Yes, the Camp Daniel missionaries are still working! Sorry for the long absence. Tony has continued to work on Megarusalem, doing detail work. The Megarusalem program has been going for about 4 weeks. It's been very successful. The kids love it.
Below is the money changer. The sign above is a spin off of the Wells Fargo logo. "We'll Go Far". The horse and carriage were replaced with camels and a chariot.

Tim and the guys have been working on Jen and Molly's cabin.

Included in this project, was the stairwell leading to the basement that's under the bathrooms. The black doorway that you see is at the opposite end of the stairwell, and leads to a storage closet that goes over the top of part of the stairwell.

More pics of Megarusalem.

As you can see in the pic below, some of the building fronts have signs painted on the facade. This is the Megarsalem Pottery and Basket

It's awesome how great this boat turned out. You really need to see it live and in person.

John and Jen have been working on organizational changes for the Able Church.

John and Sue and the Mandich's (Tim and Janice, from Living Hope Church) went to downtown Green Bay to serve a Thanksgiving meal to some homeless and struggling people. They were encouraged by the experience and are looking into having members of the Able Church do this once a month as an outreach. Marceaux's parents, Ben and Ginny, flew in from Montana for Thanksgiving. We were happy to have them, Jen's mom and Molly's parents, all for Thanksgiving dinner.

Tony and the guys have also been spending a lot of time planting the many many trees donated by Green Bay Nursery. I've lost track of how many loads of trees Tony's brought up from Green Bay. We've been blessed with a mild fall that has allowed for outside work much longer than usual.

Chrissy has been busy with Camp Daniel newsletters. The Christmas edition is at the printers now.

Friday, November 6, 2009

The past week has been quite a whirlwind of work. I estimate that Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday clocked at least 280 man hours on Megarusalem. I couldn't even guess the amount of work hours for the past three weeks. These pics of the construction of Megarusalem are from last Saturday, thru Wednesday evening, which was the deadline. Below, the stair risers have been tiled with leftovers from a Camp Daniel project, plus a few clearance accent tiles.

You can see the foundation of the mural on the right. We are super excited at the talent of this muralist. Regarding the grapevine trellis. Marceaux spent more than one day taking 2x2's and planing them into rough hewn round poles. They look great with the donated real grapevines. You just can't buy grapevines like this, still fresh and pliable. In the pic below, Anthony has started the process of stapling on every leaf and grape cluster.
The well area is almost done in this pic. 16x16 cement capstones were used for the floor and cap of the walls. Tony built a small trellis around the well to separate it from the background which will be the sea.

On Tuesday, Anthony and Tony laid almost all of the pavers, which make up about 2/3 of the floor. It was a giant puzzle with all of the different shapes and sizes.

From this point, I was too busy to take pictures, plus there was so much mess and so many people, it was hard to get a shot in, (which, of course, was a huge blessing)

So here's how it looked all cleaned up for the opening night of Megarusalem. Many details are still not done, but it still looked pretty cool. You'll notice that it looks like night, which was the intention. All of the overhead fluorescents were turned off and a couple of temporary spot lights provided the main lighting, complemented by the Moroccan lanterns, which had temporary electric tea lights in them. Eventually, the lanterns will be lit with low voltage, and more, but softer, spot lights will be added permanently.

Check out the fake fire! It even has smoke that comes out of the top of the chimney!

The boat has it's hardwood deck (leftover from Camp Daniel's Hartley House) The rustic dock has steps that lead you up to the boat from the well area.

on the left is the bank. The pottery/basket shop is on the right

The tent hides the dressing/costume area.

Friday, October 30

The continuing progress of Megarusalem... check out the cool wicker window coverings in the upper windows of the wine shop. Tony found them in a storage room. Just two big rectangles of wicker that happen to fit perfectly! The grout is done on the masonry below. The well, below, is also bricked and mortared. The flanking walls have patches of stucco coming off to reveal rock below that was faux finished to match the rock of the well.

Here, you see the back wall of the well. The center piece is a 12" square rock mosaic in a circular shape. The pipe for the fountain will come out of the center of it. On the surrounding walls is the color blocking for the mural.

