Hertzler’s Outpost

Pretty Boring in Orlando So Far

Tropical Storm Fay gave the kids a day off school today on what would have been their second day. So far the storm sent little more than rain and some gusty wind, but it was nothing that would have interfered with school. We like this kind of anti-climactic storm activity.

Audrey and Andrew Ready For School

We’re running out of “1st Day of Schools”, but today was one of the last few. Audrey started her freshman year of high school, and Andrew begins his junior year.

This year high school starts during daylight hours. Our county swapped the starting times between the high school and middle schools, so now the poor 6th graders have to be at the bus stop at 6:30 am while the high schoolers sleep in. Andrew said it was weird finishing first hour in daylight.

One interesting contrast between our experience sending Andrew off to high school and that of sending Audrey: On the Saturday before school begins there is an orientation and sign up where you get your locker, find your classes, etc. Both of us went with Andrew two years ago and helped him figure things out. He was happy to let us join him. Audrey, on the other hand, went with Andrew to the orientation day, and was happy to have the independence. She didn’t want a ride to school from Mom on the first day either; she took the bus.

Audrey talking to the kids

Andrew with one of his kids

Andrew and Audrey had a great week in NYC working with the Exodus program for kids. They had some pretty funny stories to tell, and they both came back with a new sense of how God can use them. We’re glad to have them back home!

Read the blog from their week for the rest of the story.

Preparing The Way Stucco Repair

‘Preparing The Way’ is the name of Jarrod Brown’s stucco repair company, but I prefer to think of the job he did as ‘Stopping Up The Way’ for the ants and the water. The stucco is fixed, and I am surprised at how much of a relief it is to have it that way. Knowing we’d have a gallon of water sloshing around our house during the next hard rain storm made it difficult for me to relax. Call me a nut.

This is Jarrod at work. He did a great job and was pleasant to have around while he worked. He also does a bunch of other stuff, so give him a call if you live in Orlando.

Me Sitting Outside My Stucco Hole

Today the stucco repair guy came (ya, I was surprised he wanted to work on a Sunday, too), and we found the hole in the stucco that was letting in all the water. At first it didn’t appear to be anything more than a screw hole, but ants kept going in and out of it so we dug a little deeper. Then a chunk of the wall came loose, and we were suddenly looking into a cavern in the wall, pictured at right. It was so big I could see daylight from the inside of the house.

It’s patched up now, and it didn’t leak during the storm that followed so I guess we’re good to go.

(That really is a close-up picture of the hole.)

Our New Moat

Part of our leak fixing project has been digging the sod away from the house and changing the slope of the grass so water flows away from the foundation. Andrew dug out one side of the house and is waiting for the stucco repair guy to come before finishing. This has left us with a new moat that has remained full for the last few days.

It looks like the solution to this problem will be gutters, stucco repair, getting the house painted, and a lot of digging. We need to replace the carpet in our house, so it’s important we get this solved before that happens!

Cathy called me today just after Andrew and Audrey drove off by themselves. Andrew passed his driving test (”It was easy,” he said) and has his regular license now.

He was very happy to discover yesterday that the additional cost of our insurance (due to him being a licensed driver) will be half what we were expecting. Since we’re making him pay the difference in insurance, this meant he had six months of insurance saved up rather than just three.

Our Overflowing A/C Unit

My caulk plug on the outside wall washed away, so I’ve spent the last two afternoons soaking up water as it gushed in during our afternoon downpours. Last night I plugged the hole with roofing tar and placed a piece of plastic to shield it from any more rain, so I’m hoping that holds until we can get the stucco repaired.

So today when I saw yet more water where it shouldn’t be I just laughed.

Fortunately, this problem was easy to fix. Our inside A/C unit’s drain pipe had clogged and began spilling out onto the unit’s platform in the garage. This is not the first time this has happened, so I remembered the solution; vacuum out the drain pipe. Fortunately my neighbor’s wet/dry vac was handy, and I had the problem fixed in less than a half hour.

StudiuBiblic.ro

With 26 translations of EveryStudent.com going, we still have just a few translations of our follow-up site, StartingWithGod.com. One thing we did to try to make it easier to produce new translations of this site was to create a tool so our translators could enter their text directly onto the site. Our Romanian language site, StudiuBiblic.ro, is the first one produced using this tool.

