. We will see where all of this goes. We know that God has a perfect plan, even though to us this is all seen as negative. They will be here only 2 more weeks, and our hearts are heavy because they have become some of our best friends.

We feel that we are in the will of God being here at this time. We are so tired of winter weather and want to be in Mississippi. It has been a brutal winter. We have friends that had their water main freeze despite they are using the water. This main is over 6 feet below the surface. Most nights have been between 0 and -20 for 2 full months.

Brian is funtioning as a key player in the remodel. He is overseeing many aspects of the remodel. The boys are also helping. Charlotte and the boys have been pressing hard on school work. For those of you in Mississippi who are reading this, all we can say is that we want to be in God's will and we will come as soon as we can, hopefully yet this year, if it gets too late, maybe we will come to visit, not just work. Pray for our missionaries to be able to return to us.
Thank you for your prayers, we are so blessed.

In Christ

The Haines family

Time to remodel the church

2009-01-25T21:52:00.009-06:00

Hi everyone,

Wow, I can't believe how we have failed to update the blog. It has been a very busy month.

We finished Nathan and Amanda's last week. We will publish pictures soon. It turned out beautiful.

We are fully involved in remodeling the church in Abbotsford. At this time we have the majority of the demolition and framing completed. It is amazing how the structural changes have modernized the facility. Pastor Will's father in law Gary is also working full time on the remodel. He is a very experienced and capable contractor. It has been a pleasure working with him.

It is a blessing how the timing of this whole thing works out. In June the school where we meet will close for major building improvements. We would have been forced to find a place to meet.

There is excitement about the church in the community. We are seeing many visitors in both the English and Hispanic services.

Winter has been brutal this year. We have had many days below zero and numerous nights between -10 and -25. We have about 16 inches of snow.

Charlotte and Brian enrolled in a massage class in Colby this month. We have always enjoyed receiving a massage, but giving one has been difficult for both of us. We have learned so many things and are now being able to bless one another with the benefits of massage. Our instructor Josiah has been very helpful. We would be glad to share more about this with you.

Nicholas, Joshua, and Samuel will attend Winterblast at Believer's Church in Marshfield next weekend.

We helped Becky move to Marshfield. Peggy's upper apartment will now be rented out.

Micheal's employer wants him to relocate to Wausau, WI by June. What a turn of events. Only 8 months ago Peggy and Michael were in Bakersfield CA and we thought we would seldom see them.

We are all doing well. The kids are growing up so fast. Rosa speaks well now. Nicholas is turning 18 in July.

We are so glad you take the time to check our blog. May God richly bless you according too His riches in glory!

In Christ

The Haines family

Welcome 2009!

2009-01-02T22:19:00.002-06:00

Hi everyone,

Sorry we have been absent from the page, but have been having trouble with it. We have a lot of pictures to load, but have had troubles and have not solved them yet. We are all well and busy doing many things.

Life with teens and toddlers in the same house is crazy.

We had a nice Christmas. Everything was simple. We spent Christmas eve at Brian's parents and the Saturday after Christmas with Charlotte's parents, sisters and brother- in-laws.

There has been nothing too exciting lately, we are just doing the daily things. Working, raising and schooling the kids and church and scout responsibilities.

We are thankful at this time. We have had a great year from start to finish. We have had profitable work, and have met many goals this year. Each of the kids are growing in many ways, and are all a blessing. We are all healthy and those around us are as well.

Nicholas and Samuel spent the weekend at a Boy Scout camp. Brian played bass for Samuel today. (First time in over 20 years.) He was a little rusty, but it comes back like riding a bike.

We are a little late finishing Nathan and Amanda's house, about 2 weeks beyond our projection. The boys did not seem interested in tackling this one for some reason. Brian spent many days alone. It was OK anyway. The home is beautiful now and is for sale. If you know anyone who could be interested, it is for sale for $70,000.00 It is all new, maybe it is a great deal. We anticipate finishing late this week. Stop in for a tour.

We are happy to give Accuity Insurance and adjuster Greg high recomendations. Amanda and Nathan were well taken care of.

It has been hard for us being here, we were very spoiled the last 3 winters. It seems like it has been so cold all winter.

Becky has accepted a live in position in Marshfield in assisted living. She was renting Peggy's apartment so the girls are dealing with moving and getting the apartment ready to be rented for the first time to the public.

Charlotte and her sisters are planning a weekend getaway together in Minneapolis next weekend. The cubscouts have their Pinewood derby next Saturday. You are invited.

We will begin remodeling at the church late this week.

We pray you are well as you read this. God bless you all.

In Christ,

The Haines family

Christmas 08

2008-12-22T20:41:00.003-06:00

Hi everyone,

It is hard to believe that Chrismas is once again here. We have had our fair share of snow and cold. It is hard on those of us who have been spoiled going down south. We are expecting even more snow this evening. It never reached zero today.

Yesterday was awesome for Charlotte and I. Our kids were involved in the music and skit at church. The morning service featured a typical nativity kids skit. Our 3 little ones were so cute and well behaved. Rosa was Mary, and at age 2.5 anything is possible. She behaved perfectly and even tried to sing "Go tell it on the mountain" It was too cute!

Brian, Joshua, and Samuel played in the worship band. It was a nice time.

We are getting close to finishing Nathan and Amanda's house, today we installed the kitchen cabinets.

Thanks for checking in, we will post a bunch of pics soon.

Remember to keep Christ in your Christmas, He is the reason we celebrate this season!

In Christ,

The Haines family

Back to work at home

2008-12-17T20:37:00.002-06:00

Hi everyone,

Sorry for not updating for a while.

We have returned safely home. Our trip to Lake Ozark, MO was nice. It is a tourist area, but we were in the off season. It was amazing how completely shut down the area was. We were blessed by a very nice mechanic shop who helped us with our vehicle issues. They were competent and honest. Our van ran perfect all the way home.

We returned Friday evening about 10:00 P.M. On Saturday Brian sprayed primer at Nathan and Amanda's. On Saturday evening we had worship band practice, as Brian, Nicholas, Joshua, and Samuel were all involved on Sunday.

We are working hard on Nathan and Amanda's house. We are finished with the drywall and spraying of texture, primer, and ceiling paint. We have most of the hardwood floor in and most of the windows are trimmed.

Tomorrow, we close on a house we are purchasing in Abbotsford. It will be rented to Pastor John and Rosangela, and family, our Brazilian missionary family.

We have received commitment from our church regarding remodeling. Brian will be a contractor involved in the updating of our new building. He will be doing the bathrooms and entrance and perhaps more. This commitment will delay our return to Mississippi for a while. We still plan to return there after the work is complete.

This Sunday will be a bit interesting, we will be playing three different music sets, 2 at Colby Sunday morning and a joint service at Abbotsford at 5:30. If you are interested in attending, contact us.

Thanks for checking in, we love hearing from each of you.

In Christ

The Haines Family

Ha Ha Tonka State Park

2008-12-08T21:42:00.003-06:00

Hi everyone,

We made it to Lake Ozark, MO Friday evening.

It has been refreshing getting away. Today was particularly enjoyable. We had very nice weather, with the day highs in the 50's and tonights low is 48. We went to a Missouri State Park called Ha Ha Tonka State Park. It was a great outing, it featured a castle ruin, a huge spring fed stream, great hiking and a huge natural bridge.

The weather will take a turn for the worse by tomorrow.

We have our 22 year old van on the trip, we had a bit of trouble with it running poorly. The area is mountainous, so it was not a good situation. We were able to do some tune up basics on Saturday and had it looked at by a mechanic on Saturday, but on Monday the same mechanic worked on it again. It turns out that we probably got some bad gas. We cleaned the carburator and it corrected our problem. The van ran fine on most of the trip down before the difficulties began.

We are staying at a very nice resort. We have a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom condo. The unit has lakeside view and is situated on a steep hill. There are 44,ooo boat docks in the area. It is a slow time of the year, obviously, but the benefit to us is no crowding. We enjoyed the pool and hot tub yesterday, and had the place to ourselves.

We do not have many crazy plans for the week, mostly to enjoy the time as a family. Last evening we watched the movie "Winter Wonderland" in the resort's own theatre. We enjoy showing the kids about the past times when life was a little more simple.

We just wanted to touch base, hope all is well with each of you.

In Christ,

The Haines family

Waterpark fun

2008-11-26T00:47:00.008-06:00

Hi everyone, We had a blast as a family today. We spent the day at the Cedar Creek Lodge waterpark.

Being a Tuesday, the crowds were small, so we had no waiting and tons of fun. I think Ethan must have went down the mid size slide several hundred times. It was very refreshing as the recent months have been intense with everything going on.

We are purchasing a house in Abbotsford which will be occupied by Pastor John and Roseangela, along with Jr, and Ricardo. This is our missionary family from Brazil. They needed a bigger house, and found this. It was for sale for a low price and is fundamentally sound and has a good floor plan and a new funace. Its needs are more the cosmetic type, and they along with volunteers from the church and the hispanic church will spruce it up a bit.

We really appreciate the prayers of those around us. We are often told that people regularly pray for us. I (Brian) have had a couple of close calls with accidents recently. A couple of weeks ago after spraying sealer in Nathan and Amanda's house, I had an accident with my new airless sprayer. During the cleaning of the tool, I was using denatured alcohol solvent, which was necessary. I released a hose that was under 3000 psi. ( a car tire is 40 psi) The solvent sprayed in my face, mostly my left eye. We contacted the poison center and followed their instructions. I am O.K. praise be to God.

My other blunder/accident happened Monday afternoon. I had a low tire on my truck, so we changed it with the spare. I failed to remember to retighten the nuts after setting it off of the jack. We proceeded to our jobsite in Hewitt, completed the project, and towed the jobtrailer homeward. We got about 2 miles north of Spencer when suddenly my left rear tire and wheel suddenly fell off the axle, and we were dragging on the concrete. I was easily able to handle the rig and got off well onto the shoulder. Nicholas and I looked for the tire for a half hour, then I started to jack up the truck. Nicholas looked for another 15 minutes and finally found it. The wheel crossed the oncoming lane of traffic. This is a busy highway. We contacted Decker Automotive who had our repaired wheel and they came to help. We were only able to get 3 of 8 nuts on the wheel, but were able to get home safely. The truck has sustained damage only to a wheel part, it will cost little to repair. Once again, praise God! There was plenty of opportunity for a worse outcome.

We will be back to working on Nathan and Amanda's house full throttle. We hope to be complete about Christmas time. The hardwood floor is shipped, and will be gorgeous!

We are looking forward to the holidays, and hope you are too.

In Christ

The Haines family

A historic service

2008-11-23T17:34:00.003-06:00

Hi everyone,

We just wanted to give a praise report about today's service. We held a preconstruction service in the new building in Abbotsford. We had a great turnout of over 140 and it was a great time of ministry, worship, fellowship and eating. It really seems God's hand is on this work as He is blessing and increasing every week.

We will be meeting at Colby High for a time to allow for construction in the new building. Once again we invite anyone to be a part of this exciting season in the life of this church.

We worked a hard week, including Saturday to allow us to take a day off this Tuesday. We have had some passes for the Cedar Creek Lodge waterpark and will enjoy the day as a mini vacation.
We are happy that the colder weather has moderated a bit.

We will be back to work on Nathan and Amanda's house most of the week and will be working on the bathroom and drywall.

Things will be a bit less crazy as things slow down at Thanksgiving.

Our Thanksgiving plans include serving our community at the annual Colby thanksgiving meal and hosting the Thanksgiving meal at our house with Charlotte's parents, Michael and Peggy, Nathan and Amanda, and Becky.

Thanks for checking on the blog, we will hopefully update often over the next couple of weeks.

In Christ,

The Haines family

A pre construction service

2008-11-20T22:36:00.002-06:00

Hi everyone,

It has been been super crazy again this week.

We have been hard at it at Nathan and Amanda's house. As of yesterday we have the new drywall in all rooms except the bathroom, which was not ready.

We have pulled out of this job to complete a project promised before the fire.
It is a flooring project in Hewitt.

We want to invite you to be a part of history. We will have a pre construction service in our new building in Abbotsford this Sunday, at 11:00 A.M. It will be a combined service with the hispanic church. A meal will follow. Brian, Charlotte, Joshua, Nicholas, and Samuel will all be involved in the worship team.

We are also dealing with cold weather, it is going to be less than 10 degrees tonight.

Nicholas and Joshua have completed their driving school and have passed their written tests.

We are in the process of buying a house in Abbotsford.

Thanks for checking our blog. Sorry it is so brief. Keep in touch.

In Christ,

The Haines family

Hearts at home conference

2008-11-09T18:04:00.012-06:00

Hi everyone,

Sorry it has been so long since the last update.

The last two weeks have been a juggling match of Nightmare, worship band, meetings with insurance adjusters, gutting a house and finding time to submit a proposal to the insurance company.

For those of you who are not in the know, Nathan and Amanda had a house fire in their house, which was rented out. Pictures and info are in the last post.
At this time, the entire house is completely gutted to the studs with the exception of one small bedroom and a pantry closet, which were the only salvagable spaces. The adjuster and cleaning contractor thought that the master bedroom could be saved, but when they came this Friday, we discovered that the heat released the paper from the drywall. Service Master says this was a very hot interior fire. All plastics were melted in every room.
The bedroom was saved because the door was shut.

For those of you in the south, we are also dealing with cold weather. This past week we had 3 days of record highs, reaching in the 70's, but now we are in the low 20's at night. We have had a bit of snow.

We are excited for Charlotte, she headed off to Rochester MN, Friday afternoon for a Hearts at Home conference. She went alone, however ran into a couple of ladies that she knew. It featured nationally known speakers and parenting experts. Her life as a stay at home homeschooling mom is not always an easy one, and this was a great opportunity for her to get her battery charged. She returned refreshed. This was the first time she went anywhere alone in nearly 10 years. She would recommend this conference to all moms and is inviting you to join her next year. The conference is in Rochester, MN on November 6-7, 2009. Just contact her and we will start planning.

This afternoon we were so blessed to be special guests at the Dorchester Peace United Church of Christ Harvest Dinner. We were invited to the first event in their newly remodeled hall. They were so gracious to us. They served us a great meal and were so thankful for the work that was completed. They are truly a great congregation of believers.

Our church will likely close on the building in the next week or two and plans on holding one service there the Sunday before Thanksgiving. It will be a joint service with the Hispanic church at 11:00. You are invited. The building is the old Christ Lutheran and Cornerstone Baptist, across the street from the Abbotsford post office, or just north and west of the junction of 13 and Bus. 29 in Abbotsford.

We will be working hard on Nathan and Amanda's house, we need to get it closed in before seriously cold weather. Fortunately, they had a good insurance policy and should have everything taken care of.

Our plan to return to Mississippi will likely be altered a bit as we deal with this house fire and church move and likely remodel. We plan to head out when these 2 issues are under control. As you all know how we feel about winter, you can be assured we will be doing our best.

Thanks for checking in.

In Christ,

The Haines family

A building for our church

2008-10-26T15:09:00.006-05:00

Hi everyone,
Wow it has been crazy this week.
We just returned from church. The Marshfield church has unanimously approved the purchase and remodeling of the Abbotsford building. In fact, pastor Gayland is considering starting another church plant. Planting churches is the most effective means of evangelism and is the reason missions efforts go on all over the world.

We had 68 in the hispanic service, the most ever.

We just finished our first two weekends of Nightmare, with the biggest night being last night. We had 2100 in attendance, running us at full capacity until 1:45 A.M. Everything is going great. Thank you for your prayers.

We are finishing a project for Peace United Church of Christ in Dorchester. We did a new ceiling for them. It turned out well. We have a few small jobs to do and hope to get started on Nathan and Amanda's house fire late in the week.

It is very possible that we may be involved in the church remodel. Brian has some proposal drawn up and we anticipate being involved.

The church is moving out of the strip mall spot, the Gathering Place. The neighbor store has subleased the space.

We have spent the weekend with Nathan, Amanda, Peggy, Michael and Becky.
They all helped with Nightmare and we have been emptying and planning for the house rebuild.

Between all of these activities plus the regular stuff, we have been passing like ships in the night and trying to get a normal nights sleep.

Thanks for catching up with our blog. Consider yourself personally invited to the Nightmare or to the church. The Nightmare will have it's final weekend this week on the 30th, 31st and 1st. If you come, ask for Brian and he will give you a tour. You will not be disappointed.

In Christ

The Haines family

Another fire!

