This time the drive between projects was only about 160 miles.  Easily done in a day. But why take a day, we say, when you can just as easily take two – and see some fun stuff along the way.

We pulled out of Camp Tejas on Thursday morning – a very misty Thursday morning at that!


Hey, wait for me!!!!
He did.
By the time we reached our first stop, the mist was beginning to clear.

Nothing like a brewery tour to start your day! Wink.
We actually had to wait until 11AM for the tour of the Spoetzl Brewery in Shiner, TX – home to one of Texas’s favorite beers – Shinerbock.

No cameras allowed on the tour (free and very interesting), but here’s a shot of just some of the copper involved in brewing this beer .
Oh, the shine of it all!
After our tour, and a bit of lunch, it was back on the road.


(Take note of the hills – they will soon be gone!)
We spent a quiet night at the Walmart in Port Lavaca

and come morning, we were back on the road for the final leg of the trip.
Here’s the Lavaca Bay in the early morning light -



Hello Boat!

And as the road stretched out in long strips of ribbon

(Good-bye, hills)
We were delighted to spot these big guys mingling with the cattle -


Love those Sandhill Cranes!
We made it without incident to our project – Texas Baptist Encampment, aka Palacios by the Sea. Here is our new view -

Pretty sweet, eh? That’s the Palacios Bay out there, which empties into the Matagorda Bay which empties into the Gulf of Mexico. (Check it out on a map HERE!)
Each project has its own “flavor” and since we’ve just been here a little more than a day, I’m not sure just what that flavor will be. But I know it will be different from our last couple of projects – beginning with our neighbors. November and December our neighbors looked like this -


As in, we had none.
January they looked like this -

As in, fair size group – a nice mix of SOWERs and other volunteers.
And this month, they look like this -

As in – Baby, we got us some Community going on!
All in all, a great start to what I’m sure will be a great month!

Later ‘Gator!

We’re starting to wrap up our time at Camp Tejas, and I thought I’d “flesh out” our time here. First of all, we’ve met and worked with some great people. Not only were there three SOWER couples here -

But there were six couples from the MMAPs Ministry -

We didn’t necessarily work together, but we shared devotions and breaks and a couple of meals and general good times. It’s always good to meet folks who share our hearts even if we don’t share the SOWER Logo (though we did make them sing the SOWER song most mornings! )
And speaking of work – I know I shared a little bit of what we ladies did all month –



but I haven’t really covered all that the guys did. And believe me, they were plenty busy. They started off with painting (and in fact went back to that during any lulls between jobs)

but probably their biggest project was a covered walkway off of the dining hall.






Came out great, didn’t it? All they had to go on was – Make it look like the other one!
Gary also got to work on another “out of the ordinary” project – making an indoor shuffleboard game. Apparently they had a base and they had the board itself, but they needed the frame to hold the game board.
Here it is getting close to completion -

and here it is just waiting for the board to be installed.

I think it looks great – and I’m really happy that we aren’t in charge of moving it to its final destination!
Today, even though the project is officially over, Gary and Jay built a railing on the golf cart pathway -

We’ll be here until Thursday AM, so who knows what projects he’ll dig up tomorrow and Wednesday!

I think this is enough chatter for tonight! I’ll get to the Places and Things in my next post!

During the week, things are pretty quiet around Camp Tejas.
The mornings are lovely

We go to work


and enjoy our breaks in a quiet dining hall.

The climbing wall and zip line are quiet

and the outdoor activity center lies still.

But on the weekend, this place really comes alive!
The zipline gets zipping

and that activity field?
Well, you might have thought that first picture was taken after a big rain, but that “activity” field is actually the play-in-the-mud field.




Yeah, that field is a happenin’ spot on the weekends – and while the girls weren’t quite as into it as the guys,

there were a couple of little kids there that were in mud heaven!


“Really, Mom, it’s OK for us to play in this?”
They even make cleaning up fun!

After everyone gets all the way cleaned up, then it’s off to the dining hall for another great meal, and when they leave the dining hall after dinner, they are met with the beautiful Lights of Tejas. They’ll be up until the end of February and they are lit on the weekends. I don’t know how the guests feel about them, but we think they are quite enchanting!



Oh yes, weekends here at Camp Tejas are quite a different story!
 