Below are the guys as they were starting on the boat. These two pieces are quite large, but are just a fraction of the original boat. On Tuesday afternoon-evening, Tony, Tim, John and the guys went north of Menominee Michigan to get the boat. They cut away just the parts that we needed, and were able to leave the remaining boat in place. (It helped that "in place" was a burn pile.) The owners of the boat were planning to burn it, so they were happy to help, and we were happy to get the perfect boat. The guys ended up working well into the dark to get the parts cut away (via chainsaw) from the boat. I wasn't there, but the stories are good enough, that I wish we had a video of the process. I know there was yelling and running away, and Richard almost didn't run far enough...

Oh yea, there's still plenty of work to do at Camp Daniel before the snow flies. Wed, Thurs, and Friday, Tim, Nick and Brian worked on the porch for the Craft Cabin. They set the posts, they got many of the trusses set, and even metal roofing over the far end.

They also insulated the pump house.

Tuesday, October 27

Megarusalem continues...
Below is the money exchanger. Notice the dark stripe on the lower outer corner? That's the tinted plaster, still wet. Quite a color change from wet to dry. Below is the city well and the wall that will have the mural. In this pic, Tim as given it the final smooth coat of plaster.

The money exchanger getting some cool masonry work, by Tony.

Tim Mandich, sittin' on the job. I must add, that he was priming the ceiling as well.

Below is the wine shop with most of the masonry done. The plaster on this building was tinted yellow. It was the first one, so the batches weren't consistent, but the look ended up being pretty cool. So it'll probably just get a coat of "dirty".

The money exchanger another step into the process. On the adjacent building, you can see the neat wood door that Tony made. Some doors will be curtains. Above the door, you can see a white patch. That was where some of the plaster chipped off before it was fully cured, so a patch job was done. We like the authenticity of it, as the town shouldn't look too shiny and new.

You can see the black ceiling. What a fun job that was. Eventually, the lights will be blacked out as well, but for now, we need them to see.

The money exchanger with a faux finish on the upper wall and an area for the sign. This building has been dirtied up already.

This facade is really coming along. The wood trellised windows are fun. The hole on the top right will be for the time machine. The finish on this building is on step 3 of 5 I believe.

The city well, with masonry detailing. The back wall has been primed.

the building on the left is almost done and the small corner facade has a faux finish different than the rest of the buildings.

Tony, putting the joints in on some of the masonry work.

Thursday, October 22

Since so many of us, here at Camp Daniel, are working hard at Living Hope Church, on the Megarusalem town square, I thought I'd share pictures of the progress.

The room wasn't being used for much other than playing a few ball games with the kids on Wednesday nights, so it's being transformed for the new Wednesday night Mega program, called Mega Creative Labs. It will be a hands on, out of the box, biblical learning experience for k-6 graders. Megarusalem is a biblical town, complete with bakery, wine shop, rug shop, money exchange, basket store, town well and fishing boat off of the sea.

above is the city well

above: on the right, you see the main doors into the room. To the left of that is the wine shop

above: the city well

above: the bakery

above; on the right, the wine shop. Behind marceaux is the rug vendor

above, working on the money changer and the basket weaver's

above, you see that the wine shop has been plastered. We tinted the plaster on some of the buildings with universal colorant

above: this long wall, behind the city well, will eventually have a mural on it of the sea

