Working in Pass Christian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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