Tuesday, April 30, 2024

I miss them here and I miss them there .


After 36 hours of travel, I thtink I mostly slept for the first two days back home.  The highlight of my day seems to be to make my morning coffee around 5 am then go sit in my chair and wait for the sun to come up.   
We have a big old farm house in Canada , it has at  times been home to 4 generations .. but today its just me.  It is a strange feeling .  My plan was to go out to Newfoundland and join Julie for a couple weeks.  The discount airlines does not start their summer scedual for another week, so here I sit.  I like the peace and quiet, but I think it would have been better to ease into it.  I look back over the last month and I realize how incredibly busy we were.  Certainly not a lot of time by myself.   We had several different things going on every single day.  Here are a few photos of our days at random.   







































In just 4 days I will be heading to the airport and going out to see Julie and the kids  .  I am sure that Amelia will have me busy again but for now I sit and think about how blessed we are to have so many good friends and great experiences but for now , I miss them here and I miss them there . 


 

Friday, April 26, 2024

The Kashar is open


One of our goals this trip was to get the Kashar opened for the season. It was a lot of work but everyone pulled together and we got it open.  


We had two yurts here that were the traditional wood framed yurts .  We experience such incredible wind storms on the side of the mountain that the wood twists and causes the felt to lossed and tare.  So buy the end of last season they were no longer usable .  We were able to sell them to offset the cost of three brand new mettle framed yurts .  These come with a very good warantee and will be much easier to maintain.  



We were ablee to do a lot f work on the Kashar as well.  The steps and wheel chair entrance were finished on the out side .  And a lot of needed repairs on the inside .   In one of those wind storms we lost a section of the old roof.. and then the rain caused part of the ceiling to colapse in the living room.  As well we had a small fire because some of the original wiring was too small.  


We had a friend come and add a high amperage line into each room for plugging in items with a higher draw.  The roof was patched and patches were put on the ceiling, and the walls painted where the fire was.  We are going to need to replace the old roof and properly repair the inside, but this should do until the fall when we have some teams come that will be lookig for some jobs.  



Now that we have the heavier wiring, we were able to instal an airconditioner / heat pump in the big bedroom.  we had this sponsored last year but needed to fix the wiring first. 








We built two new poured cement foundations for the yurts so that they are nice and level.


the upper room is set with 3 beds and a double pallet couch that sleeps two more .  Down stairs we have another small room with two single beds.   That gives us 9 in the Kashar and 12 in the yurts.  But it also leaves us lots of room for tents for larger groups .









I like that we were able to incorperate an excelent wheel chair to the deck as well as to one of the yurts.  We often bring people from the homes for the disabled so this will be great for them .




We got everything finished just in time for a big celebration family picnic with a couples group from Bishkek.. we had 75 guests.. then on Monday we oficialy opened .. by Saturday we had a dozen people staying at the Kashar, another family at the farm and another guest in one of the yurts by Sunday morning.. Even in the airport on the way home we were getting requests from other youth groups to use the centre.    I pray that all that come and experience this beautiful place would come face to face with the Peace that abounds.    Thank you to everyone who has made this possible.   Speeking of possible , our friends at Possibilities International have a team booked for the end of Aug beginning of September and I just heard they have a couple spots open... here is a link to their page if you are interested in joining them .