Greenstone & Thimbleberry's Blog: NOMADS Project

The NOMADS team @ Coleman, MI Faith UMC

Leaders Bill & Lee Miller, 2nd & 3rd from the left

We did our first NOMADS project in July 2011 at Faith UMC in Coleman, MI. We worked with 3 other couples, including Bill & Lee Miller, our leaders for 3 weeks. Faith was busy building a new church building on to their existing fellowship hall/kitchen. This new construction included a new sanctuary, offices, conference room, nursery, youth room, restrooms and choir room. This relatively small church was very fortunate to have an architect, and large electrical contractor among their congregation. They were doing the majority of the construction with volunteer work and had many talented and willing workers on site. The electrical contractor was very generous in loaning a lot of machinery to the church for the project. (excavator, back-hoe, bull dozer etc.)

Dave watching Ruth screw OSB sheeting to wall panel

We worked during a heat spell with temperatures in the 90's most of the time we were there. One of our assignments was to pre-fabricate wall panels from blueprints. We also worked on installing weeper tile and backfilling and compacting sand around the foundation. I was able to install about 85% of the rough underground plumbing while we were there. Joyce was my excellent helper while installing the plumbing.

Dave running a compactor

Some of the plumbing underground rough-in

We enjoyed our time on our first NOMADS project a lot. The team members were a great bunch of people. The people from the church were wonderful to work with as well.