Our builder, Ken Meester working on our roof from inside the front hallway.

The roof is patched, almost ready for shingles!

Volunteers take off siding and shingles from our boat shed. They showed up unexpectedly at 9 AM this morning, and what a blessing they have been to us!

Shed is "tarped" and ready for siding and shingles.

The garage East wall is ready for a window and siding.

Rain and wind

Last night was another traumatic night for us as a severe thunder storm came through at about 12:30 AM bringing 2 inches of rain and strong winds which blew some of our tarps down. Now we must deal with cleaning up some water in the basement. Please join with us in prayer that the rains will cease and that there will be some nice dry weather so that clean up can continue and that damaged homes will not have more damage because of the rains.
We did manage to sleep for about 4 hrs. last night.

Today's schedule includes a couple of meetings and hopefully being able to go to Waterloo later on for a bit of shopping, maybe a nice meal and some relaxation.

Frank and Betty

RECONSTRUCTION BEGINS.

This is some of the "stuff", furniture, carpeting that we had to dump because of glass shards. How it hurts to have to "dump" some of the favorite lazy boy recliners, couch, etc. In the midst of all this pile is a pink chair I inherited from my parents.

Another view of our "rubbish".

This is the group of men from the First Wellsburg CRC who came last Tuesday and cleaned up our trees, what a great bunch of guys!

First family helpers. Mike DeJong, Mike Pott, Betty, Frank and Melinds Dejong

BIG THANK YOU!

I hope later on to add some pictures, but right now I want to thank our daughter Cheri and husband Mike for coming all the way fromAZ to help us out. They worked really hard and ripped out all the carpeting in the house as well as doing mutiple other tasks. Now we can start on the next phase which is reconstruction. THANKS CHERI AND "PETE".
Regarding reconstruction, the builder was over yesterday and we found out that the south wall of the house, by our Mike's picture window in the basement was bulging out 2 inches, a bit more and that wall would have come down and then our housewould have been gone. Due to that wall damage, estimates to fix the house have jumped, and my guess is we have more or less $150,000 damage to the house.
Today Betty and I go to Aplington (a small town about 4 miles West) and get to select shingles and siding for the house and boat shed.
Thanks for keeping us in your prayers.
Frank

For those of you who are not that familiar with this blog, you can click on apicture to enlarge it and see it better. If you do so on "hour house" you will get a better idea of the destruction.
Again, we are recovering though the emotions are on a "rollercoaster" and we certainly thank you for your prayers and encouraging calls.

Thanks!!!

A big thank you to the anonymous couple who saw us in the Pizza Hut in Grundy Center last night and paid for our meal. We, Frank, Betty, Mike, Mike B. and Cheri, had decided it was time to get out of here for a while and so drove to Grundy Center, a town about 15 South of us, looked at some furniture and carpeting and then had pizza, etc. Since the waiter did not come with a bill I asked him for one and he said that a couple heard about our experience through the storm and so decided to pick up our tab. Literally brought tears to my eyes. Whoever you are. THANK YOU!
Now we are getting ready to go to church and worship. Praise God for His wonderful care and blessings.