2008-10-21T23:34:00.006-05:00

Hi everyone,

We had another neighborhood fire last night. Just yesterday, the Hanson's three story house was torn down by a backhoe from their recent fire.

Last night, Nathan and Amanda's house was gutted by fire. This is the house that we took a lot of effort restoring last summer for them to move into after their wedding. It appears to be that smoking materials were probably the cause of the fire. It was very heartbreaking for them as the renters agreed not to smoke in the house.

We met with the insurance adjuster and we will likely be the restoration contractor. The damage is serious. We are thankful that no one was hurt in this incident.

In Christ

the Haines family

Nightmare Opening Week

2008-10-17T08:09:00.007-05:00

Hi everyone

Things have been crazy.

We have had 2 Nightmare rehearsals, and tonight is our opener.

Brian is the Special effects director, now in the 11th year. Nicholas will be under him as a trainer and supervisor. Joshua will also work with him on the hands on aspects of the job as his direct assistant. Samuel will serve his first year as a tech. We will be responsible for all of the special effects. These include fog, rain, snow, smells, and our flying person stunt. We are looking forward to serving in this amazing outreach. This picture has nothing to do with Nightmare - except that this is what Rosa does with her sparetime and a bottle of lotion. So I guess it can be a Nightmare to clean.

Charlotte is leading the cub scout tiger den, with weekly meetings and outings. They recently toured the Medford radio station.

Nicholas, Joshua, and Samuel will be attending youth camp with the Colby and Marshfield youth groups in Lacrosse the last weekend of the month. (They will skip the last two nights of Nightmare.)

We are still rehearsing for the worship team every Tue and Wed.

We continue to be blessed with great instruction from Ricardo. He continues to stretch our skills and it has been great to watch the boys grow. We are also playing every week for the hispanic service. This also stretches us as we read the sheet music in Spanish, and learn to play the Latino rhythms.

Our church has put in a full price offer on the Abbotsford building and it has been accepted. Financing for the purchase and remodeling is also approved. The only thing that needs to happen is for the Marshfield church to approve the purchase by a vote. Marshfield's pastor and board all agree that we should make this a reality.

Brian will be submitting bids on some of the proposed projects.

We plan to do the improvements immediately after closing and before moving in.

Our other facility, the Gathering Place will be subleased and used by the neighbor store, Mix and Match.

We found a little time to go to a corn maze near Wausau. It was a good time. We went on Brian's Birthday, last Friday night.

Rosa has pretty much potty trained. We will finally have no kids in diapers after 17 years of diapering kids!! YEAH!

Thanks for checking in. Keep in touch.

In Christ

The Haines family

Mark Schultz in Concert

2008-10-07T22:03:00.003-05:00

Hi everyone,

We have had a very interesting and busy week.

The highlight of the week was a suprise for Brian. We had our church services on Sunday and our Court of honor for the Boy Scouts on Sunday. We decided to go on a ride, maybe to enjoy the tree colors. What Brian did not know, was that he was being tricked into a birthday suprise!

One of his favorite artists at this time is Mark Schultz. He was hoping for a C.D. for his birthday. He was able to pick a couple of them up at a concert in Minneapolis at Bethel College.

Unfortunately, the whole weekend was very hindered by sickness. Brian, Rosa and Samuel were sick pretty much the whole trip.

We dropped the kids off at Peggy and Amanda's apartment, and they moved them to a hotel while we were at the concert. Charlotte worked so hard on the weekend and was so disappointed how it all turned out. We stayed Monday and visited the Como Zoo, but Brian and Samuel needed to rest in the van and missed out on the whole thing.

Work has been very busy. We have a roof ready to shingle in Abbotsford. We did the tearoff and preparation last week and had a rooftop delivery today. We are also doing a renovation in a church hall in Dorchester and have the framing done and a start on the new lighting.

We had a flood in one of our rentals and need to change a furnace as a result of the damage.

Our church is putting in a offer on the old Christ Lutheran Building in Abbotsford at this time. It will be interesting to see what happens. The congregation has been praying for God's will.
We will post pic's soon. We have many taken, just need to upload them.

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad Haines!

Thanks for checking in, everyone.

In Christ,

The Haines family

The movie Fireproof

2008-09-29T21:00:00.003-05:00

Hi everyone,

We have been busy doing life. We finished the Colby house and garage roofing project. We finished the Marshfield deck project and the Stratford floor/patio door project.

We will be doing another roof this week in Abbotsford.

We are in preparation for our annual Nightmare project at Believer's church in Marshfield. Brian is still the special effects director, now in the 11th year. We have seen over 100,000 people see the production and are preparing for large crowds again this year. Brian is excited for his part of the production this year. We have finally found a smarter way to produce our low fog. It will be easier, safer, less expensive and will require less man power.

If anyone reading this would like to be involved this year, contact us and we will get you involved. It is an awesome opportunity for influencing the younger generation with a strong positive message. We have many testimonies every year of changed lives.

On Friday, Charlotte, Brian and Andrew went to the just released film Fireproof. It is the second film made by a Baptist church in Georgia. It is a volunteer effort and the results are amazing. The other movie was Facing the Giants. It was being shown in select theatres. We went to Chippewa Falls. We wanted to support it on opening weekend as it affects how it is marketed.
It turns out that in 839 theatres, it was like one of the very highest opening box office movies!

The movie is about a married couple that was in serious trouble in their relationship, but by turning to God and learning some things about sacrifice and selflessness could turn it around. We will not share more, because we hope you will go see it. This movie shares values not like movies that we are so used to seeing. It makes you wonder if movie producers would notice that millions of people would come out to see movies that would help the world's problems rather than help cause the problems. The movie stars Kirk Cameron as the lead actor. It is intense, funny at times and definitely well done.

Nicholas, Joshua, and Samuel camped with the Boy Scouts this weekend at Perkinstown.
The Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts are selling popcorn. Even Ethan is joining Cub Scouts. He is so excited!

Thanks for checking in.

Keep in touch.

In Christ

The Haines family

A busy September

2008-09-22T21:36:00.006-05:00

Hi everyone,

I know we always say this, but once again, everything has been crazy. The boys are in school full swing, and the business is very busy.

Last week we built a deck in Marshfield and we are doing roofing and siding work on another hail damaged house and garage in Colby.

In addition to these projects, we needed to service a regular customer who had water damage to a kitchen floor. On Saturday, Brian and Andrew did subfloor and vinyl flooring in a large kitchen, hall, and bathroom. They also installed a patio door. They needed to remove and replace trim and bathroom fixtures.

The weather has been great. Our September has been dry and warm. It has been good work weather.

We are excited about progress at the church. The Hispanic church has needed to move into the school as they have outgrown the Gathering Place. Our service is at 9:00 and theirs is at 11:00. This creates new opportunities. For the last two services, our worship band has been able to participate in the Hispanic service, coming aside with Ricardo in providing a more established service. It is exciting to see what God is doing.

Nicholas, Joshua and Samuel will be going to a Fall camporee with their scout troop this weekend.

The church is also praying about the purchase of a church building in Abbotsford. The building is a traditional building, 10000 square feet and in good structural condition. It will need some updating including roof repairs, main floor bathrooms, handicap access, carpet and paint and possibly much more.

We are still planning to escape winter. We are planning on returning to south MS after Christmas, but are also praying on possibly going to Galveston, TX. We want to be in God's will, we do not care if we are in Biloxi, Galveston, Colby, or Africa as long as God is with us. It seems to make sense for us to return to south MS, as we have a network of relationships there. The needs are still high there.

We are also excited to be planning a vacation to Lake of the Ozarks MO from Dec. 5 to Dec 12. We were able to book a very nice condo. We feel very blessed.

We were declined on the offer we placed on a house in Colby last week. We did not accept their counteroffer.

We had visits from Peggy and Michael, Nathan and Amanda, Uncle Bill and Carol this weekend.

Thanks for checking in on us.

In Christ

The Haines family

Roofing Charlotte's parents house

2008-09-13T20:28:00.004-05:00

Hi everyone,

We have been keeping very busy.

We spent this week putting a new roof on the house occupied by Charlotte's parents. It needed a bit of extra TLC as it was rather poor work last time. It has a pitched roof built over a flat roof. It turned out nice this time, we are so glad it is finished.

Charlotte has been busy with cub scout recruiting. She did recruitment outings in the schools and at a rally at the Lions shelter. It was a bit of work.

We put in an offer on a very distressed house in our neighborhood today. We figure it is a 50/50 on getting it. We would like to have control of the improvements. It would also give us a large job so close to home.

Charlotte and the boys have been hitting school hard this week.

We have received great news from Peggy and Michael, and Nathan and Amanda. The engineering firm that Michael was hoping to get into actually made a position for him and he will start working there on the 29th. The firm is expanding into Menomonee, Wi and Eau Claire, and Wausau. After he gets the next licence, it is very possible he could be running a branch in one of these areas. The offer meets his salary expectations. Peggy and Amanda have both been hired by the same company. They are collection positions. They will be able to carpool. It just seems as they are in the center of God's will. Everything is falling into place so beautifully.

Last weekend, we had a family reunion organized by Charlotte. It was attended by about 50 people. Rather than just sit and talk, we organized a murder mystery skit with 10 of us in full character and costume. It was a lot of fun. ( I, Brian was an Indian!!)

This week our work will take us to Marshfield to build a deck, then to Colby for a house and garage roof, also siding repair. This project is another hail damage project.

This week, our Hispanic church will move to the High School. They have outgrown the Gathering Place.

Thanks for checking in.

In Christ,

The Haines family

Reunion plans

2008-09-04T21:11:00.004-05:00

Hi everyone,

It has been a busy and productive week. We have finished the Marshfield roof project. It was a blessing. Our customer just located here from Shreveport, LA. They were pleased and are offering us another project.

We are working on the family reunion for Charlotte's family. It will be this weekend at Medford's Mill Pond park.

We will be putting a roof one of our own buildings next week. It is the one occupied by Charlotte's parents. The roof was tired when we bought the house in 2003. We do not think it can handle another hard winter.

Our church is gaining momentum every week. The worship band gets better every week. It is exciting to see each musician gaining skill. Samuel and Joshua are playing with increasing skill and confidence. Ricardo is doing so much to teach them.

Next week the Hispanic church will move to the High School on Sundays as they have already outgrown the Gathering Place. Praise God!!

Peggy and Michael, and Nathan and Amanda are moving into their apartment in Minneapolis.

We will keep you all posted. Thank you for checking our page.

In Christ

The Haines family

Andrew is 10!

2008-08-29T21:19:00.002-05:00

Hi everyone,

I am writing on the 29th, Andrew's 10th birthday and the 3rd anniversary of hurricane Katrina.

We are waiting to celebrate Andrew's birthday, as we have been on a large roof project in Marshfield and we are waiting for Peggy, Michael, Nathan and Amanda to make it home this weekend.

Brian, Nicholas, Joshua, Samuel, and Andrew have been working on the roof. This is the first roof project that Andrew has used a roof nailer.

Peggy and Michael have arrived in Minneapolis.

We have been busy with all of our normal activities. Charlotte is heading up cub scout recruiting. She is recruiting at our local public and Catholic schools.

Brian and Charlotte sang their first ever public duet this Sunday. You can hear it at northridgefamily.org Hit the link to the Colby/Abby church and hit This week's message.

Thank you to Mary for your visit!

Charlotte is very busy organizing a family reunion for next week. We are holding it at the Medford City Park and are planning to camp there for the weekend.

As the days pass, we are realizing how serious the hailstorm was here a few weeks ago. The damage in the city was serious. We have received a settlement offer on one of our duplexes. Brian is receiving numerous offers to repair damaged roofs and siding. We had golf ball size hail horizontally wind driven.

We are keeping the Gulf Coast in our prayers as Gustav threatens the coast.

Our Wisconsin time is half used up. In 4 months we plan to return to Mississippi.

Thank you all for reading our blog. Feel free to respond. It is easy.

In Christ,

The Haines family

Joshua is 15

2008-08-21T22:58:00.003-05:00

Hi everyone,

Wow, it has been hard finding time to do the blog. It has been so busy. The summer is full of birthdays. 4 of 6 of our children have birthdays in July and August. Joshua turned 15 on the 14th. Andrew will be 10 on the 29th.

The big news around here is that Michael and Peggy, and Nathan and Amanda are moving to Minneapolis this week. Michael and Peggy are looking forward to a cleaner environment. Bakersfield, CA is one of America's most polluted cities. Nathan is going to school in MN to study marketing.

We have been busy with all of the regular activities. Church, scouts, neighbors, friends and more keep us busy full time. Brian will be the worship leader at church this week. Joshua and Samuel will play. Brian and Charlotte will do their first ever public duet. You are all invited.

Services are at Colby High at 9:00 a.m. Sunday.

We reconditioned the front of a small car dealership in Colby. We also just completed a full bathroom remodel. We are now doing a large flooring project.

We recently discovered our R.V was damaged in our hailstorm. It has hundreds of dents and a beat up air conditioner. We received a settlement for damage. The storm also damaged one of our buildings and caused damage all over Colby.

Thank you for checking up on our site.

In Christ

The Haines family

2008-08-13T19:34:00.001-05:00

At Scout camp

2008-08-03T19:46:00.008-05:00

Hi everyone,

We are all camping at our Boy Scout camp. We have been away from the internet all week, but we now have access. I will be loading pictures for you.

This past week, Nicholas, Joshua, and Samuel were at camp Tesomas, The boy scout camp. The rest of us were at the nearby family camp. Brian and Andrew are now at Akela's world, the cub scout camp.

Brian and Charlotte will switch, each will spend two nights at Andrew's camp.

We have had a blast. We have done rock climbing and have ridden a zip line. The zip line here is mounted to a 60 foot tower and descends down a 437 foot cable. Andrew and everyone older has done the zip line. Brian did the repel rope down the 60 feet.

It was a awesome time, we spent one and a half weeks. The weather was great. The camp programs and facilies are great as well. Activities included watersports, archery, educational, science, camping, hiking and so much more.

We used some spare time to dismantle and repaint Ethan's bike. We celebrated his birthday at camp. Nicholas has turned 17 and Ethan has turned 6. Joshua will turn 15 this week and Andrew will turn 10 in August.

Brian led worship for the whole Cub Scout camp chapel 3 nights.

We are back home and we will update you soon on all that is going on here.

In Christ

The Haines Family

Colby Cheese Days

2008-07-21T22:53:00.003-05:00

Hi everyone,

In addition to everything being super crazy like usual, we had a storm this past Thursday. We had a lightning strike in our neighborhood which took out our internet, our phone line, a T.V. , a radio, and some items from our neighbors. We also had 1.75 inch hail which was wind driven and damaged roofs, siding, and broke windows all over our city. We have also had much heavy rain.

Last weekend was Colby Cheese Days. We had a visit from Peggy and Michael. They were home from CA. We were involved in the regular fundraisers from our church and scouts.

We had a serious house fire in our neighborhood on Sat evening. The Hanson's home a block south of us was seriously gutted by fire. We housed three people Sat. evening as a result of the situation.

Brian led worship on Sunday morning. Joshua and Samuel played in the band as they have been most weeks recently.

Samuel and Joshua have traveled with Pastor Will and Ricardo to lead worship at a youth camp near Superior for the week.

Brian finished the bathroom in Unity. He is on some roof projects again this week.

Rosa and Ethan both had a bout of a fever. They both recovered well. It caused a couple of hard nights.

Next week we will all be going to the Boy scout camp. We will all camp. Those of us who are not scouts will use our R.V.

Sorry for being out of touch, we have not had internet access.

In Christ,

The Haines family

July 4th weekend

2008-07-07T22:26:00.005-05:00

Hi everyone,

It is our favorite week of the year. It is the July 4th weekend and our 22nd anniversary.

We spent the first part of the week on the usual busy tasks. Brian finished Laura's bathroom.
He also installed a new commercial door at a Medford car wash. The pictures show the before and after pictured of both projects.
This week Brian will start another full bathroom remodel.

The boys have spent a lot of time with neighbor kids.

We decided to have a bit of fun with the 4th of July and our anniversary. On Friday, Brian came home early from work and we headed to Medford's Mill Pond park with our R. V. If you have never been there, you should check it out, it is a very nice park, and close to home. We rented a campsite and were joined by Charlotte's parents, Becky, and Nathan and Amanda. We enjoyed a nice meal together, fireworks and fellowship.

On Saturday, our family stayed at the camp. We enjoyed a 15 mile bike ride together. Nicholas and Joshua are earning a merit badge for Boy Scouts in bicycling. Even Ethan (age 5) enjoyed the 15 mile ride. It was a very good time. We relaxed and enjoyed the playground and had our meal in the camper.

Sunday morning was busy, Brian led worship, Joshua played drums and Samuel played bass. It was a blessing to lead the congregation in worship.

On Sunday afternoon, We headed to Eau Claire. This would be our first weekend away from the children without a babysitter in 16 years. The kids did great. We made numerous phone calls to them.

We spent a few hours at the Oakwood mall. It was a refreshing time of being alone together.

We packed for and considered camping in tents, but we decided on getting a room. We stayed in Eau Claire. On Monday, we headed to Menomonee planning on tubing the river, but the weather was not very promising.

Instead of going out on the river, we were able to enjoy downtown Menomonee, taking in some shopping, touring the Mabel Tainter theatre, driving a rustic road, touring a natural site called the Devil's Punchbowl and having a nice lunch at a local cafe.

If you have never visited the Mabel Tainter theatre, you should, it is an awesome historic site and the self guided tour cost a whopping 1$.

Thanks for vistiting our blog.

In Christ,

The Haines family

Swimming pool

2008-06-29T11:20:00.003-05:00

Hi everyone,

It has been a busy and productive week. We are all busy with the normal activities.

Andrew, Samuel and Ethan had summer school all week. They are now finished.

Last Sunday, we had a suprise 50th birthday for Kevin at Kevin and Sandy's house. It was a total suprise to him. It was a good time.

Charlotte put a lot of energy this week into attempting to get a women's fitness gym back in Colby. We lost our ColbyCurves recently due to a personal bankruptcy.
We have some ideas about restoring a gym, but need some help from others. We are not willing to take it on alone.

In faith, we set up our swimming pool in our yard. It is a 15 foot inflatable. It is only the second time we set up this pool. We did not use it last year as we arrived home from Mississippi on July 3. The weather is a bit cool, we will need warmer weather to use it.

We are starting to enjoy vegetables from our garden.

Joshua and Brian played in the worship band today. Nicholas did the sound. We filled the entire soundboard today. (and the stage too.) We had on vocals Ricardo, Junior, Sarah, Lori, Amanda A, David and Brian.
Duane played keys, Brian on guitar, David on guitar, Joshua on drums, and Ricardo on bass.

Pastor Will moved to Abby this Friday. It will be nice to have them here now.
Our hispanic pastor, pastor John preached in the main service.

Today we will be joining the church for a backyard BBQ at Ken and Dawn's.

Brian is nearing completion of a bathroom remodel here in Colby. It is a custom porcelain tile project. It will be beautiful.

Thank you for checking in, may God richly bless you according to His riches in glory!

In Christ
The Haines family

Summer school

2008-06-22T11:54:00.005-05:00

Hi everyone,

It has been a busy week.

First, we had a family funeral for Charlotte's aunt Genny. It was Thursday at Believer's Church. It was there in recent years that she and her husband Kenny were discipled and served. Many attended and she will be missed by all that were close to her.

We all know she is in a better place. We are confident in her faith in Jesus.

The kids were all involved in the public school summer school program. Nicholas took the tractor safety course and after being certified, we let him run a riding mower for one of our lawns.

Samuel took archery, summer sports, karate, and archery.

Andrew is in soccer 1, Hola Mexico, and karate.

Ethan is in introduction to kindergarden.

Joshua was at Akela's world scout camp at Rhinelander for North Woods Challenge, which is a program desingned to teach scouts to be leaders. It is a challenging week, a very good program.

Charlotte and Rosa got to have quiet time together each morning. Wow a quiet house!!

Brian found himself with less help, but completed the Marshfield roof, and did a partial Colby roof.

We have lots of good work, for this we are very thankful. This week we will be doing a complete bathroom remodel in Colby featuring a custom tile shower and replacing a car wash door in Medford.

We had usual practices for the worship band on Tuesday and Thursday. The worship band was good this week. We will change it up next week. Ricardo will play bass instead of Samuel. Duane will play keyboard.

Our Colby children's pastor Aimee will be stepping down in July and returning to Marshfield to help her husband Preston with the children at the Marshfield church. When she was hired, the plan was to help at Colby until a pastor family was hired here. We will miss Aimee here, she has been a big blessing.

Jen will now head up the childrens church.

This week will still be summer school for Ethan, Andrew and Samuel.

On Saturday, two scouts from the troop, Colton and Corwin, were presented with the highest scout award, the eagle. The eagle award requires the earning of many merit badges, and community service. Only 2 percent of scouts earn this award. We are blessed that our kids have good friends surrounding them.

Thanks for checking in, have a great week.

In Christ,

The Haines family

The Amazing Family Race and Aunt Genny

2008-06-15T18:01:00.005-05:00

Hi everyone,

We have had a busy, productive and fun week.

We also have had a sad week. Charlotte's aunt Genny has been in poor health for a long time.

She has been on dialasis for 4 years. She was also recently diagnosed with rapidly progressing lung cancer. The cancer would have caused her a painful and agonizing death in the next month or two so she and the family agreed that it would be best to stop the dialasis treatments. This option would cause her to fall asleep and pass. Her last treatment was on Wed. She passed this afternoon at her home. Charlotte is with her family as I (Brian) update this blog.

Brian and the boys spent the week on a roof project in Marshfield this week. It has gone very well except for some bad weather. We will finish about Tuesday.

Joshua will be at Camp Akela's World in Rhinelander, WI, this week for leadership training for the Boy Scouts. Nicholas will be at a Tractor driving class this week. The other boys will be at summer school at the Colby school learning many interesting skills.

Our church partnered with our parent church for an outreach called the Amazing Family Race. It was like the T.V. program. It was a very well planned and fun family outreach. Our family wound up winning the first place trophy on Friday night. We also won 4 passes to The Cedar Creek lodge waterpark!!

We placed 6th on Saturday. We would invite you all to join us next summer for the event. It was a lot of fun. Nice trophy...

We spent the afternoon at a Haines Family Reunion. It was a very nice time. We met at a hall in Granton.

"Bob" loves to entertain the children with his abilities of fun....

Family member "Bob" and his yo-yo tricks...

Brian's brother, on the left, Kenny and other family

Brian's Father on the right with family.

Brian and Samuel played in the worship band on Sunday. It went very well.

We will keep in touch. Thank you for looking at our blog. God bless you!!

In Christ

The Haines Family

Gym set

2008-06-08T13:43:00.004-05:00

Hi everyone,

Wow where do we start? It has been really busy. There has been nothing much out of the ordinary, It has been good.

Last Saturday we attended Corwyn's wedding and Harmony's graduation in Wausau.
On Sunday morning, Brian,Joshua, and Samuel played in the worship band. You can listen in at northridgefamily.org We welcomed our new pastor, Will and Jen, and their children Emma, Isabelle, and Willy. They have purchased a home in Abbotsford and praise God their home in Augusta sold at a good price after being on the market only 2 weeks. We celebrated their arrival at our regular monthly back yard barbecue at Mike and Karens house.

Our beloved Nicki at the church has accepted a intern position at a Nebraska Christian camp.
It is amazing how God works as Pastor has been hired as she is heading out. Nicki has been the brains behind getting many things going. We celebrated her today after church at a whole church brunch. We have been having nearly 100 in attendance most Sundays.

We are having worship band practices on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We are now also having an extra practice and performance on Wednesdays for youth group. Ricardo is a highly skilled musician and very capable teacher. He is imparting a lot of skill into the entire team. It is a beautiful thing to see in motion.

Brian has been on some interior remodels the last 2 weeks and we have a large roof scheduled for this week. All of the guys will work hard all week.

We will have an outdoor movie night for youth group at the Gathering Place. They plan on showing Spiderman.

Thursday night was crazy. Andrew served at a Cub Scout brat fry at 5:00. Nicholas, Joshua and Samuel had their scout swimming test at 5:00. Joshua had a mandatory meeting at Wausau at 7:00. Brian, Joshua, and Samuel had band practice. This is what life is like for us here in the summer.

Joshua will be going to camp Tesomas for scout leadership training all next week.

Becky, Nathan and Amanda are out in California visiting Mike and Peggy.

We keep interested in fitness. We have had a commercial treadmill for years. Due to a bankruptcy, we lost our local Curves franchise which was Charlotte's help. Snapfit is here, but has not really been a workable option for us as the kids need adult supervision.

We just this past week discussed the goal of upgrading our basement into our own gym. We discussed that ideally it would be great to get one of those large total gym weight set. Obviously they are pricy. We would have had to save to get one. Yesterday Brian was driving past a local resale store and they had one outside for sale. We were able to buy it for a sweet price and we are all really excited. It is a very nice set. Our neighbor also gave us a very nice air hockey table which we also installed in the basement. With all of these teen boys, they now have a good place to hang out and get more fit.

We are going to be helping with the Marshfield North Ridge churches large event The Amazing Family Race next weekend.

Brian's parents are recovering well. They will obviously struggle with the normal aggravations of a car accident. Their vehicle sustained $8000.00 damage. The other victim sustained broken ribs and internal bleeding. She is hospitalized.

We trust you are all busy enjoying Wisconsin's summer.

We will write again.

In Christ

The Haines family

car accident

2008-05-30T23:45:00.003-05:00

Hi everyone,

Just a quick update to let you know that Brian's parents were involved in a fairly serious car accident today about 3:15 PM. They were south bound on SHW 13 and a driver directly pulled out in front of them.

My Dad, Ken, never even saw the vehicle and hit the Chevy Impala in the driver's door.
Dad is pretty much O.K. Mom was transported in the ambulance to Marshfield. She has chest trauma from the seat belt, and a chipped tooth.

The driver of the other vehicle sustained significant injuries, but we do not know the details at this time. It is believed that her injuries are not life threatening.

The vehicles sustained significant damage. The impact was at about 25 MPH. My parents were driving a full size pickup.

Please pray for everyone involved and thank God it was not worse.

In Christ
The Haines family

Square foot gardening

2008-05-26T20:51:00.004-05:00

Hi everyone,

It has been a very busy week. (what's new?)

We worked for Doug and Marla all week into Saturday. We did bathroom, laundry room, and kitchen remodeling. We installed vinyl floors, a laminate floor, plumbing replacement, repaired a leaky shower, installed recessed lighting, a new kitchen ceiling, and crown moulding.

On Saturday afternoon and Sunday afternoon we worked on our new garden. We are following the advice of a best selling author Mel Bartholomew. It seems to be a good plan.

On Sunday morning, we were all involved at church. Brian, Joshua, and Samuel played in the band. Charlotte taught children's church. Nicholas helped Kevin with the technical work.

We are rehearsing on Tue and Thu evenings. Brian led worship Tue. evening for the connect group.

On Memorial day, we headed out to the Colby cemetary as is our custom. Nicholas, Joshua, Samuel and Andrew marched with their scout troops.

On Memorial day afternoon, we headed to Levis mound. We placed a cache (for GPS users) in a very cool and mostly unknown spot near the trail. It was a beautiful 75 degree afternoon and we spent 3 hours hiking. On the way home from Neillsville, we stopped at the new Longwood park.

It is a very nice new little park 2 miles west of Longwood. If you have not seen it, you will want to. It has a shelter, a very nice playground and is located on a river site.

We are blessed to have a lot of good work booked. We are thankful to God for providing richly according to His riches in glory.

Stay in touch, contact us anytime.

Charlotte and Brian can be found on Facebook now, also.

In Christ,

The Haines family

Cub scout soap box derby

2008-05-17T22:40:00.005-05:00

Hi everyone,

It has been a crazy week. Brian and the boys roofed a house between Ogema and Rib lake. The house is a cabin owned by a local person. The first day started out interesting as Brian got his 4 wheel drive truck stuck in the mud trying to park our job trailer in the site. The house looked easy, but was a 12/12 pitch. This makes everything quite difficult.

We have been busy making Ethan and Rosa fancy beds. Ethan got a Lightning Mc Queen car bed. Rosa got a princess bed. They were so excited!!

Nicholas, Joshua, and Samuel went camping Friday night with the Boy Scouts on a private lake near Chelsea.

Brian, Joshua, and Samuel will all play in the worship band on Sunday. Nicholas will do the computer lyrics. We have a new lead guitar in the worship band this week. David is excited to be on board.

Saturday was a bit crazy. The Cub scouts had their annual soap box derby on the cemetary hill. This function overlapped our churches outreach "Seniorita's sweet escape". Charlotte had several guests. It was a great time of massages, manicures, hairstyling, prizes, a nice lunch and treats, and entertainment.

Brian spent part of Sat. working on the yard and chores around the house.

Thank you for checking our blog. God bless you!

The Haines family

Rosa is 2!!

2008-05-11T20:35:00.005-05:00

Hi everyone,

The highlight of the week was Rosa's birthday party. We failed to have a decent party for her last year while we were in MS. We threw a little party with close family and friends. Ken and Carina, Charlie and Jackie, Nathan and Amanda, Becky, and Seth, and Stephanie attended. We cooked chicken on the grill and had a nice meal. Rosa had a blast.

Of course, this Sunday was also Mother's day so we all celebrated the mother's in our lives. We are so thankful for the sacrifices they have made for us!!!

We spent the week catching up on projects of all kinds. Projects ranged from fixing broken lawnmowers to sprucing up the little ones bedrooms. We had fun just being together as a family.

Brian, Joshua, and Samuel played in the worship band this Sunday. You can hear the service at northridgefamily.org There is a link to the Colby/Abby church.

Brian, Nicholas, Joshua, and Samuel will start a roof project at Timm's Hill on Monday. We are blessed to have a number of good work bookings. We feel very blessed.

We have purchased a GPS and did a little geo caching this week. Seth joined us on our outing. If you are interested in knowing a bit about geo caching, ask us. We will inform you about this cool hobby.

Michael and Peggy have made it safely to California. Thanks be to God for their safe travel and great honeymoon!!

Thank you for checking our blog. May God bless you richly!!

The Haines family

Peggy's wedding

2008-05-04T19:34:00.006-05:00

Hi everyone,
We wanted to update you about the wedding.

It was held in the Colby High Theatre last evening at 6:00 P.M. Everything went well as planned. In fact things went well enough, the entire event remained on schedule.

The wedding was followed by a reception in a 1800 square foot tent set up on our south lawn.

The weather had been very rainy and cold the days before the wedding, so we installed a 1800 square foot floor on our lawn on Friday. We would have had to move the reception somewhere else without the floor. Fortunately, the rain stopped, but it was plenty cold. We rented a heater so the tent was comfortable. We reached a low of 31 degrees.

We also purchased a sheet of vinyl flooring so we could have a nice dance floor. Razor J provided the D.J. music and did a real nice job.

The reception ended with all direct family wholeheartedly worshiping God to the song How Great is our God by Chris Tomlin. It was an amazing moment that we will never forget.

Michael is from Bakersfield, California and had 16 guests fly in. We also entertained at the house on Sunday, we had a noon meal for about 25 people. We did the majority of the teardown using the help of family and friends.

Michael and Peggy will set out by car to return home on Monday.
This will enable Peggy to keep her car. They will travel 5 seven hour days. They will make it Kansas City on Monday.

Joshua and Samuel already played in the worship band today. You can listen to them at northridge family.org. There is a link to the Colby church. Our church has hired our own pastor which will make it possible for us to function more indepentantly. Once again, he is a younger man with a wife and 3 children. He will start in early June.

We reconditioned our living room. We are loving it.

We will be faithful to post also for Peggy and Michael's benefit.

Peggy and Michael, May God bless you richly!!!!

In Christ,

The Haines family

Homeward bound

2008-04-27T06:19:00.004-05:00

Hi everyone,

Sorry it has been so long since we updated, but we have had no access to the internet for 3 weeks and have worked long days.

I am so proud of Joshua and Andrew. They worked so diligently this month making it possible for us to finish Eva's siding job and remodel her kitchen as an extra project. The boys did almost all of the vinyl soffit, foam insulation and vinyl siding by themselves. The workmanship was excellent.

Eva's house was an old home requiring much extra TLC. We had to rebuild almost everything as we attempted to improve the home. We installed all new doors and windows. We cladded all exposed jambs and other surfaces. The transformation was amazing.

