Rowen has still had work to go to most days since then, and Janet still works every day, but shorter hours. Those shorter hours away from home, and the lessened traffic time, has given her time to work on a sewing project. She is piecing squares that will eventually make two small quilts for grandsons Felix and Mishael.
Elizabeth and Emily are doing college from home, with online support from teachers and some class times that are online. It is perhaps easier for them to do college from home than others, since they were raised homeschooling all their lives, but they really miss the personal interactions with other students and teachers, and chapel services. Emily is working 4 hours on Fridays and up to 12 hours on Saturdays at Chick-fil-A, which has switched to only drive through service and every one wearing masks and gloves who work there. Elizabeth works 5 hours every Saturday for Shepherds Global Classroom, reformatting the design of the books they have available for classes all over the globe.
We have church at home with emails from our pastors with songs and sermons through YouTube. I think we are all spending more time in the Word and in prayer, which is good for us!
Now for some pictures of happenings in March and April:
March 1 guests: Caleb, Danette, Rebecca, Emmet and Cheyanna Greene, Anthony and Austin Paulus
March 8 guests: Leonard and Janet Sankey
(Emily was gone on a SWSE day of ministering in music in Indiana that day.)
Emily played in Hilltop Ivories, which is an opportunity for piano students to play in public.
There were a lot of participants in the recital.
Janet was allowed to give blood for the first time in this part of the country! The other times she had tried, there was a stipulation that if you had ever had cancer, you were deferred from giving blood. Now the rules have been changed, and she is allowed. She was so happy for the privilege of giving again. This was at a GBS Blood Drive.
Emily gave too.
On March 9, a dear friend from church passed away suddenly, and from our earthly point of view, tragically. For Gordon Martin, it was all glory, because he went to be with the Lord forever!
Here is a picture of his wife, Nancy and him:
They lived over in Indiana right next to Louisville, Kentucky. Because that is such a drive from our church in Burlington, they parked their RV behind the fellowship hall and spent the weekends on the church property. Gordon was on the church board, and videoed the services and helped in the sound booth. He and Nancy duplicated and mailed the DVDs of the services to the shut ins and people at a distance who wanted the services. One friend of theirs found Jesus because of this DVD ministry.
We and many others went to the funeral on March 13.
Pastor Darrell Stetler preached the mesage and told stories about Gordon.
Andy, Sherilyn, and Regina sang.
This loss hit Brother Stetler hard, as Gordon was like a brother to him.
At the cemetery
We were so grateful that the travel and assembly restrictions were not in place yet, when Gordon passed away. It would have been much harder for Nancy if we all could not have gone to be with her and honor Gordon in this way.
Our church had planned for months to have a 25 years of pastoring celebration for Darrell and Regina Stetler on March 15. Nancy wanted them to go ahead with it, even after the loss of Gordon. It was so good that we did, because that was our last church gathering for how long--we don't yet know!
Rowen and Janet passed out programs for the special service.
Three of the Stetlers' children sang: Sherilyn, Kenny, and Merrilee.
Regina was given a blanket with all the church people's names on it. She loved it! She is such a people person. People are her only collection/hobby. Darrell got an engraved pocket knife. That's what he collects.
It was a wonderful service with many speaking their gratefulness for the Stetlers' pastoring and friendship. Leonard Sankey gave the message.
We had a wonderful fellowship meal afterwards.
The decorations were sweet, with many black and white pictures of the Stetlers' 25 years in Burlington.
Rowen and Janet at their stand up table.
Emily's birthday was next on March 17. She turned 22. There was a ban on gatherings over 10 people, so we invited 6 friends over!
Ana Castillion (from Mexico), Meagan and Jonathon Valentine, Steve, Korin, and Daniel Harms. The rest of the Harms were at their grandparents' in Pennsylvania.
We had creamy tacos and Dirt Cake and played games.
That was our last guests for a long time.
Making our own "church" music March 22
Just us 4, no more.
After church at home and lunch, we went on a drive to see places Rowen had seen but the rest of us hadn't. We ended up at Big Bone State Park and walked on the trail a little ways. It was muddy and starting to rain, so we didn't stay long. It was chilly too.
The next Sunday afternoon, we also went on a drive. Our goal was to see the pretty trees in bloom.
