Christmas in July at ELIK

Christmas in July Here is Santa Claus passing out presents to the little campers.
Guess Who is Santa Claus. Santa where is your hand?
Here are a few of the thank you notes that Santa Claus collected.
Below is our co worker Patrick cleaning his catch of the day. Notice the shark above. Patrick had a little problem with the remedy in the past and has lost his drivers license so he rides his bike anywhere he wants to go. We often see him taking off, on his bike, with his backpack on with a couple of fishing poles sticking out of it. The other night he was riding on the town fishing pier when his pants got caught in the chain and he rode right off the pier and sank to the bottom in 30' of water with his backpack on. He finally got his pant out of the chain and swam to the surface and held on to a piling until some bystanders helped him out. The next day a guy on one of the boats in town went scuba diving and recovered his bike.
More From Last April
After our time near Corpus Christi we headed to Port Aurthur, TX to help rebuild houses that were damaged by hurricane IKE, even though the damage we sustained to our lower level from IKE is still not repaired. We stayed in the parking lot of a Methodist Church in Port Aurthur and worked on a house in Bridge City. Bridge City is a community of 3500 homes just across the bridge from Port Aurthur. There were a total of 14 homes in Bridge City that were not flooded by IKE. Driving down the streets, the houses look normal, but if you look close you see that the dry wall is missing in a lot of them. In addition to replacing drywall and installation the electrical outlets and wiring often needed to be replaced also.
Here is Linda checking out the fish in the pool at the house where we were working. It is still filled with salt water, lots of fish and at least one crab.
Here is the front of one the house where we worked. We spent the whole week taping and mudding drywall. When we left, this house was at the point where the next crew could start painting. Our friends Sonny and Linda worked several days at another house where there was just some trim work and a few doors left to hang. The woman of the house had dementia pretty bad and did not normally get up before 3 PM. But after a couple of days she was getting up and even going for walks with Linda. A lot of the help people get is from just having someone to listen to their stories. That is often more important than the actual work that we do.
Here are a few of the boats that still lying around Port Aurthur.



The bridge to Bridge City.