Working for Eva was a most rewarding experience. She prayed for God to send her the right person to help her and she clearly states that we were an answer to her prayers. She was so grateful to us and extended much hospitality to us including sending us off Fri. evening with a pizza party for us and some of her friends. I believe God blessed her as we worked for her several weeks and it never rained during work time but we received soaking rain 3 consecutive Friday nights after work hours.

We have traveled the first 600 miles and have arrived safely at Perryville, MO at our regular stopping point. We arrived at 8:30 P.M and were able to enjoy the pool before going to sleep.

Thank you for your prayers.

We will travel 600 miles today and should be home before bedtime.

We were blessed last Sunday afternoon by going to a concert series at Ocean Springs. We saw Superchic, KJ52, Disciple and my favorite, Brit Nicole. It was an outdoor event and was a lot of fun.

We had a short visit to the beach last Sat. afternoon.

We also worked a Sat. for Ed and Marcella. Their home is almost complete and they will be able to move back home. The indoor pictures are their home. We installed their cabinets, trim, doors and floors. The countertops are real granite installed by another contractor.

We are excited to return home and plan to spend January through April in MS next winter. We already have offers for work.

God Bless each of you.

Brian , Joshua, and Andrew

Peggy's shower

2008-04-06T16:01:00.005-05:00

Hi everyone, Well, the big bridal shower was last evening. It was held at the new Abby city hall. It was a nice time. Here is Samuel beginning to hang the thousands of crystals and Nicholas hanging all the sequins strings that had to be hung from the ceiling.

Some of the wonderful guests for the shower.
And of course, you need food right. This was one of our displays. It was lots of fun and Peggy was really blessed.

Charlotte's entire family was able to spend Sunday afternoon together. Becky has returned home, of course, Charlotte is home from MS, and Peggy is still in Colby. It was a sweet time for them all to be together. Charlotte's parents, Michael, and Nathan were also all there.

We are enjoying beautiful weather again. We did have a rain night Friday, reaching into Sat morning.

We finished Ed and Marcella's project on Wed.

We are pressing on with Eva's house, that will be the routine until we are finished. Joshua and Andrew are being a big help. They installed a large porch ceiling with vinyl soffit while Brian rebuilt a porch roof.

Eva is Seventh Day Adventist, so we will not work for her on Saturday, her worship day.

We spent this Saturday doing odd jobs, missing details, installed a attic fan for Maureen and changed transmission fluid in the truck.

We will try, but pictures will be a bit tricky these weeks. Charlotte has our family camera and the card reader, and Brian will have a new camera this week, but no access to upload pics.

It will be a tough few weeks, we have never been apart more than about 10 days. It puts into perspective the sacrifice of our military families.

We joined Pastor Murphy and Twila, Pastor Pete and Pam, Pastor Billy and Saudi and their children for lunch.
Andrew joined Hamp and Susan for a few hours, and Joshua joined Pastor Murphy, Twila and their family for a few hours.

Thank you for your prayers regarding Charlotte's safe trip home.

Thanks for checking the blog.

We will post pics of the shower.

In Christ,

The Haines Family

Charlotte is home

2008-04-02T21:55:00.002-05:00

Hi everyone,

Charlotte arrived home safe and on schedule this evening at 7:15 P.M. Thank you for your prayers!! The boys were able to participate in their youth group, although they were a bit late.

Brian, Joshua and Andrew were able to finish Ed and Marcella's project. It was a sweet time of friendship and prayer. We have been able to make new friends. Praise God!!

Brian, Joshua, and Andrew will start tomorrow with the task of siding Eva's house. We will be working hard every day to finish this large project.

We miss you all and will return as soon as we can.

Brian

Half way home

2008-04-01T22:18:00.002-05:00

Hi everyone,

Just a quick note to let you all know that Charlotte is half way home tonight. She stopped at our regular stop at Perryville, MO. She will return late Wed. afternoon to Colby. Please lift her up in prayer for safe travel tomorrow.

Brian, Joshua, and Andrew have stayed in MS to complete a large job for Eva and will return in about 3 weeks.

We will see you all soon.

Brian

Working hard in the sun

2008-03-28T21:50:00.002-05:00

Hi everyone,

Not much has changed since the last time we posted.

We have been working very hard for Ed and Marcella the last week. Both of our customers have had major out of town trips, so we have been taking turns working for each of them around their schedule.

As mentioned before, Ed and Marcella have released other contractors from their project and have turned us loose finishing their house. Projects this week have included installing their cabinet package, installing base trim, window trim, finishing bathroom tile, outdoor railings, and drywall.

It has been a fun project for us, because we were able to be a blessing to them. There were some difficult projects to tackle and their other contractors unfortunately were not going to be a suitable solution.

We are planning on sending Charlotte and most of the boys home on Tuesday, to return home by Wed. night. We have considered flying her home for the shower, but probably will just have her drive in.

If we follow through as planned, we will take Monday off for a fun day. We realized that we have worked 6 days a week since arriving and we are needing a little rest and relaxation.

We still have not completely kicked this virus we have been fighting. Most of us are still fighting a bit of coughing, fever, congestion and sore throats. We would appreciate prayer for this. It has been 2 weeks now and we would like to move on.

Brian and 1 or 2 of the boys will stay back to finish Eva's work. Basically, it has turned into a full blown old house siding project with all of the extra work that usually comes with one like that.
We also will probably do a couple of small jobs for past customers and friends. We will work long days 6 days a week for maximum production.

We are enjoying great weather, March and April are so nice here. Right now it is mid 70's during the day and low 60's at night. Not too hard to handle.

Nicholas has been blessed with a good computer. He looked at one thrown into storage because it was not needed anymore, and found it to be very good. He had an opportunity to use honesty and shared that is was good. It turns out that it was given to him because he will make better use of it. It is so cool to be blessed for doing what is right.

We will see all of you back home soon, thanks for checking in!

In Christ

The Haines family

Charlotte to return home

2008-03-25T19:56:00.003-05:00

Hi everyone,

This will be a quick update, just to let you all know what is going on.

We have had a hard week. It has been a long time since we have dealt with sickness, but this time it seems to have been our turn. We had a virus hit the family, starting with Charlotte. Rosa, Ethan, Brian, and Charlotte have had non-stop fever, coughing, congestion, and sore throats for a week. We are the four sleeping in the R.V. By the grace of God, the boys sleeping in the tents seem to have escaped this mess.

Brian and the boys started last Monday working for Eva. We worked through the week on her house. She was a flood victim and was fortunate enough to get help to get back in her home.
She still needed help with the exterior repair of her home. The roofing crew she hired after the storm shingled her porch without repairing the structural issues. We jacked up the structure and repaired the problems. She also wanted her siding repaired, but as her house is 100 years old, it made more sense to replace the siding than repair it. When the house was built, the siding was installed over open studs. Eva purchased the home in the 70's and has been paying huge heating and cooling bills all these years. We have been able to insulate and sheet the walls with plywood before the siding goes on.

Since Eva was to be out of town this week, we worked for Ed and Marcella this week. We have been doing trim and doors, cabinets and crown molding, and lots of details. They will be flying to England to marry their daughter next week., so we will work for Eva again.

As of now, we are planning to send Charlotte and most of the family home next week. Peggy's shower is on April 5. Brian will finish Eva and Ed and Marcella's projects prior to returning.

The weather has been great, however it has been a bit cool some evenings.

Charlotte is not too excited to return to cool weather and snow. Pray for warm rain and warm sun. We are trusting for better weather for early May for the wedding.

We will keep you all up to date.

In Christ,

The Haines family

Crown molding and delicious weather

2008-03-16T19:39:00.005-05:00

Hi everyone,

We had a very busy week with work. We have plenty of offers for work. We are very thankful for this.

Our first project was to put crown molding in a 3 year old house. It was not done upon the new contruction as a cost saver, but Lonnie and Lisa wanted it done now. It was an oversize 7 inch crown molding and it was very difficult project with angled walls and cathedral ceilings. They offered the work to 4 other contractors who never submitted bids. It was a challenge, but we were able to meet their expectations.

On Friday Brian repaired and repainted 2 large waterdamaged ceilings. They had the bumpy accoustical texture on them. The water warped the drywall and loosened tape. He wrapped the rooms in plastic made the repairs, sprayed texture and sprayed new ceiling paint. When the plastic off, everything was 100% clean. One of the rooms was the kitchen, one was a large bedroom. David and Susan's expectations were exceeded, and it was a blessing to serve them.

On Saturday, Brian and Andrew replaced a bathroom floor with ceramic tile and painted a bedroom for Ina. Andrew has become a tile pro and always offers to go on tile jobs.

It was a beautiful week, even a bit warm at time. One night our low was 63. It hit the mid 70's several times. We have needed to use the AC a few times. We have had a lot of sun.

On Thursday we were treated to dinner by Tom and Diana. Tom is the man who came up to Colby and deer hunted after having met us at CLCA. It was his dream to deer hunt up north where the deer are huge and the hunting is bountiful. We set up our camper for him to use for a week that time. They love our Colby cheese and the venison from up there. The deer here do not have farmland to fatten themselves and are basically scrawny.

We are so excited that North Ridge Colby has managed to set up podcasts on the website. Great job Kevin!!!!! We are able to stay up to date with the church as we are out of town. We encourage you all to check it out at northridgefamily.org There is a link to the Colby/Abby church. The church has goals to purchase land and begin seeking our own pastor. Pastor Gayland plans to help plant more churches. This is a very exciting time in the life of a church. Please consider being a part of history and participate with us at Northridge Colby, especially if you are not participating in a church at this time.

Plans for this week are to work for Eva, who is a friend of Essie, the lady we stayed with our first trip here. Eva has a list of needs including structural repair to a porch, jacking up a sag in the house and probably siding.

Ed and Marcella have committed to us finishing their home.

Charlotte and the kids will return before April 5, as Peggy's bridal shower is that date. Brian and probably one of the boys will probably stay in MS a couple more weeks to work hard here in the sun. Brian needs to be home in plenty of time to help get the house looking tip top shape for Peggy's reception.

We will be posting lots of pics, scroll down to the last couple of posts.

Thank you for reading our page. We appreciate you all.

In Christ

The Haines family.

A little geo caching

2008-03-09T22:46:00.006-05:00

Hi everyone,

Things are really busy for us here.
After finishing Steve and Rebecca's siding job on Monday, we started working for Ed and Marcella. They are past customers. If you were reading our blog last year, you will recall that we replaced their carport after the storm. Shortly thereafter, a drunk driver crashed into their home at 2:00 in the morning, damaging their entry addition.

After this they decided to go ahead with adding a significant addition to their home. They have worked with several contractors along the way, and have had a bit of trouble. We spent the week doing hardwood floors, porcelain tile, doors and trim. Ed will be out of town this week, but plans to have us complete the work on the house when he returns. He has released the other contractors involved.

The boys have grown tremendously in their skills on this trip this year. Nicholas and Joshua installed the hardwood floor with minimal involvement from Brian. Andrew (age 9) did almost all of the cutting of the porcelain tile and much of the hardwood floor. Samuel also helped with the hardwood floor cutting. Our customers were amazed at the skill of the boys. We were able to save them a lot of money, we calculated the cost per square foot and we were one third of normal prices here.

On Sunday, we spent the afternoon with a family from CLCA who does the hobby geo caching. For those of you who do not know what this is, you use your GPS device to find a little hidden treasure. It was a lot of fun and it gave us a chance to enjoy a nice afternoon.

Tomorrow we will start doing crown molding in a nearly new house for Lonnie and Lisa.

We would like to ask everyone to join us in keeping Brian's mom, Carina in your prayers. She has been through a lot in recent times battling non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and now she has a case of pnuemonia. We continue to lift her up in prayer and trust for her improvement, may the glory be to God.

We will enjoy nice weather this week. It is a nice time of year here. We did have some nasty weather here a few days ago. We were woke up in the middle of the night by violent winds and hard driving rain. Weather. com reported 25 mph winds, but there were reports of 70 mph winds here. Edgewater mall received damage to their gates and windows were shattered. A car dealership in D'Iberville was severely damaged. About 25 houses received severe damage. It is believed that there was a tornado, but nothing official was confirmed. We were suprised by the winds as no warnings were posted. We prayed for safety for us and the boys. We are thankful that everyone was spared harm.

Please keep in touch, we enjoy hearing from each of you.

In Christ

The Haines Family

Habitat for Humanity

2008-03-03T07:21:00.003-06:00

Hi everyone,

Just a quick update, it is Monday morning. We are coming to an end of several glorious days. It has been sunny and in the lows 70's.

Brian and the boys will finish Steve and Rebeccah's siding job today. They have added jobs along the way including a new patio door and entry and storm door.

Brian got a bit sunburned on Saturday working on their project.

The highlight of the week was a Habitat for Humanity project that we were involved in. A lady in the church here named Charlotte was qualified to receive a Habitat house, but she is nearly wheelchair bound an unable to do construction. The program allows for volunteers to fill your service hours, and that is where we came in.

On Friday, Brian, Nicholas, Pastor Pete and a lady named Linda joined up with several other local volunteers and partnered with a college group from the Pittsburgh area. Volunteers needed to be at least 16 years old.
When we arrived, the home had a floor and 2 exterior walls. When we left, the exterior and interior walls were built and the exterior walls were nearly sheeted. Another group worked on the house on Saturday and Charlotte's hours are now complete. She will now be able to progress on receiving her Habitat house.

On Friday night we decided to bless the kids and went out to a pizza/salad buffet called CiCi's, then went to the kid's favorite place, Chuck-E Cheese. It is a big arcade type place, with lots of fun for the kids.

On Sunday, we could not resist the nice weather and decided to eat by the beach after church.

An I Hop restaurant just opened recently, and we wanted to go there. There were long lines and no parking available, so we went to the new Wendys instead. Anyone want to make some money? .... Open a restaurant here on the beach.

We have been a bit lazy with the camera lately, but we will step it up for you.

We are in storm warnings for tonight, as is the whole mid section of the nation. It is 65 this morning, but this is a cold front coming through.

We miss you all back home.

In Christ

The Haines family

Working in Ocean Springs

2008-02-26T22:54:00.002-06:00

Hi everyone,

We are all well. Rosa is growing so fast. The kids are working hard on school and are all doing well on their studies.

Most of last week was spent on Jeremy's project in Ocean Springs. Work included final carpentry needed to start the metal roof and installing metal roof. The house is a 2 story elevated house with high ceilings and a metal roof. It is a nice situation for us as Jeremy is allowing us to come and go as it suits us around our other work. Jeremy will be in Duluth for the next month finishing his house there so it can be sold. We will be leaving about the time he returns.

Last week Steve and Rebecca treated us to dinner as we planned their siding and window project. This project is also in Ocean Springs 4 blocks from the beach. It is amazing that they sustained no flooding in Katrina as homes only 2 blocks away are completely destroyed.

As of this evening we have 5 new windows in and most of the soffit installed. Nicholas helped Monday and Tuesday and Andrew helped today. Tomorrow Joshua and Samuel will be put in the action.

On Sunday Pastor Pete and Pam treated us to a meal at a Mexican restaurant. They have been so good to us since we met them 3 years ago. Last spring Andrew went to Kid's Camp under Pastor Pete's leadership. The camp was sold out and we found out later that Pastor Pete slept on the floor so that Andrew could have a bed. He said he wanted to honor Andrew for sleeping in a tent for months to help Katrina victims. How's that for being Christlike?

We are on standby to help a victim who qualifies for a Habitat for Humanity house. The candidate has to perform community service hours but volunteers can perform those hours on her behalf, the way we understand it. We will know more soon, this may happen yet this week.

The nice weather we had has been followed by rain, but now wind and cold. It is windy and will be in the 30's tonight. This may be a blessing as the neighborhoods we have been working are infested with nasty biting gnats. They will hide if it is cool and windy.

On Monday Brian and Nicholas drove the Hwy 90 route along the beach from Gulfport to Ocean Springs to deliver siding. There is a lot of projects in process including fixing the highway. There is a lot of new curbing, resurfacing and work on the beach itself. There is a huge casino just beginning construction. There are some house starts and a Mc Donalds under construction to name a few. Traffic is up since the bridges are now open.

That's about all that is new here for now. Thank you for checking on the blog.

In Christ

The Haines family

Just work and school

2008-02-21T15:59:00.003-06:00

Hi everyone,

We have just been busy doing work and school, nothing too exciting to share.

Danne headed back home and arrived safely. He traveled last weekend and had to endure snow and bad roads in Wisconsin.