Well, we’ve just finished our first week at Camp Tejas in Giddings, TX, and it’s been a good one. Weather-wise it’s been everything from early summer (sunny and 75) to blustery spring (hard rain for a day or two) to definitely winter (highs in the low 40′s with wind gusts up to 30mph and skies that look like it could snow at any moment. Brrrrrrr). Work-wise it’s been a little of this and a little of that. There are three SOWER couples but there are also six couples that work with the MMAPS Ministry (Mobile Missionary Assistance Program).

So there have been lots of hands to keep busy! We ladies started doing “detail” cleaning in some of the guest rooms.
These rooms are beautiful and beautifully kept, so what we’ve done is some of the less-noticed areas – picture frames, baseboards, bric-a-brac, and the like.

Unbelievably, when summer comes these rooms are emptied out and are outfitted with addition bunk beds for summer campers. I’m still trying to picture that!
We also spent one day removing the lights and dismantling the 75 Christmas Trees that were in their main meeting hall.

Camp Tejas has a HUGE Christmas Light Festival during December, and it was time to start the de-Christmasing!
Here’s that room without any decoration -

But since yesterday was that Sunny and Seventy day, I took the camera out for a walk, and enjoyed some of the sights around camp. I haven’t explored all of the ins and outs of the camp, but I have discovered that it is quite a facility.

Some parts of it are rustic-

And some are just downright lovely -

There are Lakes


And swimming pools

and kayaking

(along with zip lines and other teen-friendly activities!).
Here are a couple of other shots from around the camp -


(This building was made with all re-purposed material! It’s amazing!)

And one of my favorites of the walk -

Sometimes when we work at such lovely camps I wonder if they really need SOWER help. But what I’ve learned over the last seven years that even facilities like this rely heavily on volunteers to fill in the gaps and take up the slack. We’re blessed to be able to see what God has been doing here at Camp Tejas! And we’re honored to be able to be a small part of reaching people with the Gospel here in great state of Texas!

I’ve been sticking pretty close to the office this month at Rockin’ C Ranch. I helped them catch up with their filing (like since about August!), and then I attempted to clean the different offices. Considering that these offices are located in the barn, you can only imagine what an endless job that is. But I gave it my best shot, and if nothing else, everything looked nice and shiny for a day or two. I even managed to throw out some 2010 Catalogs. Pretty radical, I know. But last week I was asked to actually help with some office work. That usually makes me pretty happy anyway, but when they said they were looking for some help with an e-mail marketing blast – then I really knew why we had been led to this camp for our December project! I’ve been using the same program they use for the last 7+ years and while I’m no expert, it was a delight to be able to raise my hand and say “Hey, I can do that!”. Then they taught me how to register campers for New Year’s Eve Camp (what a great idea and much more fun than a babysitter!) and introduced me to “Camp Brain”. As geeky as it sounds, I love learning new computer programs, and it was fun to not only learn how it worked (well, on a limited basis at least), but to then be trusted to actually Do It! All week I have been the “Hello, Rockin’ C Ranch, this is Stephanie, how can I help?” girl  and it’s been fun! The best part is that if they ask a question I don’t know anything about, it’s so easy just ask them to call back after Christmas!  Ah, the sweetness of being a Volunteer!

But wait – it gets even better.  On Tuesday our boss asked me if I would mind taking pictures of their cabins – inside and out.  Really?  You want me to walk around with my camera and take pictures?  If you insist!!!!!

I love my job!
While my job has been primarily focused around the office and the barn (don’t forget that feeding the barn-kitten job), Gary’s jobs have been all over the place!! I don’t know all that’s he’s accomplished, but I do know he’s worked on bunk beds (and you can see from the cabin shots there are plenty of those), made new lighting fixtures for the bath houses and lavatories, cleaned off roofs and then cleaned off the decks that were covered with the mess from the roof! He’s tightened (or repaired) toilets, repaired electrical fixtures, and made award plaques!

So it’s been a good month all around! A couple of really fun weekends in Waco, a nice quiet (but productive) weekend at home and great people and fun tasks here at the Ranch. God is so good to us!

I’ve vacuumed and dusted, changed the sheets and washed the towels. I’ve even (finally) hung my Christmas Wallhangings.
Must be time to hit the road!! Early tomorrow we’ll be heading to a lovely campground in Waco where we’ll be spending our Christmas break. In case I don’t get back here before then – may you all have a Blessed Christmas, and may this celebration of the birth of our Savior bring to mind His great sacrifice on our behalf.

PS – If  you would like to see all the Cabin shots (exterior and interior) here’s that set.

If you’d like to see a couple more “project” shots – check ‘em out HERE.

And if you wanted to know how the turtles were doing….

it was another great day on the log!