The white trees were really gorgeous this spring!
We've taken lots of walks in our neighborhood and enjoyed other beautiful flowering bushes and trees. Forsythia bushes are so cheerful!
Snowfall cherry weeping willow trees are very plentiful in our neighborhood. They are so beautiful in the spring.
Emily
Elizabeth
Janet and Elizabeth
Redbud trees have been gorgeous too.
We picked some seed pods and googled how to start a redbud tree from the seed. We have two containers in our refrigerator with seeds in moist sand for 6 weeks. After that we will plant them inside and see if we can get a tree started. We have about 24 seeds, so surely one will grow!
The tulips on GBS campus have been beautiful. Janet is the only one of our group to get to enjoy them because she is the only one to go to campus during this time.
This is what Emily looks like when she is at work nowadays.
And what Rowen has to wear in some of his installation situations.
Our dear pastors visited everybody in the church by driving to their houses and visiting from their van. How we do miss the close fellowship! They also are calling everyone and emailing and texting everybody frequently.
Our friends, the Harms came by and visited on our porch on April 11. It is so hard to not be with them, especially Emily, as she likes to spend a lot of time with the kids, teaching them sign language and playing with them.
Our Easter Sunday picture by the side of our house.
With all the rain that we have had this winter and spring, we discovered water problems. One was our basement, and the other our roof. So we have had two house projects.
We first discovered our basement wall leaking when we returned from our December trip to Missouri. There is a drain in the floor edge on the left in the picture below, but none on the right wall. You can see the crack that had been mended in the past. All the times we looked at this house last summer, even after rain, there was no leak. So the "fix" had failed at the end of the year. The water table has been high with all the rain we've had. We put old towels down on the floor to catch the water and keep it from going across the room and under the wall to the floor drain behind the bar. Thankfully all that floor involved is concrete, not carpeted! We have not seen any problems in the carpeted, finished part of our basement.
We were told that we should remove the paint from this wall in order to seal it again. Rowen did this, but it was not possible for a couple weeks for the wall to be dry enough to reseal it with new paint. We had so much rain! We were going through so many towels, having to launder a load of wet towels several times a day some of the days.
This is how it looked after Rowen's work of resealing and making a dam across the area.
The next big rain, we had two places that leaked. The dam retained it and we squeegeed it to the French drain.
Since then our neighbor gave us some cement sealer that Rowen put in those spots and repainted and we have not had trouble since! So we are hoping that problem is solved!
We discovered our roof was leaking when it came through the sunroom ceiling on February 16. We had a couple roof guys give their opinions. The most through roof guy went up in our attic and took pictures of the sheeting that was ruined several places. It was only a matter of time before we would have our ceiling ruined in our bedrooms! The other danger was our rafters becoming damaged if we let the sheeting continue to be destroyed. So we felt the only thing to do was to protect our investment and get a new roof.
That happened on April 15. The old shingles were removed and sheeting was replaced everywhere it was damaged. The new underlayment and new valleys are superior quality and the shingles are fiberglass and the guarantee is for 30 years. A ridge vent was installed, which this house never had. We feel we have had a superior roof installed and it will still be good even after we have gone to heaven! The color is Castle Gray, which we feel is attractive on our house. Both of our neighbors have commented that they like the color of it.
We still have the damaged ceiling to fix in the sunroom, but we are thankful to have the roof completed. There was a 50% afternoon rain forecast last Wednesday, but we prayed and the Lord held the rain off until after the job was complete.
We enjoyed our Jane Magnolia bush blooming this spring.
We planted Bleeding Heart bulbs in late February and they came up nicely and produced some beautiful blooms.
On Saturday evenings we have been enjoying Zoom technology to see our kids and grandkids and visit about the happenings in each family.
We are participating in a study in Revelation through God's Bible School (not for credit) and enjoying that very much. In the picture above we are reading the Revelation verse by verse commentary together.
April 19 (today) we felt led to ask Lonnie and Leta Witt to join us for dinner. We know they have been so lonely without the church fellowship and they have been on our hearts to encourage. They brought their food and we put it together with ours and enjoyed the meal and visiting around the table.
We are thankful for good health and feel the isolation has gone on longer than what is good for some of our friends and family. We were happy to join in Christian fellowship with Lonnie and Leta today.