Last week included working for several people. On Friday Essie hired Brian to drywall 3 ceilings in her home. She got new walls after Katrina but her ceilings were not storm damaged. She did not like the texture and look of those ceilings. Essie was our host the first year we came here.

On Saturday and Monday, Brian painted the entire interior of a 3 year old home that was sold.

Beginning on Tuesday he began work on a elevated 2 story home. He is subcontracting labor to a contractor named Jeremy. It is a 3300 square foot home on the Bayou. The customer lost their entire home in the storm. This week was spent doing carpentry on the roof system. We were going to start the metal roof today but we had heavy rain. We are expecting heavy rain tonight and tomorrow. They are posting a flood warning for the Pearl River, 1 hour west of here.

Jeremy is a contractor who relocated here after the storm from Duluth, MN. In fact he is returning home to finish a house that he built for his own family, but they never moved into it.

While it was raining, our entire family helped Pam, the church administrator sort and fasten 500 50 page church directories. We had the help of one other volunteer. We can be an army when you put us to the right task.

We are invited to dinner tonight by a couple who wants us to side their home. I can not remember a customer ever doing this before. MS is known as the hospitality state but this is new to us.

Hope you can find somewhere to put your snow.

We will post some pics when we can.

In Christ

The Haines family

Tea time

2008-02-13T21:45:00.004-06:00

Hi everyone,

We have certainly been staying busy. Sorry it has been a bit since we posted.

Last week we did tile bathroom for Maureen.

On Saturday, Brian completed Jeff and Lori's railings. Also, Charlotte, Nicholas, Joshua, and Samuel went to Winterjam in Mobile, Al with CLCA. Artists included Skillet, Barlow Girl, New Song, Mercy Me, and several others. Charlotte drove a 15 passenger van for the trip. The concert sold out and the doors were closed directly behind their group. They were fortunate to get in.

On Sunday Jeff and Lori had us over to their home for ribs cooked on the grill. They served us in their backyard on the bayou. It was a very pleasant sunny afternoon. This was all during below zero temps back home. Wow, you have had winter this year. We do not regret traveling south like the birds do. We have had much nice weather lately, but last night and today were certainly cooler.

This Tue and Wed. Brian worked for Ina. Projects included installing a ceramic bathroom floor, peeling wallpaper, painting, and general household repair. Ina is our friend Susan's mother.

Last evening, Charlotte and Brian attended a missions banquet sponsored by Global Support Mission. It was an inspiring evening. GSM has been launched by some very young people from CLCA and has some very big dreams of helping orphans and others worldwide. They have already done some awesome things in Uganda and other places. They have installed new wells and helped orphans out of their poverty. There are many orphans in Africa because of AIDS and poverty. We were treated to a sharing time by a lady who has cared for 1500 orphans with almost no resources. If anyone wants to know more about this mission, let us know. It is great soil to sow in to.

We are planning to be very busy in the days to come.

We miss you all back home. Peggy, May 3 is coming!!!

Thank you to all of you who have been helping us.

The Haines family

Working in Pass Christian

2008-01-31T21:12:00.000-06:00

Hi everyone, Wow those of you back home have had a blast of winter this year. We are glad to be here where it is at least a bit warm. This evening included thunderstorms and tornado watches. It rained hard again this evening. It has been a common occurance lately.

Brian finished at the church yesterday. 2 of the offices used a very bright red paint requiring 6 coats to achieve the desired results.

Today we began finishing the drywall in the first of the Apostolic World Relief houses in Pass Christian. The interesting part of this project is that it may very well lead into a series of 9 houses that they are building there. Brian and Joshua spent the day working there. The state of disaster in their community is still very desperate. There is very little restoration complete. It is like being in a war zone.

We will be posting more pictures soon. Thank you for taking the time to check our blog.

In Christ

The Haines family

Welcome Danne

2008-01-26T21:21:00.000-06:00

Hi everyone,

For those of you from home, Danne arrived safe and ahead of schedule before 6 P.M. this evening. He has just retired from nursing and is on his 2nd tour here. He will be once again providing services on behalf of Good Shephard Lutheran Church and Orphan Grain Train.
He will be working at Biloxi's free medical clinic for the next month.

He recently discovered that his camp may not be able to provide electricity for his R.V. He contacted us to see if CLCA would be able to help him. We asked Pastor Pete and he said Danne was 100% welcome here. He is presently camped about 200 feet from us. We are grateful to Pastor Pete and CLCA for their commitment to helping the victims here.

Earlier this week Charlotte's dad had a minor surgery to replace his pacemaker. It went very well and he is recovering very well.

Brian spent today installing a solid red oak finished staircase for Jeff and Laurie. Jeff is a teacher at the college here. 1 week after the storm he was volunteering helping clearing trees when he was the victim of a terrible accident. A log was dropped on his upper legs and broke both of his legs. He has rods in both of his legs. He and Laurie had lost everything in the storm. After his accident they decided to rebuild at their old site. Jeff has done a large amount of the reconstruction despite his disability. It was an honor to serve them today. We will return to install their railing system a different day.

We have numerous opportunities for work. We are bracing to be very busy in the coming weeks.

We miss you all and will see you about April 1

Keep in touch.

In Christ

The Haines family

Back from Winterquest

2008-01-22T19:23:00.001-06:00

Hi everyone,

We had a most fun and interesting weekend. We traveled 3 hours north near Laurel MS. We had services in the camps new larger facility. We went to bed on schedule about 1:00 A.M. We had a great night until about 5:30 A.M. when we were awaken by a group of girl students running through the camp screaming OH MY GOSH......IT'S SNOWING!!!!!!!!!!!!! They acted as though they won the showcase on the Price is Right. We actually spent the next several hours watching these teenagers experience their first snow. They received 3 inches of wet packing snow. It came in large flakes the size of a quarter. There were snowballs flying. Brian helped teach Hannah and Madeline how to make a snowman. About 90% of the students have never seen more snow than a flurry or two.

The camp opened a new facility and when we arrived it was 57 degrees in their sanctuary. We were told the heat was turned on but it never went up. We endured the cool temps by wearing coats, hats or whatever. (This is very cold for people here.) I looked into the situation on Saturday myself and we discovered that their heat system was not even hooked up yet to the gas. They obviously have never needed it before.

On Saturday afternoon we endured a a 4 hour power outage due to fallen trees from the snow. It took out the heating and water systems.

Saturday night the weather turned colder dipping to the high teens. Sunday morning we woke to discover their main water system froze up. The new sanctuary was dipping to 50 degrees so we moved the services to the old sanctuary with a real wood fireplace. We enjoyed Sunday services in that sanctuary at a balmy 75 degrees.

Aside of the technical difficulties, it was a great and powerful retreat. 90 students attended and I was impressed at the maturity level of all of them. Usually it seems there is a troublemaker or two in a group that size, but they were a great bunch.

We did some live drama and human video and had great praise and worship and great teaching. Everyone was touched.

Ed was not ready for drywall yet, but the church hired me to remove wall paper and paint 2 offices. Their maintenance crew has been on this project but were spent. They have had a difficult time removing the paper and have damaged the drywall surfaces badly enough to have to apply 3-4 coats of drywall compound. I was determined to find a better way and after 2 hours of experimenting with different ideas, I discovered that my 1000 degree paint stripping gun would remove the paper with absolutely no damage. Needless to say everyone in this office was amazed. It is a bit slow but will be only about 25% of the effort they put into numerous other offices.

We are staying behind the church adjacent to a ministry camped here called Apostolic World Relief. They are a denomonation similar to Mennonite. Most of them come from Indiana, Illinois and Missouri. They are building 8 new houses in Pass Christian, one of the hard hit communities.
They have asked us to finish the drywall in one of those houses in a couple of weeks. They have not been able to recruit the suitable help for this task.

Brian had a tooth extracted today. It has been rotted since his braces as a teen and has been the source of a lot of trouble.

Some wonder how the recover here is coming along. Brian read an article today in the paper about the city Pearlington, MS. They were in the eye of the storm. There are about 1000 houses there. Every structure there was flooded. As of now 35% of their houses are habitable or nearly habitatable.

We will be welcoming our Colby neighbor Danne here this weekend. He is bringing his R.V. and will be on his second tour. He will partner with Orphan Grain Train and the Lutheran Church.
Zion Lutheran in Colby will be sending a team of about 12 in a couple of weeks. They had a breakfast to sponsor the cost of their trip. We are excited about their commitment to help these people out.

We are suffering with all of you at the Packer disaster on Sunday.

We finally have nice weather today, with our windows open and wearing light clothing.

Please keep in touch. We love hearing from all of you.

Off to camp

2008-01-18T10:29:00.000-06:00

Hi everyone, Today Brian, Nicholas, Joshua, and

Samuel will be going to the Winterquest youth

retreat. There will be over 80 youth attending.

Brian will be helping with various tasks including

carpentry and drama. We are praying that God

would touch these teens including ours.

We finished the work for Olga and Christine. They

retained us for various small projects around the

house. The bathroom turned out very nice and they

are already enjoying the shower. Christine has not

been able to use the old shower for the last couple of

months. She nearly fell and it scared her.

We know you are very cold back

home. We are having colder nights

but the days have been pretty nice

this week. Highs most days have been

in the 60's and lows around 40.

We have been helping more around

the church. They are recarpeting and

painting offices. Pastor Pete wants to

hire Brian to remove wallpaper and paint 2 offices. The wallpaper is not coming off well and the

regular maintenance crew has had enough of it. The

facility here is huge. The office area is 3

stories tall. I would estimate the facility is at least

50,000 square feet. We are helping move

furniture in and out of the offices.

Focus on the Family is launching a pilot program called Faith in the Home. CLCA is one of 1o churches around the nation that will begin this ministry. We will be hosting one of these small groups soon. They will be specifically targeting singles, marriage and families.

Last year we built a carport for a man named Ed. After we left, he has started a major house rebuild actually doubling the size of his house. He has his carpentry, plumbing, and electric inspections passed. He is wanting to have us do the drywall. He saw our drywall work last year.
Hopefully we will do this project this coming week.

We miss all of you back home. Thanks to all of you who are filling our places in our absence.
May God bless each of you today!

The Haines family

Britt Nicole concert

2008-01-13T16:30:00.000-06:00

Hi everyone,

We have had a productive and fun week. Olga and Christine (age 98) have enjoyed us and we have enjoyed them. Christine has especially grown fond of Ethan. They have become buddies. We will complete their bathroom early this week. The shower is complete and turned out beautiful.

The weather straightened out later this week after a couple of tornado warnings. MS was just one state affected by storms.

Last year we went to Winterjam in Mobile. The opening act at this concert was Britt Nicole. Brian was impressed with her. Her first CD was to be released in May 2007 by Sparrow records.
We ordered her CD for Christmas and just received it here this week. WAOY 91.7 was giving away tickets and Brian won a pair. The concert was last night at Pascagoula MS. (a 35 minute drive)
Brian and Charlotte went as a date. Serious, we had a blast. Her concert was one of the very best we have ever seen. She opened with a worship concert, then her brother Bryn preached a message. Their focus is on ministry to the teen generation. They had alter and prayer time and then concluded with their concert. The entire band, Britt, and Bryn completely poured their hearts out for over 3.5 hours. We sang, we laughed, we danced and we cried. We highly recommend that you all discover this great new artist. She is only 20 something years old.
Her CD is called Say It. You will not be disappointed.

We have a busy week. On Wednesday, we will join CLCA to go to the movie "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" by Veggie Tales and Universal Studios. The church bought a bunch of tickets and are taking the Kids church and their families.
We are expecting it to be a good time.

Go Packers!! We hope you all had a chance to see the game!

Next weekend will be CLCA's annual youth retreat called WinterQuest. Brian, Nicholas, Joshua, and Samuel will attend. Brian will be helping with some work to contribute to the success of this event.

We will be volunteering to do a oak staircase and railing for a couple here at the church. They have built their own home since the storm, but were hoping for some help with this project. They told God they
would not ask for help, but were trusting to have an offer for help. Without knowing this we felt led to help them.
They are Ethan's Kids church teachers and are a blessing.

We stayed at the camp on Saturday this week. Brian worked on the family honey-do list. We had some small projects on the R.V. to help it be a little more functional. This mostly consisted of interior cabinet upgrades to help with storage.

We are all good. Rosa had been a bit congested last week but is better.

May God richly bless you all.

In Christ,
The Haines Family

A Tornado warning

2008-01-09T07:21:00.000-06:00

Hi everyone,

What a crazy week of weather. It started out very cold last week when we arrived, then it became very nice, it has been in the mid 70's. Overnight we were waken up by a very local hot thunderstorm. There were numerous local lightning strikes and heavy rain. We heard a tornado warning for our area posted just after the storm passed us. Yes, our boys stayed in their tents during the excitement.

We are aware of the crazy weather you have all had up north as well. I cannot remember Wisconsin ever having a winter tornado.

Our bathroom project has been going great. We wound up being hired to do the entire bathroom from top to bottom. We have the drywall nearly finished and the shower is built and partially tiled. It will be nearly complete by the weekend.

Brian has enjoyed his customers. They are thrilled at the progress and the overalll situation.
Olga has recently received a bid to replace the tub only for $17,000. The contractor wanted $7,000 downpayment. Fortunately she was smarter than to hire him. I doubt she would have ever seen him again. We are doing the whole room and using all quality products including porcelain tile and her total cost for materials plus labor will be 1/4 what his bid was.

This is yet another example of the situation here. The storm recovery affects the normal economy as there is a serious lack of competent and honest people available.

Brian was hired by a company from Phoenix AZ to replace a small countertop in the Gulfport Airport. They are an electrical contractor and are replacing radar equipment in the air traffic control tower. On Monday Brian was escorted by FAA security to measure the project. It was very neat to see. A couple of planes were landed while he was there. The installation will have to be done in the middle of the night while the airport is shut down.

So far Charlotte and the kids have pressed on hard with school and enjoying the playground at the church.

The church here is probably going to connect us to a lady who has been wronged by someone. We will offer her assistance. We do not know the details at this time.

Our camp is good. We are actually on river front property and have a lot of space.

Please keep in touch. We love hearing from each of you.

The Haines family

Getting Started

2008-01-03T19:56:00.000-06:00

Hi everyone,

We worked yesterday setting up the camp. The Apostolic World Relief team needs all of the dorm space at this time so the kids are using tents. Unfortunately we brought winter with us this time. Last night there was near record cold in the area. Temps dipped to 24. There was a brisk north wind to go with it. Only Joshua and Samuel tented last night. Our new R.V. can accomodate all of us in a pinch. Temps will moderate ten degrees each night for the next 2 nights and will be very nice by the weekend. Highs will be near 70 by Sunday.

Brian had a interview for a bathroom remodel yesterday and was hired to start today. He gutted the bathroom completely and is ready to start rebuilding tomorrow. He is working for a lady in her 70's who has been caring for her mother a number of years. Her mom is now 98 and a wonder at how vibrant she is. Her total medication is one Bayer aspirin a day and on pill she has been on for about 20 years. I do not know what that pill is but is cost 5 dollars per month. It must not be anything too serious. Besides updating the bathroom, the main motive is to replace the tub with a large custom walk in shower. It will be 3x5 feet and will be all tile.

Brian has a interview with a large company on Monday to discuss replacing counters in the Airport control tower. Radar equipment is being upgraded and will need new counters.
They could not see me until Monday as FAA security has to escort us up there.

We will update more soon and will get you some pictures.

The Haines family

A safe arrival

2008-01-01T21:16:00.000-06:00

Hi everyone,

Just a quick update. We have arrived in Biloxi safe and 15 minutes ahead of our planned arrival. We had good road conditions other than a moderate wind. (And a few nasty rough spots)

We headed out early and kept steadily pushing forward. Traffic was light as it was New Years day. It is unusually cool here with the north wind. It is supposed to dip to 33 tonight.

We set up the basics and we will all sleep in the camper tonight. Brian has a couple of leads for work already. Thank you for your prayers.

The Haines family

Last day of winter (for us)

2007-12-31T22:38:00.000-06:00

Hi everyone,

We had a great day of travel. We had some challenges. We had an unusual phonomena of freezing fog this morning. It left beautiful frost on the trees, but unfortunately we experienced some very slippery roads. In fact, near Wausau, Wi. this morning we saw 3 vehicles in the ditch in 2 miles. We also experienced a snowstorm in Illinois. We experienced strong wind gusts near St. Louis.

