To say I've been discouraged since we found out our home was flooded Tuesday night, would be an understatement.  We missed the final day of the conference that was really good and didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye to friends who we only get to see once a year.  And then we get home and it’s worse than what we were hoping for, but of course, not the end of the world!  Even trying to get it cleaned up some crazy things happened.

For instance, I'm finally finished getting as much water out of the trailer as I can and the drying equipment is all set up. I'm just double checking everything and getting ready to walk out and collapse in bed next door. The dehumidifier pump kicks on to drain into the kitchen sink and the hose connection fails and the water goes all over the floor!

I did some crazy talking to The LORD during this process and just wondering is it time to hang it up with Calvary Relief, after all it's been a great run, almost 17 years and I'll be 60 this year. I’ve had many say to me in recent years that I'm crazy, you need to downsize at the least if not just go back home. But God, right!

We're getting ready to start our first "big" project here next week on a home that should've been condemned from the tornado last Easter. We've got our good and faithful, repeat offenders, I mean friends, Thom and Mike coming out to help first of next week.  A contractor that we had worked with in Colorado the last time we were there, also contacted us.  He’d been thinking about us for a while and had been wanting to volunteer with us.  He had some time that he could give us and wondered if we needed any help.  Perfect timing for the couple of things that we’ll be working on the next couple of weeks.  And guess what, he’s not a Christian!  Please pray for us the next couple of weeks, especially that Parker would see Jesus in us, would want to attend devos and have an open heart to The LORD and get saved!

So then this morning I get up, do my devos, and of course I have a hundred other things on my mind so I didn’t pay too much attention, bad me!  But then I check my email and one of my daily “pop-up” devos has this verse:  So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up.  Galatians 6:9!!

One thing for sure, we don’t want to be found lacking when we see Him!  We may not know what is going to happen to us, our country, or our world tomorrow, but we do know clearly what God has told us in His Word and we are without excuse as believers and the call on our lives, and yes that goes for you too if you’re a child of God.  Our circumstances and surroundings can and will change often and sometimes quickly on this earth, but there are no escape clauses in God’s Word.  He is the same yesterday, today, and forever!  (Hebrews 13:8).  His Word’s are true and that includes ALL His promises, but all His promises have conditions.  We must love and obey Him.  (Mark 12:30, John 14:15).  We are to love others.  (Mark 12:31).  And of course, the command from Jesus to ALL of us right before He left this earth, we’re to be sharing The Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ, the “Great Commission”, is to be foremost in all our every Christians’ lives.  Matthew 28:19-20).  We are to do this regardless of any virus, government, persecutions, and even in the face of death!  Remember that there are many brothers and sisters in the world who will die today because of their faith in Christ.  And know that people aren’t persecuted and killed just because they believe in Christ, they aren’t secret Christians, they are known as Christians because of the way they live their lives.  And they know full well that as they do, they may indeed be invoking persecution and even putting a sentence of death on themselves, their families, and their friends!

So, we’re not giving up, even though our home “smells” and is wet right now and I’m sure satan would be glad if we did.  We want to finish well, stand firm, press on towards the prize of heaven and Jesus, and one day hear the words from our LORD and Savior Jesus Christ, “Well done my good and faithful servant!”  (2 Timothy 4:7, Acts 20:24, Hebrews 12:1, Philippians 3:14, 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, Matthew 25:21).  We’re praying the same for you, please pray for us!

We’re getting ready to head to Savannah as we have to pick up our bunkhouse that we had to leave to get back home as quickly as we could.  Please pray that it would all go well with no issues on any of that!

If you need to know what happened to flood our trailer, somehow the hose bib outside was turned on by accident and at some point was  turned back off.  Since we drained the water lines to avoid freezing, we also leave a faucet open.  We also have to put anti-freeze in the tanks and leave them closed.  This means water came into the sink, filled the tank that also drains the shower, the shower pan filled and then overflowed.  The upstairs flooded into some of the main floor, but also into the basement.  The water shorted out our backup power system, which caused power to the trailer to go out.  I don’t know the extent of the damages to that equipment yet, but it isn’t cheap!  I’m going to crawl back into the basement this morning and sop up as much water as I can as I can’t get a dehumidifier down there and we’ll run a fan and a heater there!  I’m told that’s the best I can do!  When we get back, I’ll also need to crawl under the trailer and drop the under belly and get into the floor from there.  It may be fine, but it may also be flooded, especially under the bathroom where all the water overflowed.  And yes, I’m making one more change to what we do to our home when we leave so that if someone accidentally turns on the hose bib, we won’t have water into our trailer!  It’s hard to winterize to live in it and then disconnect everything and I try to cover all the bases, but you just never know what you don’t know until you find it out!!  We’ve been leaving it like this in the winter for since we bought it, including right here over our CHRISTmas break, but again, you never know!

We’re blessed to be here so that Doug, then Michelle could come over and get eyes on things and get the furnace turned back on until we could get home.  Also, Charles, our long-time friend and the person we blame for getting us into disaster relief a long time ago, lives in this area and owns a PuroClean franchise here.  He was able to give us all the info we needed to get this mess cleaned up and loaned us much better equipment than what we have, to get it quickly taken care of.  We’ve never remediated a flood like this before, it’s usually all wiped out!!

We also have another prayer request involving our website and blog.  It is down again so we need prayers for it to come back up quick and for wisdom on what to do to stop this from happening again, both for our provider and ourselves, going forward.

Thanks for all your prayers and support!  Please let us know if there is anything we pray for you about.

LORD Bless and Love All Y’all!

Curt & Mary Jo

If you’re interested in helping with any of the expenses with Calvary Relief, please click here.

Love You All and LORD Bless,

Curt & Mary Jo