St. Michael Missions Trip Pt. 3 Paint!

The team was in St. Michael for only 4 days total, the fourth being Sunday and we were planning for an open invitation potluck and church service and leaving that afternoon, so there was no real time for work on Sunday. So what had to be done had to be done in three days. So, with not a moment to lose, work started right away on the painting of the church. If you look close, you can see how dry the wood is. Who knows when if ever the church ever has received new paint in it's 30+ year life.

The team sprang right into action and before very many minutes had passed paint was going on the walls. Some of the building, like the front absorbed the paint like a sponge. Because we had a minimum of paint with us and Home Depot was about 400 miles back in Kenai, extra coats of paint were hard to come by. The front in particular got about three coats and from the rate that paint was being absorbed it could easily have used three more. As it was, we literally ended up with about a cup of paint left over, which was used to paint the toe-kick in the parsonage when the new floor was installed. Nothing went to waste.

One thing that is difficult to appreciate is that all the exterior trim (except the facia) had to be replaced. Since there is no Lowes (where there is more of everything) in St. Michael, and we had no trim material with us, it had to be created from what was at hand. Each piece of trim had to be ripped with a skill saw from lumber. No luxury of a table saw, actually there was no luxury of a table on which to set up. A couple of saw horses (where those came from I have no idea) and a scrap or two of lumber and plywood became the sturdy (or not) bench from which everything had to be hand produced. All the corner trim, all the window trim and even the crosses had dry rotted to crumbling powder when you pressed on them. It all had to be replaced. This took immense patience and skill to produce each individual piece from scratch. Well, if we had to mill our own logs for lumber then cut them into trim it could have been harder so we had the luxury of having lumber to cut our trim from. The lone skill saw which was the lightest duty unit I have ever seen and left-handed to boot eventually broke and had to be repaired with duct tape (what else!?) but now did not all any angle adjustment to be made. That too had to be done by eye and patience and skill. Obviously I was not in charge of making trim. All of this was often interrupted by those other hard workers who were working on other jobs and needing the use of the single skill saw that was available. That one saw blade cut lumber, plexiglass, and aluminum which soon did the obvious in making the blade dull as a cob.

What an adventure! We'd all do again in a heartbeat. Seeing that the Lord provided everything we did need or made available material that could be improvised with was amazing. I'll share more as I add more pictures.