After driving through the St. Louis area, we drove completely out of the snow and below freezing weather.

We spent the night in Perriville MO. This was our planned rest stop. Most of us enjoyed the pool. We are on schedule and made the goal of 625 miles today. We plan to arrive at our destination by 6:00 P.M. tomorrow evening.

God bless each of you who takes the time to check on our blog.

In Christ

The Haines family

A nasty snowstorm

2007-12-23T15:04:00.000-06:00

LET IT SNOW...

LET IT SNOW....

AND LET IT SNOW !!!

Hi everyone

As we write this blog this Sunday afternoon, we have received another 12 inches of snow in the last 24 hours. It has been accompanied by 30-40 mph winds. Our temps are low as well. Wind chill temps are below zero. It takes a lot to stop life in Central WI, but this storm has us paralyzed. The worst aspect of the situation is the blowing snow which caused total white out conditions. It is very dangerous to travel when it is this messy.

We did decide to cancel our Colby service today. I think it was a good idea.

We had an exciting week at work. Brian subcontracted to a large construction company to help frame up a 60 unit assisted living center 1.5 miles from our home. It is a panelized wood frame building. It is amazing what can be accomplished with a crew of approximately 10 guys, a couple of Pettibone lifts, a crane and a bunch of nail guns.

Brian took one of the boys each day, they hired us as a 2 man team. They assigned us to build interior rooms. We were able to build 20 interior units. Brian and Nicholas crawled trusses on Tuesday and tied the trusses together with 2x4 perlines. This work was about 30 feet in the air and we had frost and ice to deal with. On Friday, Brian and Nicholas were assigned to frame 2
interior rooms. After this was completed, they installed 36 large windows in 6 hours.

Joshua and Samuel helped frame rooms. Needless to say we were exhausted each evening.

Brian had the opportunity to meet the owner and general contractor. He also met the owner of the framing company. They have all been very nice and took a bit of time to visit in the midst of all the action. This center is a duplicate of one they opened in Wisconsin Rapids recently. He showed pictures and pointed out the advantages of his unit. The Center will be upscale and impresive. There are huge commons areas with high vaulted ceilings, fireplaces, even a baby grand piano will be included. We are excited that this facility will provide some jobs and a reason for some people to travel to our community.

We did have fair weather last week, but we will return to a serious mess tomorrow with the snow.

We have decided on the logistics of our return to Mississippi. We will travel New Years Eve day and arrive in Biloxi on New Years Day. We will stay at the camp that CCLA has set up. They have dedicated a portion of the facility to accomodate relief volunteers. They have a R.V. park set up right behind the church. It will work out real well for several reasons. We will partner with them and the things they are doing. The kids will be able to participate in many of the activities that go on there. The little ones will be able to play on a playground. They are also located near an on ramp to the freeway. The older kids will probably sleep in the dorms rather than tents.

One of the reasons we decided to go with this plan is that the large kitchen our family parnered with last year is shut down. This will give our family tons of opportunity to serve as Brian works.

Our Chrismas plans are simple. We will have our Christmas eve service on the 24th, we described the details in the last entry. We will get together with direct family and that is pretty much it.

In Christ

The Haines family

Sledding, Shoveling and Waterslides

2007-12-16T17:19:00.000-06:00

Hi everyone,

Well, Brrrr pretty much sums up life in WI lately. We received a solid blanket of snow and it looks like it will be sticking around a bit. We have approximely 12 inches of snow. The kids have enjoyed playing in real snow. In fact, as we write this blog, Brian, Andrew, Ethan and Rosa just returned from our city sledding hill. It was fun. The kids also discovered that their backyard slide works well for a sled launch.

We did manage to finish the roof in Riplinger. We had to tarp the roof and shovel the snow 2 times. As we mentioned last time, Brian has had his fill of winter with the cold and the snow.

We pulled out the roof jacks and moved off this job on Monday.

The next couple of weeks will be spent helping frame up a 60 unit assisted living center in Colby only 1.5miles from our home. The framing contractor needed some more carpentry subcontractors. In addition to the weather being hard, their company had a couple of their guys hurt in a head on car crash. I suspect they may be a bit behind schedule.

Brian did another ceramic tile tub wall this week. Work included replacing the plumbing, replacing the drywall with cement board and the tile. It turned out very nice.

We set up our Christmas tree last weekend. We do not get over serious about decorating the house much other than the tree.

This past Friday evening our family decided to do a mini vacation and take our first visit to a nearby indoor water park. We spent the night and let the kids stay up very late and then we played hard all Saturday. We actually wore them all out and they were happy to return home.

Once again we had an exciting week at the Church. We had our highest attendance so far this morning with 96 in attendance. We did a music set of Christmas music and had a mini children's performance which was a teaser for our Christmas eve service. On Christmas Eve, we will meet at the Methodist Church for our service. It is at 2 P.M. and you are all invited. The Silva family, which is our new Hispanic pastor family are awesome. Their son Ricardo joined our worship band. He is a very skilled guitarist, bass player and keyboard player. He is a specific answer to prayer as he will be capable of facilitating the worship band in our absence. We had the Silva family join us today for a noon meal.

We have tentative plans to return to MS on New Years Eve day. We will take two days and make it to our destination on New Years day. We will probably do detail finishing for Joan, the last project we did in June. When I spoke to Joan, she was using her A/C as it was still warm.

We do not know what we will be doing but God does and we are trusting for all things to work out.

For those of you in MS, we look forward to seeing you.

In Christ

The Haines Family

Wanna shovel some snow?

2007-12-02T20:34:00.000-06:00

Hi everyone,

We had a productive week working on the Riplinger house. As of Friday we had all of the roofing removed, loaded in the dumpster and all plywood, felt paper and edging installed. We have roof jacks and 2x6 lumber installed. All of the roofing is on the roof jacks and about 30% of the roofing is installed. It was a
brutally cold week with cold temps and 20-30 mph winds most days. The boys worked hard and
we are grateful to them.

We had a forecast for a winter storm on Sat. so we covered the roof with large tarps. Thankfully we did this.

On Saturday we received our first significant winter storm with approx. 8 inches of snow followed up with some sleet and icing.

We spent some time digging out from the snow as did everyone else. We suspect the snow will stay as temps have been cold and the ground is frozen.

We had an awesome Sunday at church. We had two first time visitors at church including a young lady and her children. We have been praying and trusting God to reach her for over 1.5 years. We have been reaching into her life and helping her on a regular basis. Join us in praying for her, her children and her husband. They need our prayer and our help.

It is official that our church has now launched a hispanic ministry. We have added Pastor John Silva and his family on staff. They have moved to Colby this week. We are thrilled to see this happen as literally thousands of Mexicans have located here in recent years and the great majority of them are unchurched. They will be open to a hispanic pastor as they can relate to him. We are also excited that their son is a capable worship leader and will be a great help in our absence this winter.

We just wanted to touch base, keep in touch.

The Haines family

The Riplinger Roof

2007-11-27T22:00:00.000-06:00

Hi everyone

We thought you would enjoy these pictures. When Charlotte shot these pictures it was 12 degrees with a 20 MPH wind.

Enjoy.

The Haines family.

We give thanks

2007-11-25T15:46:00.000-06:00

Hi everyone,

Wow it has been 2 weeks since we updated. The last couple of weeks have been stuffed with activity.

We were able to complete the project in Unity. We worked for a really nice family and really enjoyed the whole process.

We have started a difficult project as of Friday. In 1990 we bought a house 10 miles away at Riplinger in the Town of Unity. This is the house that Charlotte's parents and sisters lived in for about 12 years. The house had a poor roof then already. We have not been able to replace it yet
(had to use that word Susan). Our renters Dean and Martha have reported to us lately that it finally has started to leak. They have had to use buckets on a couple of occasions.

This house has one of those steep 4 sided hip roofs. It has a dormer in the front. It's pitch is 12/12 which is steeper than our house. For those of you who know, our house is a 10/12 pitch.

On Friday we were able to tear off and prepare the first side and start the second side.
Nicholas, Joshua and Samuel were all in the activity. We are praying for safety and good weather. Yes, we are working safely and using safety precautions. We will do other projects when the weather turns bad.

We have been working very hard improving the worship band. This Sunday we played some difficult songs including 3 awesome songs we brought home from the church we attend in Mississippi. The congregation has been supportive and appreciates the effort. It is amazing how Joshua and Samuel are improving every week. I invite each of you to come and see for yourself.
Nicholas is in the action as well, he is helping with the sound and computer work. Our regular sound and computer people were out for hunting these last 2 weeks and his help was valuable.

We have an interesting situation with this family band. It seems as we have grown working together over the last number of years, we have an offer to record a CD from a friend from our old church. Steve makes his living providing recording services in a studio he owns in Marshfield. He has offered us to record this work at 10% of his normal fee to bless us as his friends. We are considering and praying about this opportunity. We would want to do this before we leave for MS and before Peggy leaves for CA.

We have had a lot of time with Charlotte's side of the family over the last week. We were all able to be together for Thanksgiving . Becky came down from Duluth from Wed through Sunday and stayed with Nathan and Amanda. Michael flew here from Bakersfield, CA and stayed in our home from Thursday through Sunday. We are excited to get to know him better and all enjoy him.

We decided as family to participate with the community Thanksgiving dinner. It truly was an awesome time as we partnered with our local VFW, Chamber of Commerce, and Smith Brothers Catering. Our whole family along
with Peggy and Michael,
Nathan and Amanda, and Becky served meals to those who came.
Our group was 13 volunteers and we know that we made a big difference. People who were in need or lonely came to this event.
What a blessing to serve those whom Christ loves. I think it helped make it our best Thanksgiving ever. We were able to serve almost 100 people. It is so true that it is more blessed to give than to receive!

Nathan and Amanda are so excited as Nathan has landed a first shift job at Welcome Dairy in their Lab. Nathan and Amanda both worked third shift at Marathon Cheese for the extra dollars to pay for their wedding. They will now enjoy a more "normal" life.

We wanted to share a profound thought we picked up from a Point of Grace song that applies this Thanksgiving. A key to happiness and joy is to have what you want, but want what you have. We encourage each of you to be thankful for all the blessings we take for granted.
Remember, all of us in America, even the poorest among us are actually in the very top percentage on the wealthiest people who have ever lived on this planet. The scripture reminds us that to whom much is given, much is required. Praise God for his goodness!!

The latest update regarding us going to Mississippi is the same. We plan on spending Jan, Feb, and March in the Katrina disaster. After finishing the roof project, We will have had a great plenty of winter.

This past Wednesday night Amanda and Brian had the honor of providing music for a most sad occasion. A friend of Amanda's named Allison and her boyfriend both lost their lives in a vehicle accident in Upper Michigan. Allison is from Colby and in fact her family lived 2 houses from us when we first moved to our house in 1987. We did the funeral service at the funeral home in Abbotsford with Pastor Mark from Zion Lutheran in Colby. It was an awesome time and our prayers continue to go out to these families.

We did find some time to have a bit of fun together. On Saturday, We went bowling. We will not share the scores, but we did have fun and plenty of gutter balls. On Saturday evening, we went to a large light display in Marshfield sponsored by their Rotary Club. If you have not seen this display, please do. It is very nice. It is at Wildwood Park.

We are introducing Charlotte's parents to the world of E-mail and blogs so they can keep up with all of you knowing what is going on and staing in touch in this busy world. With Peggy also leaving town, 3 of the 4 girls will be out of town at times.

Keep in touch.

The Haines Family

November Update

2007-11-11T15:21:00.003-06:00

Hi everyone,

It has been a week since we updated you. It has been a busy but relatively ordinary week.

Last Sunday afternoon, we enjoyed the nice weather and did some yard catchup work.
The older kids had youth group Sunday evening. They watched "The Ultimate Gift". Once again we recommend that everyone see this great movie.

We worked on our jobsite project this week. Work included installing and cladding doors and windows and installing cement board siding.

The weather did not cooperate quite so well this week. We had 2 days with temps in the 30's and winds gusting to 45 mph at times. This makes the jobsite less than fun. It has remained mostly cold with lows in the 20's and highs in the 30's or 40's.

Charlotte had a very unusual day of being sick on Thursday but has rebounded nicely.

On Thursday, Brian and Peggy picked up a refrigerator for Peggy's apartment. Her older refrigerator was one of those that needed to be thawed from time to time. I have never seen anything like it, but her freezer would literally completely fill with ice in a short time.
We were able to purchase a very good used one for a good deal.

Saturday was spent doing oil changes and Brian spent 5 hours mowing our 2 largest lawns. Brrrr it was only 36 degrees.
Charlotte and the boys picked up Boy Scout popcorn and did housework catchup.

On Saturday evening, we spent the evening with the Nightmare leadership team for our annual celebration party. It was held at the director's home.

This Sunday morning we once again put together a full worship band. We worked hard on some new and more difficult songs. Once again we had Samuel play bass. He is really learning quickly. He has been a great
addition to the team.
Next weekend may be a little more difficult as a fair amount of our team will be participating in the Wisconsin holiday known as the gun deer hunting season.

Today, this Sunday we are having a mini birthday party for Rosa. We were in MS when she turned 1. We spent the day with Peggy, Amanda, Nate and Charlotte's parents. My parents were unable to make it as they were in Illinois today. She is actually 1.5 years old now.

Thanks for spending the time to check in.

Contact us anytime.

Harvest party and fall camping

2007-11-04T13:46:00.000-06:00

Hi everyone,

We had a busy week (nothing new).

Early in the week we spent time getting ready for our halloween alternative party. We held this at the Gathering Place. This harvest party gave the children a safe and fun option for halloween.

I am not sure who had more fun, the adults or the kids. Next year we plan on a huge harvest party and partnering with all of the churches in the community.

We are doing a garage remodel in Unity. Work will include roof, cement board siding, soffit, gutters, leaf caps, windows, overhead doors and openers.

We worked together on tearoff and Brian was able to get the new roofing installed by Thursday afternoon.

With an unusually nice early November forecast, we decided to go camping at one of our favorite sites, Brunet Island State park at Cornell, WI. We camped from Thursday night to Sat. morning

The weather held up to expectations and we had a real nice time. We did some hiking, had a campfire, and just plain relaxed. It is hard to beat a camping outing with kids.

On Friday night we watched the movie "The Ultimate Gift". We had seen this movie in MS, but Nicholas won a DVD copy on 89Q. Do not miss this one, it is a GREAT movie.

For those of you watching the Katrina disaster with us, south MS got a huge blessing. The Biloxi Bay bridge was opened from Biloxi to Ocean Springs. This bridge will allow traffic to resume to normal on US 90 which is the primary economic route connecting the entire beach areas.

We returned from camping to participate in a cub scout function which was to a local farm.
This gave the kids a great opportunity to get personal with the farm life. They got to see cattle, pigs, a horse, chickens, dogs and cats. Our kids love animals.

Samuel recently purchased a bass guitar and amp. Joshua has been telling us that he is playing well. They finally persuaded Brian to work with him. Joshua was right, he has progressed so well that we able to add him to the church band today.
We had a full worship band today. Brian was on guitar, Joshua on drums, Jesse on congas, Duane on keyboard, Samuel on bass. Vocals were provided by Peggy, Amanda A., Lori and Brian. Kevin is doing a great job for us helping with the sound.

We recently received news that Charlotte's sister Peggy will move to California. She is in a relationship with a wonderful guy named Michael. Peggy gave a 4 month notice at her job and plans to move in late February. It is bittersweet for us because we are happy for her but know that we will miss her here. We spend a lot of time together and have always been very close.

The Colby youth group will be raking leaves this afternoon, and we are showing "The Ultimate Gift" tonight.

Thank you for taking the time to read our blog. We do this for you so you can know what is going on in our world. You may share this site with people who would be interested.

Let us know what is going on in your world.

In His Service,
The Haines Family

The Nightmare and One Accord

2007-10-28T19:09:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone,

Wow, we survived the Nightmare. Last night was our last performance. We ran capacity crowds with most ticket holders waiting 3-4 hours to experience the Nightmare.

Brian served in the capacity of Special Effects director. He has held this position since the beginning of this outreach. He has not missed a performance in 10 years. We have seen over 110,000 people come to the Nightmare in 10 years.
Nicholas served on the tech crew this year. Joshua served on the parking crew. Brrrrr. it was 24 degrees at 2:00 a.m. when we were able to close.

Brian gave a 2 hour VIP backstage tour to a pastor from Virginia who hopes to duplicate the production in his home city.

