Week 3, Rio Grande City, TX

 On the weekend, we celebrated Karen's 70th birthday on Saturday evening,

and on Sunday, got a group picture with Pastor Kelly.

Our last week in Rio Grande City was spent working around the Church, St. John's UMC.

Some folks cut down a large group of palms that were blocking the sidewalk.

and Harry is trying to remove the stump and roots.

Stump removed, hole filled and area leveled with additional dirt.

Irene and Linda pruned the various plants that were around the courtyard.

Jim worked on fixing the hardware for the pews.

The rest continued clearing brush from the grounds

and cutting down dead trees,

and preparing them for hauling to the disposal site.

The campground at the church had broken or unusable sewer connections

so we replaced all the connections 

with updated couplers and caps.

The church was getting water entering on this side of the sanctuary so we began preparing the downspouts to drain away from the bldg  and across the sidewalk.  First we removed a few more palms that blocked the spouting.

Then we built forms to add concrete drains across to the sidewalk and filled the area between the sidewalk and the building with dirt to prevent water pooling.

Preparing the proper slope 

and completing all 8 downspout "spillways".

Others continued to trim dead tree branches

and dragging dead trees to the disposal site.

As we come to the end of this project, this is the evidence of the cleanup we had completed.  The city will come along and gather all this debris.  The place looks much better now so we are ready to move on "down the road".