The idea of using a tool like this for producing new translations wasn’t completely successful. Our initial version proved too difficult for a non-experienced translator to use, and some more features need to be added before we can produce multiple new versions simultaneously. So the future of this tool is unknown at this point.

1986 Yamaha Maxim

Last night I became a motorcycle owner, and today I did my first commute to work on it. It was the first time I’ve enjoyed the commute to the office since when I rode my bike to work back in Budapest. It was really fun!

Raining Inside

Today we had a strong storm, and the water came flowing in our new house hole. I scrambled up to the attic looking for a potential roof leak but found nothing but heat (!) and dry insulation. But back down on the ground the water kept coming in, so after the rain let up a bit I got the garden hose out and sprayed until I had repeated the leak. Sure enough, the hole is in a rusted-out seam of our stucco near the foundation, just above the grade. The seam rusted out because the bottom of it goes below the grade and sits in water every time it rains. Normally stucco is not installed below the grade of the yard, so this should never have happened. I think some caulk should plug the hole until I can fix the source of the problem.

After stucco repair, gutters and a drain field should probably eliminate the excess water in the area of the leak. This whole problem seems to be caused by poor construction, so it’s a bit frustrating.

While we were away Cathy talked me into buying that Yamaha Maxim I had been riding. It was actually harder for me to find a justification for it, but I finally found one. I’ll use our auto savings for it until we need to buy another car. Then I’ll sell the motorcycle and put the money back into the auto savings fund. That’s the plan for now anyway. I get the motorcycle Sunday afternoon. Woohoo!

After a week at camp without their small screens (all campers turned in their phones and iPods for the week), Andrew and Audrey returned home tonight. The first dilemna they each had to overcome upon arriving home related to their small screens. The screen on Audrey’s camera broke, her phone recharger didn’t work, and Andrew’s iPod recharger broke. This created some re-entry stress for the two of them. It reminded Cathy and me of our own re-entry stress last Sunday night as we walked into the problems that awaited us after getting back from vacation ourselves.

They had a good time at camp, though. And in just three weeks they leave for their missions trip to New York City, and they have a lot of work to do in the mean time.

If the last ten years saw huge advances in the information available on a computer screen, the next ten years should see advances in what you can see and do on a small screen. That is, the small screen of a cell phone or an iPod. Campus Crusade recently began using video iPod’s and short film to create spiritual conversation opportunities for our staff members and students, but one of the things we want to begin developing are ways to make our message available to spiritually interested students on their cell phones - when our staff members or students are not around. We have some ideas but no proven model that works. I’m thinking of taking this on as a project.

Rising Waters In Our House

Returning to real life in Orlando after two weeks of vacation in Illinois and Wisconsin has been an uncomfortable jolt, but it’s nice to be with our friends here in Orlando again. Including our week in St. Louis, we were gone three weeks.

Our vacant house seemed available while we were gone, though, and several things took up residence while we were away. Ants, an armadillo, and more rising water.

We can deal with the ants. The armadillo who dug a burrow under our palm trees in the backyard will probably be more of a challenge than the ants. But the rising water has us completely perplexed.

This is leak #3, and we still haven’t finished leak projects #1, and #2.

The water is visible at the floor level, but we’re not sure if it’s coming in through the window or through some gap in the wall system. Unlike the other houses in our area which are built with concrete blocks, our house has pre-fabricated, steel reinforced concrete wall sections. Between the wall section and the foundation is a seal of black stuff, and I’m wondering if that seal has not sprung a leak. I think I’ll have to tear into the drywall to find out.

Andrew, Audrey, and Cousin Amanda
at the high water point of the Mississippi River
near the St. Louis Gateway Arch

Here in the St. Louis metro area rising waters are the big concern right now. Near where we stayed last week, a community soccer field became a community lake due to the flooding. Only the tops of the soccer goals and the top of the picnic pavilion were visible above the water. We even saw someone paddling their kayak around in it. But none of the places we’ve stayed have been low-lying, so it’s mostly something we’ve seen on TV rather than something we have been affected by. We drive to Wisconsin later this week, though, where some of the roads have been flooded along the way. We’ll see how that goes.

Today I have no more appointments, but it’s just as well because I have plenty of work to catch up on. Starting last Sunday I had a week of catching up with friends, meeting new people and telling about what God has done through our work recently. These weeks are always one of the best parts about what we do. It’s energizing to look back and tell people about how God used their investment in this ministry to change lives.