With our busy lives, Brian has planned for 6 months to resign his position following this year's production. After the 2nd week, he knew in his heart that it was not possible for him to resign .

We know that many lives are touched at this event. Let us share a tesimony.

Last year a 18 year old girl came to Nightmare. She explained that she and her friends love drinking. They have used drugs. She has never been to a church. She has a 16 year old sister who has gotten into a bad crowd. In her school they call her a "bang hoe". She will sleep with all of the guys in the gang to be a part of the gang. She entered a group in the Nightmare. A girl in her group looked just like her sister. They walked through the scenes in the production making fun of the actors and actresses. They walked through the car accident scene, the drug room scene and then entered the gang shooting scene. She did say they were impressed with the reality of it all. The girl who looked just like her sister was emotionally engaged through these scenes, almost crying and clinging to people in the group.

It was at this time that an actor in the gang scene grabbed the girl in her group that looked like her sister and threw her to the ground and kicked and punched her. She wanted to help the girl, but the security guard instructed her to leave the girl and to get moving.

At the end of the production she prayed to accept Jesus. She has been connected to a church in her home town and has been helping restore her family to Godly living.

She visited Nightmare this year and learned the girl in the gang scene was an actress. She said this actress caused her to evaluate her life and turn to God.

We know this outreach touches people who would normally not attend a church. Brian and the boys will continue to serve. Where else can you have an opportunity to introduce over 10,000 people to the Jesus of the Bible?

If this was not enough excitement for 1 week, we also had a guest ministry at North Ridge. We had One Accord from North Central University in Minneapolis. We set up the sound gear at 7:30 A.M. and Brian mixed the sound. It was a great time. Yes, Sunday afternoon included naps, but this was after the Boy Scout Court of Honor.
At this ceremony, awards and rank advancements are presented.

Charlotte, Nicholas, Joshua and Samuel attended youth group Sunday night. The upcoming week will be busy as usual.

Thank you for taking the time to read this blog. God bless each of you!!

In His service,

The Haines Family

The nightmare and much more

2007-10-21T20:12:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone,

It has once again been a completely consuming week.

We have had a mixed bag of weather with cold and warm and a lot of rain.
Brian's work had to be mixed up because his main project is outdoors.

We picked up our "new" travel trailer on Tuesday. We are very excited as the new one will meet our needs much better this winter
.

We spent Friday night camping with Nathan, Amanda and Peggy. The campground we stayed at had us enter from the back emergency exit since the main entrance was flooded by The Yellow River, which very, very high.

This camping excursion overlapped the Nightmare and Andrew's Cub Scout Chuck Wagon event. It gave us all a chance to spend the day together as well as try out the R.V. We wanted to use everything before setting out on the major winter trip.

The Nightmare has been very good. Brian, Nicholas and Joshua are serving this year. Brian had seriously considered turning in a resignation after this year's production but after being involved again, the motives for being involved have not changed. What an opportunity to bring approximately 10,000 people to the foot of the cross to examine their lives and to seriously consider what Jesus did for them. The production has remained potent and powerful as in the past and we know many lives will never be the same. This weekend, the middle weekend is usually the busiest, and once again we had over 2000 people per night. We, the leadership underestimated the potential of this outreach from the start 10 years ago planning for 5000 per year. We are limited by our own lack of capacity to 18 people to enter every 3 minutes. This causes long waiting lines and our having to work long hours. Last night we got the last group through at 2:00 A. M. Most attendees wait 3-4 hours for their chance to see the Nightmare.

We were at North Ridge Colby at 7:30 A.M. We set up and led the church in worship. We had a great service. We believe we had the most powerful worship service so far. This is so much fun!!!

On Sunday night, the Colby youth met for their fall festival. Much fun was had with costumes, pumpkin carving, bobbing for apples, music, contests, games, food and more.

Thank you for checking out the blog. We invite everyone to The Nightmare this last weekend. If you come, ask for Brian and he will treat you to special VIP priveleges. We also invite everyone to North Ridge Colby 9:00 A.M. at the Colby High theatre.

In His service,
The Haines family

The Nightmare and Packer party

2007-10-14T19:48:00.000-05:00

Ethan & Peggy

Hi everyone,

Of course, it is nothing new that this week has been very busy. In addition to all the normal activity, we have
been helping Believer's Church with the annual production of The Nightmare.

Brian has served as the Special Effects director for 10 years. The Nightmare is a virtual reality haunted house that depicts the top 4 killers of our teens. It also introduces the attendees to the Jesus Christ of the Bible who suffered a horrific death on a cross to save sinners from eternal punishment.

We are proud to serve the public in this capacity and have seen 2000 people see this production this weekend alone. At this time now over 102,000 people have seen the production. Two of our local T.V. stations featured the production on their 10:00
P.M. news.

After serving at the Nightmare this weekend, Brian, Nicholas and Joshua were serving at Colby North Ridge Church at 7:30 A.M. preparing for our weekly worship service. We had our largest worship team so far, and had a great time in worship.

After church, we set up for our Packer Party at The Gathering Place. The party was well attended, in fact we consumed 24 large Pizza Hut pizzas. Fortunately, the Packers managed to pull off a win today.
They are now 5 wins, 1 loss.
Peggy, Amanda & Nathan
Peggy & Nathan

Amanda & Andrew
At this time , our storefront spot will now be open regular hours every day. The atmosphere will be like a coffee shop. Visitors will be able to come in and relax and have a cup of coffee or use free wireless internet. We have many scheduled activities including Bible studies, ladies activities, youth activities and childrens activities. We are excited to see growth every week. We are trying very hard to reach our community, particularly completely unchurched families.

We were able to buy and sell travel trailers this week, it will make us more comfortable for our return to Mississippi this winter.

We have been working hard at the daily things like work and school. It has been plenty cool and wet this week. We have had frost and several rainy days. Only a week ago we had record highs in the 80's. We are needing to use heat to stay comfortable.

Thank you for taking the time to check our blog. We love all of you who are a part of our lives. May you all be richly blessed this week.

The Haines Family

Copper Falls State Park

2007-10-06T23:53:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone,

Wow, I can not believe it has been 3 weeks since we updated. Everything has been a whirlwind this month.

We are on a large job and I have been using the family to help. We are doing a whole house exterior. There has been a lot of labor with the house, but it is going well.

Last Sunday, we went to Copper Falls State Park with Amanda, Nate, and Peggy. We dodged some showers and enjoyed northern Wisconsin colors. Copper Falls is home to a 165 foot waterfall. We would recommend everyone to see it sometime.

We continue to have fun and great success with the new church. We are so excited. Pastor reported that last Sept. our average attendance was 46, but this Sept. our average attendance was 76. We are using our new "Gathering Place" facility more every week. Last evening we had a casual worship night there. Everyone in attendance enjoyed themselves in worship.

We will have a Packer party at the Gathering Place on Oct. 14. If you have no plans, join us for free pizza and coffee and watch Brett break more records and hopefully score another victory.

We still plan to return to our friends in MS this year. Wow, our time here is already half over. Our plan is to spend 3 months this time. 6 months was hard and too long. We plan to head out Jan 1 and return Apr. 1. We are glad that you have been spared a bad storm this year.

Brian, Joshua and Nicholas are helping Believers Church with the annual outreach "The Nightmare" again this year. We have completed two rehearsals at this point and the production starts next weekend.

Charlotte and the boys have been working hard on school. The boys were a bit behind, but are close to being caught up as a result of the extra effort lately.

Keep in touch, to respond to the blog, it only requires a simple google account to be set up. We love hearing from everyone.

The big wedding

2007-09-16T16:00:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone,

Of course, the big item of interest was Nate and Amanda's wedding. All we can say is Wow!!

Nate and Amanda had big dreams and worked very hard for an amazing wedding. It was so beautiful. Everything went according to plan. The service was awesome. They had live music for the service. Donna, Marla and Doug from Believer's Church did a trio. For those of you who know them, it is always a treat to hear them sing. Pastor Zach and Pastor Gayland's daughter Betsy escorted the party in to canon in D on piano and violin. Our youth pastor Daniel and Pastor Zach sang a duet.
Pastor Gayland gave an awesome sermon and did a real nice service.

As you see in the pictures, the clothing was beautiful. Amanda and Nate have a knack for finding the eye catching styles.

The dinner and reception were at the new Holiday Inn Conference center in Marshfield. We were treated to a dance by a local D.J. who really did a great job.

Brian led the Colby worship team today. Yes, we were at the school at 7:30 A.M. setting up sound gear and practicing. Joshua played drums. Jessica played keyboard and Amanda R. and Lori provided vocals. We were so encouraged as some of the team are rookies, but there was a definite move of the Holy Spirit on the worship this morning. Everyone worked hard and everyone did a great job. I believe God is honoring the team building process that we are striving for. If you know of anyone in a church home, encourage them to check out our service.

Mark from WGNV radio visited our Colby church to promote the station and set up the feature "Church of the week" for the station this week. If you listen to WGNV, you will here promotion of our church. We are excited about this and pray that we would have new visitors as a result of this effort.

Work this past week included some smaller projects. One was the reconstruction of the bump out window on our museum railroad depot. The windows will be restored and installed at a later time.

We will begin a whole house exterior this week. It is a medium size house 13 miles east of home. It should go well.

Brrrrrr. We had a hard freeze Friday night with lows in the 20's and wind. On Friday it was in the 40's with a 25 MPH wind. It was like November. This week will be much warmer.

Enjoy the pics. Sorry there are no pics of the whole party, we were not shooting
pics because we were in the party and having fun. We will try to get
pics from someone else.
Keep in touch.

The Haines Family.

Coming soon-Nate and Amanda's wedding

2007-09-09T14:49:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone,

As usual, everything has been crazy.

The wedding is next weekend. All spare time for the girls has been spent on preparations.
It is going to be a beautiful wedding.

We finished roofing Frank and Holly's home. We did a 3 layer tearoff, sheeting, shingles, gutters and leaf caps. The boys helped much, it was a lot of work. We will be doing small catch up projects this week including repairing a bump out window on our local museum railroad depot another little project on the other side of the Methodist church bell tower, tear off a porch roof, install a railing and who knows what else.

Once again, the Sunday service went awesome. We were able to include Duane on keyboard, Jessica was out of town. We are all having a blast. On Tuesday, Joshua and I will provide a worship set for the kickoff of our mid week Bible study, we will not include Amanda and Peggy so they can pursue wedding needs. Joshua will be playing drums for the youth group on Wednesday at the Marshfield church. Next weekend we will still do Sunday worship at Colby.

On a sad note, our hearts are heavy as a family we know in Mississippi had a serious tragedy.
Brandon and Missy lost their 9 month old daughter after Brandon forgot her in vehicle last Friday. It was a hot day and he made a serious and careless mistake. Have you ever made a serious or careless mistake and by the grace of a great God were spared the harm you deserved? I know we have. Please pray for them as Brandon will face manslaughter charges.
Also pray for their restoration. We know they loved their Lexi with their lives and would never have harmed her.

We will have a busy September, On the 22nd, Brian will be doing sound mixing for a large youth leader conference at North Ridge Marshfield. Zach has put together a city wide worship band featuring some of the areas best worship musicians. It will be a great time.

Brian, Joshua and Nicholas will be involved in Nightmare. It will be Brian's 10th year as Special effects director. He has a helper named Brian also this year who will make the load much lighter.

For those of you in Mississippi you would freeze if you were here. Autumn has arrived. Our highs this week will be in the high 60's, lows in the 40's. Some trees are beginning to have fall colors. It is a great time of year here. You are all invited, grab an airline ticket and we will show you what life is like here, we would give you a good time.

Keep in touch

The Haines Family

Rosa's dedication

2007-09-04T00:35:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone,

It has been really busy around here lately. We are still roofing Frank and Holly's house. The boys have all been involved. It required much labor and it has been
plenty warm.
Fortunately we have had dry days and nights.

We are also still doing things for Nate and Amanda finishing details on their home. We have painted the entire interior
of the home including ceilings,
trim, walls and cabinets. This afternoon, Brian installed rear brake pads
in one of their vehicles. The house looks great, many things have been accomplished. Their new home is only 2 blocks away on the same side
of our street.
The children
will be able to walk or bike easily to their home.

Sunday services at our new church in Colby have been exciting. Brian, Peggy, Amanda, Joshua, and Jessica have been providing a great spirit led worship service. It has been so fun letting God build this team. We are all rookies in our roles, but it has been a blast. Pastor Gayland is teaching the book of Acts. We encourage all to attend. Pastor is also requesting that our gang
do a worship set for a Tuesday night study we will open on Sep 11 at our new building, The
Gathering Place.

On Sunday, we dedicated Rosa to the Lord. It was an awesome time. Pastor Gayland prayed for both Rosa and Mom and Dad.

Rosa was dressed in a handmade dress. Charlotte's friend Susan helped her with the smocking and Charlotte did the embroidery while we were in Mississippi. It was beautiful, Charlotte put many hours into the details.

The wedding is in less than 2 weeks. Everyone is working on all those final details. It seems there are so many.
Please keep in touch, we love hearing from each of you.

the Haines family.

Late August update

2007-08-28T21:17:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone,

Sorry we are so late on updating the blog. Things have been crazy busy. We have been working very hard and have had non-stop activities.

Many things are going on at this time.
We are helping complete details for Amanda and Nate's wedding. We are also finishing details with the home they are purchasing. Much time was spent this weekend painting the interior of the home. It is looking great.

Four of the six children have birthdays in July and August. Andrew turned 9 on August 29. Joshua turned 14 on August 14. Also Nathan has his birthday in August.

Work in the last week has included changing windows and doors. Also we had a project to change 3 garage doors and 2 openers. We also have been working on preparing a house for new tenants.

This week we started a large roofing project for Frank and Holly.

Joshua and Samuel got some experience today operating a insulation blower. They crawled in some small spaces to insulate their home.

We had an exciting week this week at North Ridge Colby. Brian had the opportunity to grow the worship band. With much effort and practice, Jessica was introduced on piano and our Joshua (age 14) played his first Sunday morning worship service on the full drum set. Both did great and the congregation enjoyed the growth.

Last night we had studio photos shot for North Ridge's photo directory.
We will add photos when we have more time.

Keep in touch. We enjoy hearing from everyone.

The Haines Family

Let the bell ring!

2007-08-18T09:24:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone

For those of you down south, we are praying that somehow hurricane dean settles down before serious harm is caused.

We have had tons of fun working hard on the Colby United Methodist church. The board hired me to make those repairs on the bell tower. It is now in use, the interior roof is repaired and the 8 openings have been re opened. It was very rewarding to participate in this work.

We are including some pics of the family in the backyard.

The older boys are camping with the scouts. We have had a very dry August. However, it seems if we need rain, we send the scouts out on a campout. It has become very cool, unusual for August. We did not even reach 60 for today's high. It has rained all afternoon and will continue for 24 more hours. We are to receive a couple of inches of badly needed rain.
We used the heater in the van and our house is only 65 degrees.

We bundled up and spent the afternoon enjoying one of our areas local fairs. This fair includes animal exhibits. It was a nice outing, and gave the little ones an opportunity to touch and feel numerous animals.

I stumbled into some interesting statistics about our home county. Some of you will enjoy this or even find it humorous.
Clark County, WI has human population of 33,557. Our cattle population is 63,000.
We have 27.6 people per square mile. We have 82,300 acres used for grain corn.

Our median income per household is 34,577. Our median home value is 64,700.

We love our hometown and it really is a great place to live.

Keep in touch, Call or write anytime.

Our contact info is hainesbc7@hotmail.com or phone 7156134601

The Haines family

Colby United Methodist

2007-08-15T19:43:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone.

We had to show you pics Rosa growing up so fast.

Brian has been working hard repairing an old church in Colby. Their roof had serious repair problems. This past Easter Sunday the congregation had to listen to dripping water during the service. The structure is a masterpiece of quality work of yesteryear. The roof is now repaired. Only some details remain for tomorrow.

We wanted to share some great photos. The church bell has not been used for a decade due to some safety concerns. Brian went into the bell tower to scout out the situation. The bell was made in 1883. The original wood church burned down. The current church was built in 1915.
It seems that the bell was re-used. We are discussing implementing some safety systems and getting this bell ringing once again. We are planning to install strong safety cables so the bell could never fall.

Last Saturday Charlotte, Peggy and Becky held Amanda's bridal shower. They went all out and it was a great success.

