Tile setting 101

Hello to all!  For several weeks we have worked on and off the tile in the residence rooms of E Res.  A lot of the tile floors in the rooms were set by short-term temp workers. 

These short-term temps are here for a week or two. But a few are available to work longer, like six to nine weeks.  In any case, they drop their secular work, wave goodbye to family (those who have families only stay two weeks), and work as hard as they can.  As we get to know them we are really built up by their faith.

Take Eusebio (standing in the dead center).  He went to prison in Cuba at the age of 16 for taking his stand on neutrality. Once his wife and four children came along, he was interrogated, thrown in prison and his family harassed as the work was banned. Witnesses were made to feel as if they were worthless citizens and they were essentially kicked out of the country.  Once in the US, Eusebio did everything to train his children to love Jehovah and happily all four are in full-time service of some kind.  He speaks VERY little English, yet he was aglow with enthusiasm to serve here at Bethel even with the challenges. He wanted to work with both hands every minute of his two weeks here!  Grinning all the time.  He learned some of those who were also imprisoned in Cuba as youths were serving as temp volunteers at Warwick this week too!  His daughter, told me the reunion brought tears to her eyes.  The brothers kept saying to eachother:  "Can you believe we went from those prisons to now serving in Jehovah's house?"

 

Or Steve (in the white t-shirt in the center), he and his wife just recently returned from three weeks in Nicaragua and are learning Spanish as they live quite simply in a silver bullet style rv.   

 

 We could go on, but that would be a lot of stories for one blog post. :)  In any case, we are really privileged to meet and work with these faithful friends!  Five of the brothers in this shot are short term temps.

But I digress!  These temp brothers put down much of the floor tile and the longer temps (such as ourselves) are working on showers and tub surrounds.  So here is the way the showers happen:

 

 

A fiberglass board (similar to drywall) is roughed in on a cement floor. You can see the shower drain waiting for some action

 

Stewart is creating a shower curb and making a concrete sloping shower pan so that the drain is the lowest point.  He is also coating the walls with thin set (tile mud) and pressing on the orange Kerdi fabric.  Kerdi is basically a water proofing method.  The shower pan will also have a Kerdi layer.  You may notice the bright blue floor.  That is a coating that they paint on the floors to absorb motion so when the tile is set on top of it, it is less likely to crack under stress.

 Here is Kerdi finished shower and you can see the floor tile has been set too.

Next the ceiling of the shower is put in on a diagonal.  And then the  mosaic floor tile is put in.  Here Jeremy is starting the wall tile.

He is almost finished now!  Just a few more cuts for the walls and then he will tile the shower curb.  These showers are also given two simple shelves (also made from tiles).  Each shelf is handmade so each one is a slightly different size which can make fitting them properly... fun.

This shower is finished now and the carpentry crew has come behind us and put in the vanity already.  Now that the vanity is in, I can come behind and put in the right size pieces of tile baseboard along the walls and we are on to the next bathroom!

So this is the cycle we are currently a part of.  But there are other tile projects going on around the E Res too.  More on those later!

 

The Way Wallkill Bethel Welcomes...

Since the United States is a host country for several International Conventions through the summer, the three Bethel locations are receiving thousands of the delegates as they come to tour the facilities.  It is remarkable how many delegates schedule extra days in this foreign country just to see the US Branch.



Happily Bethelites who speak French, German, Japanese, Italian, Albanian and other languages all are assigned as the tour guides and walk the groups through explaining everything clearly. Then all delegates are provided hospitality for either  lunch  or dinner depending on what time they tour.  We all know who the delegates are because they are wearing their tell-a-tale badge cards.  French and Italian brother and sisters are on the left and right (respectively). 
Never did find out the country vistors below.

Bethelites were invited to join a singing chorus class just so they could be trained to sing for the delegates.  This has involved three practices a week for the last six weeks for those accepted.  They perform after the meals when delegates are here and everyone gathers to listen.  The conductor is a professional who is also a Bethelite.  Today I took video of all five songs hopefully I will soon be able to post at least  two. (today it's not working for me)

 

 

Bethel has welcome / hospitality / interactive displays all over!  Here are only a few of them:

 

Electrical invites visitors to put a push pin on the map of wherever they are from. Or peek thru the windows!

 

The Service Department is actually a little store full of supplies for most of the trades.  They carry all sorts of eye shields, nitrile and latex and leather gloves, vacuum bags, paint brushes, rollers, sandpaper, hair dye (for the beauty shop)...  They aren't really a "tour stop" location but they wanted to get in on the hospitality mood.

 

This is in the dining room.  Can you see all the different languages saying welcome along the outside perimeter of the sign?

Guess you can figure out this department.  Again, they aren't on the tour, but if a straggler came through- they could put on the high vis outfit to the left and pretend to paint - if that floats their boat.  {The interiors shop is actually the tile department's home base.  We are here for a meeting every Monday with the rest of the interior people- not really sure what crews that includes yet}

There is more all around the branch but I've not yet got it to share.  I'll post them when I do. 

