Jesus Our Help

We’ve been home since the second week of November, connecting with our local family and friends, working on our home and Phoebe, and planning for our next trips in January, February and March.

Connecting with Family and Friends;

On our fall trip we connected with our daughter Bethany and her family in New York and our daughter Hannah and her family in Pennsylvania, as well as our sister/daughter Katrina in Florida. Gail and I also connected with all of our siblings. On returning home we needed to connect with local family. So we’ve had Thanksgiving at Ruth’s house and also taken care of her boys for a week, we’ve attended a play and a Christmas concert with the Rask family, and we’ve visited with Tina, Paul and Armando, and even helped them with a plumbing repair. We’ve spent time with Bobby and Michael (who is still living at our house). The only folks we haven’t been able to see are John and Robyn, but we hope to see them in a week or so. It’s been great to spend time with all these great people.

We’ve also spent time with friends. We returned to our home church the Sunday after Thanksgiving and were warmly greeted. We’ve also had meals with a few people, and we’re going to a big Christmas dinner this weekend.  The transition to Trinity’s new pastor, John White, is going well and we are glad to be able to stay connected with the church in this new season.

Working on our house and Phoebe

Whenever you return from a long trip (54 days) you realize that there is a lot to be done at home. While we were gone we had an air conditioning leak, so we had a pretty big piece of ceiling to replace in our guest room. This reminded us of the piece of ceiling missing in our garage, from a now-repaired tub leak. We’ve got the sheet rock up in both places but still have to do the floating, texturing and painting. We’re grateful to be able to use the skills learned at Crisis Response on our own home.

The other big project, which we hope to have finished before we next hit the road, is the replacement of all our downstairs flooring with vinyl planking. So far we’ve removed the carpet tack and trim in all the rooms and the wood laminate floor in the kitchen. The concrete beneath looks pretty good, so we are going to order the materials and plan to start laying the floor right after Christmas.

Finally, we’ve had a few little repairs to perform on Phoebe, our class b camper van. Just before we came home from our fall trip we discovered that we had a small water leak. We tracked it down to a valve in the hot water system that had apparently frozen when the van lived in New Hampshire (under its first owners). So I learned to work with PEX piping and then replaced the valve. The other relatively simple fix is to replace the door on our outside shower. It’s currently covered by a thin cutting board, but the part is on order and should be in next week. Last but not least, we’d appreciate your prayers for the air conditioner. It makes an awful racket, and we’ve got to get it fixed before the next warm season. Pray that we can do that one relatively cheaply too.

Planning for the New Year

We plan to be home through Christmas and the New Year and to further enjoy celebrating this season with family and friends. Then in the second week of January we plan to hit the road again in Phoebe, traveling first to the response site in Ft Myers where we will spend four or five weeks working with teams and connecting with homeowners.  We may even host a pickleball clinic in the Spring Creek Village community where we’ve been working.

In February we’ll be attending “PT-DEV” the yearly development and training conference for Crisis Response staff. Then we’ll be home for a few weeks before heading north to Pennsylvania, where Hannah is due to deliver her fourth baby in mid-March. We’ll stay there a while, caring for Hannah and the kids as they welcome this new little one into their lives.

We’re looking forward to all this travel and we covet your prayers that we would be the hands and feet and heart and voice of Jesus in all these situations. If you would like to be on our frequent pray-ers list and get more frequent updates, just drop us a note or comment on this post.

We also covet your support. Our monthly support is growing, but we still need partners who will commit to even small monthly giving to enable us to continue in this wonderful ministry. We’re at about 75 percent of our goal now, and when we reach about 90 percent we’ll be able to start taking salary, which will really help with our household budget. If you would like to support our ministry financially, visit Giving: Bob and Gail DeGray. All gifts are greatly appreciated.

In Christ

Bob and Gail