July 11, 2010

Greetings Friends and Family,

Once again we are back home in North Carolina. What an exciting winter we had working on the Faith Community educational building in Chandler, AZ. With the help of other Hard Hatters and volunteers from the church we were able to complete a significant portion of the building which included class rooms, an AWANA storage and office, a coffee shop area and a second large storage room. The exterior of the building is completely finished and the completed portion of the interior is being used almost daily.

New Classrooms

AWANA StorageRoom

We left Chandler the middle of April for Colorado where we spent a couple of days at Fairmount Bible Church before heading up to Camp ID-RA-HA-JE in Bailey, CO for a week of celebrating the 40th anniversary of Hard Hats with some work and retreat time with many Hard Hatters and staff members. Though the weather was cold with some light snow through the week a lot of work was accomplished to help get camp ready for the upcoming summer season which is well under way at this time.

Bill Meyers(L) and Dick(R) New Snackshop at Camp Dick crawling around in the dirt again!

On May 1st we all gathered back at Fairmount Bible Church for our Hard Hats anniversary celebration banquet with Hard Hats, families and friends totaling about 60 people. It was a blessed time of remembering and celebrating all that God has accomplished through this wonderful ministry!

Following the festivities we packed and loaded our clothes, food, tools and you name it from the trailer into our pickup for the trip home. We made a stop over in Oklahoma for a couple of weeks with our son Tim and his family. We then moved on to Conway, AR where we spent Sunday morning at Grace Bible Fellowship Church and then met Al and Sherry Williamson (Al is the brother of current Hard Hats director Dave Williamson) and enjoyed a nice lunch and fellowship time with them. Later that day we traveled on to Memphis, TN and spent a wonderful evening with Brittany Sorensen who is a young lady that we had the pleasure of watching grow up at Fairmount Bible Church over the years. The following day we moved on to Nashville, TN where we were able to visit our granddaughter Natalie and catch up with what's going on in her life. Finally on June 1 st we arrived back home in Marion, NC completing a busy month of fellowship and activities.

June was a busy month of catching up with our house, family and life in NC. Lots of yardwork to catch up on and doctor appointments and maintenance around the house kept us running.

On July 6th Dick had rotator cuff surgery on his right shoulder and is currently learning how to manage as a one armed man with his right arm in a sling for the next six weeks followed by several weeks of physical therapy. For those of you who know Dick well this will be a challenging time for him to learn to slow down and allow his body to heal and recover before hitting the ground on his next project. Please be in prayer for quick and thorough healing of his shoulder and continued health. Vi is having a lot of back and hip trouble these days and will be undergoing several tests over the next couple of months to determine the cause and treatment. Please be in prayer for her healing and guidance and wisdom for her doctors.

Lord willing toward the end of October we hope to travel to Charleston, SC (where we first met) for a reunion with Dick's Navy shipmates and then return home to pack and ready ourselves to head back to Colorado and then on to Arizona. Please pray that the money for completing the interior of the building at Faith Community in Chandler, AZ is available in the fall and that the Lord provides and guides our way to be able to be there to take part in the work.

We wish to thank each of you who have been able to continue partnering with us in prayer and support during these tough economic times. A special thanks to Faith Community Church for helping keep our truck running and the new tires on our trailer which were such a blessing. God is so good!

In His Service,

Dick and Vi Avis