Yesterday, Joshua turned 14. He played drums tonight in Marshfield for the main church youth band. He is very excited.

This weekend the three older boys will camp once again with the scouts.They will be going to a state park.

Enjoy the photos, keep in touch.

The Haines family

Church Festival

2007-08-11T08:54:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone,

We have once again been crazy busy. We have participated in all the activities mentioned in the last blog.

A week ago Friday we participated in Mike and Karen's wedding. It was an evening outdoor wedding. The setting was in a large perennial garden. The weather was perfect. Peggy, Amanda, Joshua and Brian provided live music. The whole thing was beautiful. We were all treated to a nice meal and a huge fireworks show.

Last weekend was a flurry of activity. We were involved in preparing for the church office grand opening.
Sunday morning began with staging the Interface band for Sunday worship. They are a 6 member band from Fort Meyers Florida. We had lunch with them at Nicki's house. Nicki is our ministries director at the Colby church. She is a graduate of the Fort Meyers Masters Commission program. She is a phonomenal blessing to this ministry.

Sunday afternoon we set up for the concert. Interface blessed our community with a great concert. After the concert was the cookout and jumbo inflatable toys. Fun was had by all who came. At 9:00 P.M. we showed the movie Over the Hedge on our school football field outdoors.
Several dozen people were introduced to our church family at this event. We were excited about the success of it all.

Our new office in Colby "The Gathering Place" will meet many needs of our church. It will be staffed during normal business hours. It will be home to many small group meetings, bible study meetings, counseling appointments, a coffee bar open to the public, a reading library, free wireless internet to the public, small concerts or worship, and hopefully a hipanic service will be held there on Sundays while we have our regular service at the High School. Pastor Gayland is trying to find a Hispanic pastor.

We are excited about Pastor's vision to grow this church. We were also introduced to a couple that was hired by the church. Preston and Amy will be the children's pastor role and Amy will help staff the Colby office. Preston and Amy join Zach as our worship pastor, Nicki as our Ministries director, and Daniel, our youth pastor. All of these staffers are enthusiastic hard working people all are under 30 years old. What a blessing to work with great young people.

On Thursday Mike and Karen blessed us taking us to Eau Claire to Fanny Hill dinner theatre. We enjoyed a great play and meal. It was a real treat as activities like this are more rare to parents of 6 children. It seems you never have enough time or cash. It was a very enjoyable double date.

Nicholas and Ethan were treated to a birthday outing this week with Grandma and Grandpa Haines.

As of today, Sat morning, Charlotte, Peggy, and Becky are preparing for a huge bridal shower for Amanda. They all stayed up all night working. It is this afternoon.

Brian's work this past 2 weeks included adding on to a deck, a plumbing project, and is now working on replacing a partial church roof. It is 100 years old and needed new lumber installed,and new flashings fitted into the brick. It will take about a week.
Brian also prepared an apartment for a new tenant coming from Richmond VA.

Keep in touch everyone. We enjoy hearing from y'all!

The Haines family

Camp was great!!

2007-07-29T15:04:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone,

We sent Nicholas, Joshua and Samuel to their boy scout camp last Sunday. Brian, Charlotte, Andrew, Ethan, and Rosa stayed back home Sunday and Monday.

Brian worked Monday, Ethan rode along and played. Charlotte, Rosa, Andrew, Brandi and Jade shopped and ordered flower girl and miniature bride dresses.

We took Ethan to Minneapolis to Shriners Hospital on Tuesday for his annual checkup regarding his club foot. We are excited to give a praise report that his recovery/treatment continues to be a virtually textbook recovery. The doctors are thrilled with everything. It was fun particularly spending a few minutes with one of his doctors named Chas. At the time of the treatments
Chas was only a technician, having personally done most of Ethan's castings. He has since become a regular doctor. Praise be to God for his healing and for these wonderful people!!

After traveling to Minneapolis we finished packing for family camp. The scout camp has a separate little campground near the main camp. We stayed there. We enjoyed normal camping activities in addition to watching and participating in some of the scout activities. Brian earned many Daddy points with Rosa, having time to bike ride, push a stroller, and
push a tire swing.
Samuel earned his archery,pioneering and enviromental science merit badges. Joshua earned forestry, camping ,enviromental science, and worked toward personal fitness. Nicholas earned oceanography, computer, finger printing and space exploration. Nicholas gave a speech on oceanography. There were fun activities associated with these things. They shot rockets, bow and arrow, and tons of fun things.

Camp Tesomas is a 1100 acre facility with a completely private fresh water lake. It is very highly rated in the boy scout system. Nicholas and Joshua are expressing interest in becoming program counselers for the future. We were expecially thrilled that Samuel earned the troop's scout spirit award for the second time and our other boys were considered. In these situations it is so obvious what a blessing this whole home schooling thing has been. Their ability to lead, cooperate, listen to instruction and good attitude seems to shine every time. They make us very proud many times over.

The weather was great all week, yes Susan, the weather in July in WI is delicious!

Once again, Peggy, Amanda, Joshua, and I did the worship set for church. We had fun and seem to be making progress in leading the fellowship into a great worship experience.

This week will be a bit crazy. Our new church is doing a huge kickoff to introduce ourselves more to the community. It will be Sunday afternoon and evening including free food, a free concert by Interface from Fort Myers Fl. This will be outdoors in front of our new multipurpose facility "The Gathering Place". We also will be doing a family fun time with huge rented inflatable toys for children and adults. All the fun will end by having an outdoor movie "Over the Hedge" on our high school football field. All of these functions will be unusually noticable in our normally quiet little city. We are trusting that many will be introduced to the wonderful ministry
coming from this new church.

On Friday, good friends Mike and Karen will be getting married. Peggy, Amanda, and I will be providing live music for this event.

On Saturday and Sunday, we will be housing 2 of the Interface band members. This should provide us incentive to get the house a little bit more in order than usual.

Thanks for checking the blog, enjoy the pics. I will be adding in some pics to recent entries, scroll down and enjoy.

The Haines Family

Time for Boy Scout camp

2007-07-22T22:08:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone,

It has been a usual but very busy week at the Haines household this week.
Leaving home for 6 months can definitely set you back on your to do list.

After last weekend festivities we buckled down and worked hard this week. For Brian, it was off to a nearby community to remodel a bathroom for a past customer. Our customer trusted Brian's recommendation for ceramic tile, including all custom ceramic tile shower. The bathroom is almost complete, and Rick and Jean will be having him doing some more projects including adding on to their deck.

Early this week, a demolition crew came to our Kwik Trip. To our suprise, they removed the fuel island and not the destroyed store at the present time. The store is corporate owned and they have not announced their plan on whether to rebuild, where to rebuild or when to rebuild. Our small city does not have a grocery store, and we really hope they rebuild here on their old site.
They have a very good grocery program including most of the basics at less cost than regular grocery stores.

Charlotte and the boys worked hard on household duties including sorting clothes and setting up Rosa's larger bed. We all got measured for the wedding this week.

Brian and Joshua have joined Peggy, Amanda, and others each week at church for worship. We are so excited that Joshua has had the opportunity to experience this. The church has been so responsive to the worship and it is so exciting to see what God is doing in this small city.

At 10:00 this morning we sent Nicholas, Joshua, and Samuel to their boy scout camp. It is in a beatiful camp called camp Tesomas in Rhinelander, WI. We will leave our big house once again to spend most of the week in our humble camper at the same camp in a day or two.

Sorry that there is nothing too exciting this week, but we wanted to update all of you.

For those of you in MS, you would have liked our weather this week. It was like your March. We had lows in the 40's and highs in the 70's most days. Yes, this is our summer, but it is usually a bit warmer than this. The days have been pleasant with reasonable humidity.

Keep in touch. Call, E-mail, or respond to the blog anytime. We love hearing from our friends. God Bless each of you today!!

Brian, Charlotte, and the boys

Exciting weekend-Kwik Trip Fire

2007-07-15T20:18:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone,

It has certainly not been a boring weekend here in the small city of Colby.
We enjoyed a beautiful outdoor wedding of Charlotte's cousin Katrina at a local county park on Saturday. We have been serving at our local Colby Cheese Days for both the Cub Scouts and North Ridge Church.

I was woke up on Sunday morning to unusual explosion sounds. These sounds were followed by numerous sirens stopping nearby. I decided to check out what was going on and got up and stepped outside. I was amazed to see our local gas station/convenience store engulfed in flames.
This business is 2 city blocks from our home. The station sustained serious damage and will no doubt be a total loss.

Hi everyone,
Once again this week both Joshua and I played in the worship band along with Charlotte's sisters Amanda and Peggy singing. Everything went great and it was a lot of fun.

We had our local parade today. Our home is on the parade route and we always enjoy the locals coming over to view the parade from our front lawn.

Sorry for the short update, but keep in touch, we love hearing from everyone.

Brian, Charlotte, the boys and Rosa

Cold in July??

2007-07-13T22:22:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone,

Wow, almost a week since we updated everyone!

Things have been really busy getting caught up on life here. We have been busy working on all of our various tasks. For Brian, it has been sprucing up the house we are selling. Projects have included refinishing a 100+ year old wood floor, ceramic tile work and a new front door.

For Charlotte and her sisters, planning for Amanda's shower seems to be keeping them very busy.

On our first Sunday here, Brian played guitar and Joshua played drums for worship. We will also play this weekend. The pastor's son Ben has move 80 miles from here and it is now difficult for him to play for this service. He has graciously been helping out in our absence.

Our new church has rented a space in our town's strip mall. We have all been involved in the painting and light remodeling. The space will be pleasant and offer some amenities such as office space, internet access, a coffee bar, a music stage and a comfortable atmosphere.
It will be used for small groups, youth meetings, counseling appointments, community events and much more.

Our comminity has it's annual Colby Cheese Days this weekend. Festivities include a tractor pull, a parade, D.J. music a carnival and of course, food and beer.
North Ridge Church (Our new Assembly of God church here in Colby) is selling Itty Bits ice cream in the food court for our fund raiser this year.

Our family is also involved in the Cub Scouts annual french fry stand. It is usually a busy place.

We seem to be having a unusually cool July. (Maybe it is just us??) Our high temp has not hit 70 degrees in the last 2 days!

Next week I will be renovating a bathroom for a past customer.
In 2 weeks we plan to take a week off and join the boys
for a beautiful week of camping at our regional Boy Scout camping facility at
Rhinelander WI called Camp Tesomas.

We are sorry for the lack of pics at this point, but some have been shot and will be posted soon. We promise.

Thanks for reading our page. We love you all!
Keep in touch.

Brian, Charlotte, the boys and Rosa

Home Sweet Home

2007-07-07T00:19:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone,

Welcome to our new viewers from MS.
We will be including pics and stories for your benefit. We really do miss you all.

As we shared last time, we really did have a nice journey this time. We had good experiences even at our stops finding the services we needed and had a good hotel experience at Perryville MO.

We arrived home Tue evening about 8:30 P.M. Since we have had some roaches in our camper in recent weeks, we drove past our home and went straight to our town laundromat. We filled every washer and dryer in the place and washed every item of clothing and bedding in our camper. We also discarded all cardboard. We fogged our camper for the third time as we went to bed for the night. We really do not want these rascals finding our house as they are not normal here.

We had a wonderful 4th of July. We spent the morning unpacking and folding that mountain of clothes and bedding.
My parents stopped in for a visit in the afternoon. We had a nice visit with them. We spent the late afternoon and evening at a rural site with Charlotte's younger sisters Peggy and Amanda, Nathan and Charlotte's parents. We enjoyed a cookout, paddle boating, and fellowship. We all went to our nearby town Abbotsford for the local fireworks display.

We celebrated our 21st anniversary on the 5th.
I spent time organizing my business by moving back into our jobsite trailer.
Charlotte and I enjoyed a nice picnic in a new park in our town.
We are thankful for 21 very great years that God has given us. We are so blessed.

We recently had a vacancy on a small house that we own here. We planned on putting it up for sale. Since Amanda and Nathan are getting married, they need a home. It seemed to make sense for them to consider the option of buying this modest house as it is very affordable. It seems at this time that this is what will happen.
We pulled out carpets and vinyl today and began sanding the original hardwood floors. This process will continue into early next week. We will be able to spruce up the place and make it look very nice for them.

Charlotte and Peggy are already very much involved in planning the shower and wedding for Amanda. Time is going fast for this event.

Amanda has asked me to help with the worship team at our church plant in Colby. I will be playing the guitar even at our first service back. We are so excited about the great things going on at this new church. It is growing in both numbers and spiritual growth. We are anticipating the great things that God has for this fellowship in the near and long term future.

We love your comments on the blog. It is very easy to respond. Just click on the link and set up a simple google account. It is free. We also welcome your phone calls or e-mails at any time.
This page helps us keep in touch. We try hard to let you know what is going on in our lives.
We desire knowing what is going on in yours.

God bless each of you.
Brian and Charlotte and the boys and Rosa

We're Home!

2007-07-04T02:01:00.000-05:00

Well,

We are back in Wisconsin. Thank you everyone for your prayers. The trip was very good.
We could feel your support.

We'll update soon. In the meantime have a Happy 4th of July!
Thank you Jesus for America.

The Haines

On schedule

2007-07-03T07:14:00.000-05:00

It is 7:00 A.M. We are in Perryville,MO. It is about 1 hour south of St. Louis.

We made 625 of 1200 miles. We had great weather, minimal wind and sunshine most of the way. Traffic was not too bad. We will hit the road by 8:30. See you soon.

We miss all of you in MS. Six months will go by soon. Try to stay cool. You guys are all awesome!!!!!

Thank you for your prayers.

Brian and Charlotte and boys and Rosa

Coming HOME!

2007-07-02T06:19:00.000-05:00

Well Everyone,

It is 6:30 in the morning when I am posting this and we have a very little to pack up in the camper yet. Brian is ready to go and will be dragging the children out of bed soon.
We were able to get farther on the house than expected, we are excited about that.
We have pics to post, but will patch them in to these pages when we have more time.
Please pray for safe travel and reliable equipment. See you soon.

Brian and Charlotte

Late June update

2007-06-27T07:22:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone

We have been working and playing hard. As of today, we will be complete with drywall taping.
I will begin spraying texture, primer and ceilings.

While I was taping drywall, Nicholas, Joshua, Samuel and Charlotte installed all of the electrical outlets and switches, under my careful supervision. They did great. We will install ceiling lighting after spraying.

We will be able to leave one bathroom complete. Joshua and I installed the ceramic tile late Monday night and Andrew (age 8) did the grout by himself, while we worked on our projects. He helped me a lot at Ron's house in February and knew how. It looks great.

We have made so many friends here, it has been a blessing. Last week Sunday, Adam and Pam treated us to a Mexican Buffet in Ocean Springs. It was great.

On Saturday, Charlotte and the kids blessed 3 other families by taking them to Skate Zone in Ocean Springs. The day consisted of skating, laser tag, pizza and soda.

On Saturday evening, Joan's grandson and fiance came here on the water with their pontoon. They blessed us with a ride on the bayou and the Jordan river. It was a beautiful evening and we all enjoyed. We all had a blast.

On Sunday we went to Moss Point to spend the day. Jay and Michelle invited us to their home. Our children are friends with their children. They have 4. Madeline, Anna Grace, Jackson and baby Caryanna. Their home has a tennis court in the backyard. We had a great time. I am very concerned I may lose to Joshua sometime soon. Jay was coaching him and he is getting pretty good.

Tomorrow evening, Maureen and Joe will be blessing us by taking us to a nice buffet in Gulfport.

Things are getting crazy here. In addition to the fast pace on the house and our coming departure, Joan will be closing on her house in Mandeville this Fri. This means she needs to move some personal items and furniture to this site. Thank God I will be done with the drywall just in time.

We regret that we cannot finish her home. We would have needed about 2 more weeks, but we leave her with easier projects to hire out. These will be flooring, vinyl siding, kitchen cabinets, interior doors and trim, and final coat wall paint. She may wind up moving in with some incomplete projects and wait for her opportunity to get them completed. It is very difficult to hire out services here as this community is 85% destroyed. Everyone is very booked up.

We are including a picture of a neighborhood home that now has a tent in it. Don't know anything about it, except it just showed up about two weeks ago. We'll have to see if anything happens before we return home.

We still plan on working through Saturday. We will pack Sunday afternoon and pull out Monday morning. If we have no problems, we should be able to make it in by Tuesday evening.

God bless you all!

Brian ,Charlotte and the kids.