Downtown Paducah, Kentucky

Tonight we went to downtown Paducah and walked around the Lowertown Art District. For dinner we had a picnic in the park next to First Baptist, where our friends Grant and Elisabeth got married years ago. Then we went to the “Downtown After Dinner” area by the riverfront and walked around until we’d seen it all and heard it all. A fun evening with family.

We’re on the road today, heading toward Paducah, Kentucky where we’ll stop at Sister’s house and see cousins, see friends, and give an update at one of our partner churches, Heritage Bible Church.

This trip we have three drivers, so it’s been easier, too.

Yamaha Maxim

A friend of mine let me know of a motorcycle for sale last week; a 1986 Yamaha Maxim. I decided to take it for a test ride, as my friend had it at the office. It has a 650 cc engine, half the size of the V-Rod I rented but it was still a fun ride. It’s not something I was ready to act on, so I figured it was just another fun experience.

But then last night my friend called me again and said the same bike was available for me to ride this weekend if I wanted. The owner is certainly a smart man, providing opportunity for a potential buyer to get hooked on the product. But I’ll take that risk anyway.

Last night I did another night run around the neighborhood, and later today (after I finish my chores) I’ll take it out for another spin.

Front Door Drip Guard Installed

The duct tape holding the weather strip up under the front door finally gave out - for the fifth time - so I decided to get the job done already. It took me most of the day, but I figured out a way to make it work. Ironically, I don’t think my solution will have a weather strip under the door, but it should be OK because there is no room between the threshold and the bottom of the drip guard anyway.

Total savings on this project: ~$850.
Total cost of the project: 5 Saturdays + materials ($65)

UPDATE (2 June) - Tonight we had some severe thunderstorms with about twenty minutes of driving, heavy rain against the front door. A little stream of water ran through the gap between the bottom corner of the door and the door jamb. D’oh. I may just ignore the problem for now, as most everything at that location is made of vinyl and shouldn’t be damaged by water. But most likely I will resort to cutting off 0.5″ of the bottom of the door so I can fit the proper weather stripping under it. That’s another day-long project. Maybe I’ll wait until next winter when it’s cool again.

Hertzlers at Graduation

Tonight Audrey graduated from 8th grade and Trace Academy. On to high school for her now. Her class size will jump from 4 to over 1,000, but she is looking forward to the broader horizon.

Cathy graduated tonight, too. After seven years teaching at Trace Academy (with a three year stint at the International Christian School of Budapest), she has now completed her responsibility at this parent-led school. She’s looking forward to catching her breath this summer.

Today I upgraded the software that runs this website, and it reminded me how far my life has moved from about three years ago. At that time I was intrigued with figuring out how to produce this site, and I was making changes weekly. In my free time I would upgrade the software that runs this site within about a week or two of new updates being released. Now my life has different things in it, and it has been nine months since I last upgraded. For now that’s OK. I’m more interested in using my free time to figure out how to get a motorcycle into it than the latest upgrade to this website’s software.

Three years ago Tom and I were also just figuring out how to get students to respond to the gospel on a website. Now I’m wanting to help figure out how to get students to take the next steps of growing spiritually and reaching their world with the gospel on a website.

We sold our gray van today! It feels great to own one less vehicle, and it feels even better to have sold it to a young family that looked like they could really use an affordable family van.

This time I remembered to visit the tag agency with the buyer. A few years ago I simply gave the title to the buyer, and they failed to transfer the registration. They got in an accident and had an insurance dispute over it. Since my driver’s license was still tied to that vehicle the state of Florida suspended my license! They never notified me either. It wasn’t until six months later when I went to write a new auto insurance policy that my agent told me my license was suspended. It was not difficult to resolve, but it would have been easier to have done it right the first time.

New Motorcycle License

Yesterday afternoon I got a new driver’s license; one that has a motorcycle endorsement. And we made reservations for our complimentary one-day Harley rentals for next Friday. I reserved a V-Rod. “Are you sure you want that much horsepower?” was the Harley salesman’s question. So now I’m shopping for full-face helmets since the Harley store only rents half-helmets. Maybe that will make up for the extra horsepower.

And the “shocked” license photo got shredded yesterday, too. It went out with glory. I asked the license clerk who took my new picture if I could see it before she printed my new license. “My last one got comments for ten years,” I said. “Ya, it’s the eyes,” was her comeback. “I saw your license and wondered what you’d look like in person.” D’oh.