Tuesday, October 20

Here's what's been happening since the last post.
No big surprise, in that Saturday was a work day at Camp Daniel. Brian and Dave came from Living Hope Church. They worked with Tim installing drywall in the dorms, running electric and starting on the heater in the craft cabin. Crystal Johnson,who was spending the weekend with Jen and Molly, helped out. Charlie Welsch also drove up to help. We were pleasantly surprised too, when Johanna and Julia Axelrod pulled in, as it was a planting work day. Johanna is a master gardener (plus a really fast and efficient planter!) We had 140 plants from Green Bay Nursery to get into the ground (not counting the large trees). It took Karol most of the day just to inventory, organize, identify and place the plants. We ended up getting all but about 30 planted on Saturday. Chrissy single handily made a great lunch for everyone.
Johanna came back on Monday and helped Karol get the rest into the ground. Tony, the guys, and Tim planted the large trees on Monday and Tuesday. It was quite an undertaking, but they all look quite fabulous. The trees were beautiful specimens, not just clearance, half dead stuff that no one would want. Thank you Green Bay Nursery!! One of the tricks now is going to be finding all of these plants and keeping them watered this fall.
Dave Detloff came back today finished installing the heater in the craft cabin. As things so often go, that was a much larger job, than it originally seemed. Thankfully, it's one more thing checked off the "must be done before the snow flies" list.
Marceaux has been working on trailer lights and getting the heavy equipment going this week. Jen is still filling in for another therapist in Pound. Molly left on Sunday to visit with the folks. Pastor John is stilll recovering from the flu he picked up last week when in Minnesota. Thankfully, he hasn't shared it with anyone here.

Friday October 16

Monday thru Thursday Tim, the guys and the septic crew worked to install the septic tanks and fields for both dorms. They are now done. In the pic below you can see the black plastic pieces that make up the field. There's a white pipe at either end of every one of them. It'll take a lot of flushing to fill these babies up!

I'm going to attempt to explain today. It's confusing, but such a prime example of the way things so often go around here. Today was a planned work day at Living Hope Church to work on the Wednesday kids program. The town has now been officially named Megarusulem. At 8:30 the caravan left from Camp Daniel for Green Bay. Karol, Molly and DJ were in Karol's van pulling trailer #3. Tony drove Tim's truck with trailer #2, and Tim, Marceaux and the rest of the guys were in the Camp Daniel pickup and trailer #1. The guys went straight to Church and Karol went to Home Acres to get a sheet of drywall and some universal colorant for the plaster work that will be on the building facades. They don't carry colorant. Then they made their way to church. Karol ran to Home Depot to get roller covers (and some other supplies) so that Molly could roll on the plaster primer onto the existing walls. The guys were drywalling. Karol then left again on the hunt for the universal colorant. 4 stores and an hour and a half later she made it back with colorant and McDonalds for lunch. Then the caravan of three trailers headed to Green Bay Nursery. They were giving a large donation of shrubs, trees and cobbled pavers. After restacking and wrapping the pavers onto pallets, 3 of the pallets of pavers fit in trailer #1, the shrubs and medium trees went into trailer 3, and the HUGE trees onto trailer 2. While the trees were being tied down, the pavers trailer went back to church and were hurriedly unloaded, then back to the nursery for the second load of three pallets. All three trailers went back to church and everyone helped stack the pavers next to the wall of the church. (The pavers will be used for the floor in Megarusulem) Then everyone was back inside to continue drywalling, except for Tony and Tim, who took trailer 1 back again to the nursery for more trees. When they got back, it was about 5 o'clock and we figured that we should start the trees on their way north so that one of the trailers could be unloaded for a final trip to the nursery for the remaining trees. The guys were staying with Jen and Molly and DJ for Able Fellowship. Just as we were leaving, we got a call from Sue, whom was on her way to Green Bay to pick up Crystal and attend Able. She had just got off the phone with John whom was home with the flu. She had to turn around and bring John to the VA hospital in Iron Mountain. That changed things because now Crystal needed a ride to church and they had too many people for Jen's car. So at the last minute, Richard, Nick and Brian came home with Karol and Tony. So that everyone had a ride home. En route, Karol changed the plans to pick up the kids in Crivitz. Just south of Crivitz, Tim's truck started smoking so badly that it created a white out condition. Thankfully we all were able to pull onto the shoulder without any accidents. The smoke originated in the engine compartment. It spilled all the oil out and could no longer run. So Tony brought trailer #2 to the Kelly's house, then came back to pull Tim's truck and trailer #1 to the Kelly's house. Then he brought one of the trailers back to Camp Daniel so that the plants could be planted tomorrow at the work day.