So, Jim and Irene, what do you do on one of these sojourns?

We thought we'd take this opportunity to give you a "picture folio" of our work at our most recent sojourn.  It was at the Middletown, New York Church of Christ.

For the last 18 years this church has been meeting at the Howard Johnson's in Middletown in one of the Motel's conference rooms.  The church has grown to be about 60 members over that time.

Three years ago the church was approached by the town of Circleville.  The town owned a building that was built in the 1940's by the Townley family.  It was originally an auction house.  When it was given to the town it was used for year's as a firehouse.  Then, after the town built a dedicated firehouse, the town converted it into a community center.  This caused it to become a well-known landmark within a 10-15 mile area.  So the church put in it's down payment on the building and the town of Circleville is carrying a 5 year note.  The church is required to make a one-time-per-year payment of "X" amount of dollars.

Since they got the building they have been working on getting it habitable. Apparently the town actually dumped it rather than sink the necessary money into it to bring it up to code.  So, for the last 3 years the church has been bringing in the sojourners to help with the necessary work that they have to do to make the required work, modifications and upgrades to get a Certificate of Occupancy (CO) so they can officially move into the building and "open" the building as a church building. (Until they get the CO they cannot have the building open to the public for liability purposes).  We are the 3rd Sojourn that has been here (1 per year) and they are getting to the point where they H-O-P-E to be able to get the CO by the end of this year.

OK, now on to what we had to do this year.  One of the things they needed done was to have a pantry area painted and a shelving unit in it sanded to remove the rust and then painted.  Irene jumped on that.  (After our Midwestern Children's Home Sojourn, Irene had purchased a "painter's kit" and was itching to break it in).  She had gotten pretty confident rejuvenating rusty metal items.  Here's a picture of the renewed pantry and shelving.

They also needed the kitchen (an institutional style kitchen) cleaned.  It was absolutely filthy.  There was 40 years of grease on the stainless steel venting to the stove/fry vat area.  Ethie, one of our fellow sojourners had started on that and once Irene was done in the pantry she helped finish the job.  Irene said in places the grease was up to 3/4" thick.  Here's are pictures of cleaned area.

One of the main tasks they wanted done when we arrived was to paint the walls: First with primer and then with a light beige finish coat of semi-gloss.  Unfortunately the drywallers hadn't gotten done finishing out the drywall.  It was all hung but they were still taping and finish coating the joints.  So the painting would have to wait.... for the most part.

One area that we could paint was the entry.  So this was the next area that the women jumped on.  Since this area was paneling it had to be painted using a brush for the grooves and a roller on the main part of it.  Here's three pics of them putting on the primer.  

Another big task they wanted done was a coat closet.  The room was built with conic blocks on 2 of the outside walls.  So, those 2 walls required insulation.  The whole room would need to be framed in and have drywall hung to get it ready for the drywallers to tape and finish.  Martin Buchanan and I drew that task.  Here are two pictures of our framing the wall that will hold the insulation inside the block exterior wall:

It took us 3 days to get the framing done and the insulation installed. It took us 1 1/4 days to get the drywall installed.  But here is the finished product:

The second week of work we got to the painting and hanging the suspended ceiling framework that need to be done but had to wait until the drywallers were out of our way.

The suspended ceiling framework was handled (for the most part) by some of the other sojourners.  Here are a couple pics of them leveling the outside wall of the room rails in the fellowship area that is just inside the entry foyer:

Now a few pics of them actually hanging the suspension grid from the wires that had been screwed up into the ceiling joists:

Since all of the drywall was "raw" the first thing that needed to be done was a priming coat to seal it and then it could have the finish coat put on it.  Here are some pics of the "before" drywall:

It took 2 days for all of the priming to get done.  Having said that, after any one room was primed (after about 6 hours drying time) we could begin putting the finish coat on.  First, however, the walls would have to be brushed down to get all of the drywall dust powder off the walls from sanding the drywall joints:

Then the primer coat could be applied:

Now it was onto the finish coat on all the rooms that needed painting.  Those include: the entry foyer; fellowship area; 2 classrooms; a cry room; a connecting hallway and the main assembly area.  At first while many of the sojourner ladies were doing the primer coat on the drywall, once we could start, Irene and I did the finish coat.  

As they finished priming the other ladies jumped on helping Irene with the remaining finish painting: 

Since I was going to be teaching class on Wednesday night, I took part of Wednesday off to get my notes prepared.  It would be Lesson 1 of the 10 lessons on "Perfecting Holiness" which would be a workshop I would be teaching on Saturday morning.

Thursday is the final day of a sojourn and we still had lots to do.  We needed to continue on the suspension ceiling in the main assembly hall and clean the floors as well as we could.

I got moved onto the ceiling suspension team for the final push:

We didn't quite get the ceiling in the main hall completed by Thursday, but Bob Jarvis and I were both sticking around until Friday, so we finished it that morning (and even got paid time and a half for overtime - of course 1.5 x $0 = $0.00 still).

We decided to stick around an extra week and just do some relaxing and catch our breath.  Our next sojourn is in Saguenay, Quebec.  We will leave tomorrow morning after meeting with the church one more time this evening for bible study.

Here's a picture of the whole Sojourner team that was at Middletown: