Late June update

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.

Ants, Roaches and Racoons

Hi everyone,

Sorry we have not posted, we have had internet problems. We are grateful that it works most of the time. They said someone cut the cable and it had to be replaced.

As summer is setting in, we have had some interesting guests. We have been struggling with ants and fire ants since we have been here. We mean literally thousands. When we arrived, the yard was filled with colonies.


We recently discovered that it was not the boys making a mess of the bathroom in the house every night, but actually a racoon who visited every night. We found him in the attic recently. The city animal control dept. borrowed us a live trap and we captured the rascal the first night.



A couple of weeks ago, Joan hired a mold control company. They basically sandblasted the entire house with a product similar to baking soda.

It did an amazing job cleaning up the structure, but it scattered some roaches and their eggs all over the property. They are a common problem down here. Well, some decided to move into our camper. These are the large type that you really would rather not share living space with. On Sunday morning we bombed the camper and seem to have killed all insects including the ants. The boys are also finding some roaches in their tents. We are still dealing with that. You can buy roach products at Walmart here.  It is a good thing that there is a Walmart here as no other grocery provider has managed to rebuild in Bay St Louis or Waveland.

On Friday we passed all inspections, construction, HVAC, plumbing and electric. This is good news. We have heard many stories about very picky inspections slowing projects down.
We have done outside sheet insulation, and interior fiberglass insulation.
We hung drywall on Monday and will continue hard this week.  We almost completed the ceilings in one day.  :)  ☺    
Today we will finish the ceilings and hopefully the walls too.

We have had highs as high as 99 and it seldom goes below 80 for lows. It can be extremely humid also. We will have some rain this week keeping afternoon highs a little more moderate.

We received a wonderful blessing on Father's Day.  We were able to go to Ms. Joan's other house she has sold in Mandeville, Louisana, and go swimming in the pool there.  
Her closing is happening sometime toward the end of June, so she still has everything there.  She said use what ever you need.  
So we had our own private resort.  Thank you Jesus for such a fun time.


When we are not working or we are waiting, we make up games of our own, like PVC Plumbing Gun Arcade.  As you can see that was pretty fun.  
(Mom, still says no guns.  But Mom, this is only PVC piping that shoots cheese, not bullets.)  Must be from Wisconsin.  Ha! Ha!




As you can see, the children are getting bigger.  
It must be because our favorite new past time is to have at least one slushy a day.  
Rosa and Mom are sharing one.  Since Rosa never comes up for air ~ I guess I should say that Mom is tasting Rosa's.  

See all of you soon.  We love you!!! ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

It is only 2 1/2 weeks until we come home!

Hi everyone,

It's been a long time since we posted. We are using a different browser and was not being able to post. Hopefully, this will be figured out soon.

We are really trucking along on Joan's home. We will have our final inspections on plumbing and wiring on Friday. The outside insulation was started and finished today. We will be starting the inside insulation tomorrow.

If Joan's grants come in by Monday, we will have the siding delivered. That order would also include the doors and windows for downstairs. Once the house is closed up, we can have the drywall delivered. Much to do in the next two weeks. If everything gets here, we will be close.

We have decided to leave with the project unfinished. We will leave Joan in a position of near completion. It should not be too hard to finish what will remain. She may have to hire others to do flooring, the service elevator and cabinets. We hope to leave her exterior complete and be at least at the stage of drywall complete. I have offered to do work here on the lower level(now the garage) in January. It is not necessary to have this complete to have her move in.

The weather is so predictable it is crazy. It starts out pretty warm in the morning, then between 2:00 - 3:00 there is a small thunderstorm that blows up. They come from nowhere and the locals call them squalls. You can almost set your clock to it. Not always do we end up with rain, but for sure we end up with wind gusts. Later after the squawl it's nice out. So the trick is to be around camp when it takes off and then finish up with what you were doing once it's done. We are having highs in the 80's this week, but on Sunday it hit 99 with opressive humidity. Wow!!

As of this evening, we are sad to tell you of a terrible accident near here. (2 miles) The Bay St Louis to Pass Christian bridge was rercently opened on one side. The crew is building the second side. They had a scaffold collapse and 9 men fell into the water. The locals say there were 2 fatalities. We will know more tomorrow.

As our heading says, we are heading home in 2 1/2 weeks. Our plan is to head out of here on the morning of July 2, and return to Colby on the evening of July 3.
We may need a offering for gas money, Ha Ha!!!! We are so looking forward to seeing everyone and hugging all of you. Thank you for all checking our site and keeping in touch with us.


Brian and Charlotte and the kids

Memorial Day-Ship Island

Hi everyone,



Been too busy to write, sorry. On Memorial Day, we played hookey from all the work. To be honest, I was feeling burned out. Many play with their boats, it is a primary recreation.

Twelve miles south of the Gulf coast, there are barrier islands which are National Park property. They are in their natural state. We went to ship island on a privately run excursion.

It was a beautiful day and we had a great day of refreshing. We swam, saw numerous dolphins and toured a historic battle fort. The 1.5 hour boat ride in each direction was fun for all of us.

Nicholas got stung by a jellyfish. It was temporarily very painful, but he was ok.



This morning we sent Andrew to CLCA's Kids Camp. It was a bit frenzied. We did not sign him up because we did not plan on being here this long. It was sold out, but we packed for him in case there was a no show. The children's pastor, Pete accepted him on the trip,even though there was no seat on the bus, and no bunk in the cabin. He rode in a pickup, and will sleep on the floor. We are thrilled to have him there. Like everything CLCA does, this camp will be top notch.

We continue to be blessed by the quality families that make up this great church. We would appreciate your prayers for Andrew that God would show himself real to him.



We have our van back from Champion Chrysler. They did a nice job.



We are nearly complete with the wiring and will start plumbing early this week. We will be needing these inspections before closing in with drywall. We are trusting for favor with the local officials. I am doing all of the wiring and plumbing, including the 200 amp mains and hooking up the plumbing all the way out to the street.



Timing has been a bit of a challenge, as we are slightly ahead of Joan's funding and material purchasing. We are not completely sure how this whole drama will play out, but God does.



I was concerned about the need for over 700 code required hurricane straps requiring over 7000 nails and the labor associated with it. We purchased a nail gun especially for it and Joshua and Samuel had used 500 nails in 2 hours. It will make a big job small, and I will not have to do any of it. Praise God!



We are very homesick and are doing everything we can to expidite this project and return.

We miss all of you and appreciate your patience with this mission. I assure you, Joan would be nowhere without us, and she is very blessed.



A couple of recent stats: 49,000 families still in FEMA trailers in LA, 26,000 families in FEMA trailers in MS. Average cost to taxpayers-$60,000. FEMA will be selling them to residents so they can quit the maintenance.

Contact us anytime, phone, email or blog.

God bless you all!

The Haines family.