Enjoy the historic convention spirit! Enjoy the conventions!

 

Work & Rest

Over the last few weeks we have been at work on several different tile projects. So for those of you who are extremely curious about what we actually labor at through the week, this is your update. :)

To start we worked with the whole tile crew one morning in the kitchen. No, we weren't peeling carrots or chopping cabbage, this was stage 4 or 5 of kitchen tile update.  We have one more kitchen job some time in the future, but the kitchen crew can't handle the tile crew tearing up their whole kitchen for any length of time ( it isn't like they can close for repair or remodel ).  The tile work has to be in doses that can be contained where kitchen crew can work around us.  So after walls and ceilings crew put up a temporary surround and the boys put down the tile for the soup station, Jeremy and I were a part of the grouting party. {a grouting party is the hyped up name for when everyone is needed to pull a big, time-sensitive job.  personally I don't call something  a party unless cake and balloons are somewhere in the mix. and there was none of that on this job}

 
   



However, it is something to behold when your crew can grout 600 plus square feet in approx 3 hours.

Especially considering the grout is an epoxy - the consistency of chewing gum - that must be mixed for exactly 2 minutes, spread into the tile joints for precisely twenty minutes then initially scrubbed and followed up with a heavy handed final wash requiring about 30 buckets of clean water and at least a dozen new sponges.

Whew! 

Jeremy was involved in initial scrub and I was a final washer. And as you might imagine we had QUITE a safety meeting on protecting our skin just before the "party".

 

 

  With a tile crew that can work like that you'd think we labor non-stop!  But this crew takes advantage of moments of down time, just like everybody else!  Technology anyone?

 

 

 

 

 We have also found ourselves spending lots of time this week in the basement of the E Res tiling the women's locker room. 

 



 
Earlier the crew put in the floor. Jeremy came in on the shower work and I came in when it was grouting time for the showers and the baseboards. Following that we are now into caulking everything that wasn't grouted.

 

 

So when Sunday came around this week we were happy to take a break from the inside.

After service and the meeting, two of our sisters in the congregation took us to some scenery at the Deleware Water Gap National Park (15 minutes outside of Milford, PA). 

 

Here is where we hiked to Dingmans Falls with a few other Bethelites.

 

So that puts us back around to a Monday. :)  See you next week!

 

Sliding into South

Our new congregation is the south congregation in Milford, PA.   The drive is very pretty from Bethel to Milford and that makes the hour it takes a little less lengthy.  Once on the highway, we climb a small moutain and enjoy the beautiful scenery of the valley that carries the Deleware River.  Our territory includes part of Pennsylvania and New Jersey which seems odd since we live in New York.  Here in service with Julie and Danny we stopped at a section of the Appalachian Trail (also in our territory). 

But the important thing to know about it all is that gas is approx 30 cents cheaper in NJ.  Plus  the state law is the gas attendant has to pump it - so getting gas to or from the congregation has some highlights.

 

 Sorry this map doesn't have the clarity to show the roads, but this is our congregation territory map and everything in the highlighted areas are neighborhoods that are closed communities. This means phone territory is a staple for the friends. Just like in Williamsburg, it can be 45 minutes or more from the hall to the boundary areas.  They also do public witnessing every Saturday at the post office.  Here our jazzy Bill and Jill Lane (long-time Bethelites) are manning the post.









Here is the Kingdom Hall. There is the North and South and American Sign Language Milford, PA congregations meeting here and  both English are good size groups of well over a hundred publishers. (Not sure on the ASL size)  There is a second school too! Jeremy has already given an impromptu #3 talk back there!

For quite a while the  congregations have been looking to build a new hall in a better location.  This one needs a lot of attention and they know it would be better to build new.

 

 

It is taking some serious effort to remember everybody's name!  Here is a picture of just SOME of our young people under the age of 18 in the hall.  Just about all of them participate in the meetings too.  We love that!

There are 15 or 17 Bethelites assigned to our hall so we have schedules made up for who carpools with who on our Thurs mid-week meeting at 7:30. So all the Bethelites who have a car either take a turn driving or contribute for gas and we all pile in at 6:15ish and get home around 11ish. It seems like an adventure each time!


Our Sunday meeting is at 1pm.  That allows us to meet for field service in the am and already we have a couple of return visits!


Lovingly some of the friends in the hall have taken us in and included us in a BBQ last Sunday.

(and of course we had to have a "toppings" picture when the ice cream came out)







  Today we enjoyed REAL New York style 26" cheese pizza!  It was soooo good we decided to try the sausage/mushroom pizza too.

{of course we had left-overs}

 

 

Another huge highlight of this week was seeing Becky, Jen and Phyllis and other friends on their bus tour of Bethel.  We only wish we had more time with them!  We love you guys!