Hi, All....
My sincerest apologies for not updating this blog sooner than this. Almost a  month and a half has gone by since the house arrived, and much has transpired. Unfortunately, it has not all been good. While early progress seemed to indicate that things were going together fast, we quickly ran in to problems with our carpenter.

To make a long, ugly story short - he often didn't show up when he said he would, didn't do what we told him when he did show up, and now - more than six weeks into the project - the house is still not what they call "in the dry." (That was supposed to be done in the first two weeks.)  A major windstorm a few weeks back ripped all the felt paper off the roof. The roof couldn't (and still can't) be shingled, because the carpenter had not finished actually building all of the roof. Finally, last week, after threatening to fire him, he got the felt paper back on and got more of the roof built, but still did not finish it by his promised deadline. This past week we had another round of major thunderstorms (go figure in Illinois, huh?). At that point we discovered he had not felted the new section he had built, and so the inside of the a significant portion of the master bedroom had a virtual lake of water in it - dripping all the way through to the basement.  That flooring is now damaged and will have to be replaced. Repeated phone calls to the carpenter were not returned.

Needless to say, he has now been fired. We have arranged to have some equipment delivered to the house that will aid in getting the roof done; now all we need is to find one or two guys who can work with Cameron to help accomplish the task. Most of the doors and windows have been installed, so the really major concern, obviously, is to get the roof on and shingled. We feel like we've made a necessary course correction (by firing the carpenter) and are now back on the right track. Please pray that the weather holds out, that we can find the needed man power, and that by week's end we can get the roof completely finished! Obviously, the enemy is doing all he can to throw a monkey wrench into this project. But God will prevail!