Hey, I have thee best tamales link, you just have to try it.
http://www.sonofthesouth.net/tamales/Tamale_Recipe.htm
They are the best and the site walked you right through the whole process.
Enjoy!

Hooray, This is what 263 yards of flannel looks like. Black Friday was a success!! Sew N Sew's, which I work with, will have flannel all year to make into jammies for missions. It's always a kick to get to the store at 6:00am and shop at a race pace to get the biggest load a cart can hold. God's way of letting us know that we aren't done sewing yet, I guess.

Yesterday, our friend Beth and I cleaned 4 roosters. Beth's granddaughter had 7 chickens and 4 were roosters that just had to go so we butchered them. Not bad for two city ladies. Harv helped and we pulled up our farm memories and did it. What a kick.

We arrived home safe and sound and received word that one of the houses we worked on had been finished and they had a "last Nail" party. Here is a picture of the family and their kitchen. We are thrilled for them.

We have one week before we head for home. Pray for us to complete the race and praise the Lord. This has been a very good work assignment and we have worked hard, had much fun and made new friends. Love you all and can't wait to see you.

Its Saturday so we went to Gator Country and visited the gators. It was very interesting. The weather is beautiful, about 70 and sunny so we had a very nice day off.

Besides all the work, we see some amazing sights. This is a spider on the side of the house. It must be 4 inches long and they tell us this is just a little one!!! Yikes.

Here we all are after 2 weeks of work, and looking pretty good. All is well and we are enjoying our time in Port Arthur with another great team of new friends.

Wow, we have completed 4 days already of our 2nd 3 week assignment. The time is flying by and we are enjoying the 2nd team as much as the first. We continue to work hard on finishing up the 2 houses we started and also started a 3rd house because the team is bigger. The clients are so nice and are so thankful for our help. We are praising the Lord for them because they are ministering to us as much as we are giving them. We hope to finish up all 3 of these houses before we leave the work to the next team.
The weather has been hot off and on but not as hot as 2 years ago. We have had a lot of rain so it's been muggy!!! We are using a LOT of insect spray, every day we have to 'Off' ourselves. God is good and we miss family and friends back in Colorado. Love you all. Verla and Harv

The framers were kept in line by the boss here. Great fun group

Beth is learning to mix drywall mud.

Our hats are off to the wonderful first team that we were part of and that worked so hard. Thanks for the great work and your love of the Lord.

The first 3 days we worked, I, Verla was in the kitchen and Harv shadowed the construction super. I have been with the super and Harv since and Harv and I will continue to work to earn our CS position. We are praying we have the wisdom to do all the paperwork and keep the work sites humming along for our great team of hard workers.

The second house was a large garage. The family's home was lost to Rita so they finished off their very large garage for their home. Ike put 3 foot of water in their garage home and so now they are living in a FEMA trailer. It's been a huge blessing to us to help this very sweet family. They have taken such a one two punch.

Sept brought the next adventure. We left Parker on Sept 16 and arrived in Port Arthur TX on the 18th. We started work on Monday morning at 2 houses. This one had rain damage to the ceilings from a tornado spun off Ike. The roof has already been replace. The 2 bedrooms are about ready for paint by the end of the first week.

Sept brought a new adventure for us. We left Parker on the 16th and arrived in Port Arthur TX on the 18th. We brought 2 bad colds with us but they have been chased away by the warm humid weather. It's been very nice but warm. Not as hot as 2 years ago thank goodness. We got started right away on Monday. This is the first house. It was damage by a tornado spun off of Ike. The roof has already been replaced and our team is working on the ceilings that were rain damaged.

Our next adventures will include this boat. We traded one of the tractors for this boat in Iowa. We visited the folks and did the swap. Hooray we will be enjoying a few fishing days before we head out in Sept for Port Arthur TX. More later.

Two weeks later we left Tanana in the rain and left a little piece of our hearts with the people of Tanana as well. The picture isn't very clear but from the plane we could see the little village along the river a very long ways from everything (Walmart).

A few days later the smoke cleared and the view was amazing.

The first time we drove up a hill to the lookout the forest fire smoke was so thick this is what we saw.

One evening we went blueberry picking and made pies for the team. Notice the net over my head!!! It was the only way to survive the attack of the state bird!!!

We worked on the insulation damage to the under side of these raised houses.

Then on to the village of Tanana in a rather small plane.

Nasty floods on the Tanana River in Alaska brought us and our disaster response team to Fairbanks Alaska the middle of Aug.

We got to share in Hannah's first birthday too.

In July another bonas blessing when Suz and the kids came for a visit.

Camping and a boat ride with the grandkids.

We were hughly blessed by having Jeff's family come to visit and camp with us in late June. Are these the cutest grandkids ever?

Sargent Bluff is just south of Sioux City.

We arrived home safely but through a snow storm from California and just a few weeks later we drove to Iowa to work on a church building and visit the parents in Orange City.

Amy was the best at finding the big tourmline!!

San Diego county was inviting because we were able to go Tourmaline mining which was a hoot.

The boat ride to Santa Catalina and Avalon was amazing. I was so disappointed that Frankie and Annette weren't on the beach!!

Wow old Air Force one is really BIG

We enjoyed a little sightseeing fun as well.

We arrived home the middle of Feb. to enjoy a few days at home before we headed to California to Visit niece Amy and do a little remodel of her bathrooms.

We arrived home the middle of Feb. to enjoy a few days at home before we headed to California to Visit niece Amy and do a little remodel of her bathrooms.

Here is some of the work we did in Lake Arthur

The second place we toured today was the Konrico Rice mill. There is a lot of rice farming in the area and this is the oldest rice mill in the country. It looked like it too. Makes us wonder if we want to eat rice anymore but it was fun. Did ya know that Rice is planted by airplane? That would be a fun ride.

We have completed the first week of work and Sat. is for sightseeing. We drove to the Tabasco plant on Avery Island in New Beria, La. We had no idea there was Tabasco pepper sauce in so many products. The film and factory was very interesting. And we tasted a lot of things like Tabasco Ice Cream. Pretty fun!

Along the beautiful shores of Lake Arthur, LA

This is the Camp I mentioned on the first post of this trip.

We arrived at Lake Arthur LA on Sat evening all safe and sound and very glad to get here after long days of driving. The Christian camp we are staying at, is right on Lake Arthur and really a beautiful view. The work area covers 5 Parishes which are counties so some of the teams have to drive a ways in the morning to get to work. Amazing how much damage is around yet 3 years after Rita. Ike did hit this area too so that didn't help. Please pray for all the people we help and for us and the teams too.

Jan 24 On the road again

Wow we left Colorado on Jan 21 in beautiful weather. Traveled to Delhart Tx and enjoyed the park and about a million snow and Canadian Geese on the lake. We stayed in Bowie Thur night and arrived in Beaumont Tx Fri. night. We are picking up Kathleen at the airport here and then heading to Lake Arthur. Everybody is supposed to be there by 4 PM to get settled in and be ready for supper by 6. Just found out the flight for Kathleen is at least a half hour late so we will most likely be late getting to Lake Arthur but so be it.