Goodbye to Ohio

I will be leaving in the morning to fly back to Grand Turk. Reports are that there will not be electricity for six weeks. We have lost the roof of our house and friends have told me the house is a disaster. I am packing food for a couple of weeks, tarps for the roof, a small cook stove, and a bunch of diapers for our neighbor.

Deneen and the boys will be staying in Columbus for the near and possibly long future. We enrolled Martin back in high school. Lucas and Davis will continue to home school on the outside chance we may have a house by the beginning of next year.

With no electricity or internet, it may be a while before I can write a blog. Images of Grand Turk are awful. The best ones so far are on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LTvHdUcgA8

The first blog I wrote one year ago was called "Starting from Scratch." I have a feeling that I will be re-starting from scratch this next year. The whole month of August I replaced the bathrooms and part of the kitchen in the house. Last week Deneen and I bought the final few things to make the house perfect. Yesterday we took this stuff back and bought emergency supplies.

In November, when the whole family moved to Grand Turk we gave away or threw away everything we had in Columbus. We have now probably lost everything we had in Grand Turk. They have a comfortable place to stay in Ohio, but until yesterday Deneen did not even have a pair of jeans here.

We will see what the rest of this year will bring. At the museum we were on a roll with new programs, new tours, and thoughts of new exhibits. We will have to change modes from building bigger to re-building.

If you pray, please pray for us. We moved to Grand Turk to be together more. Spending what will now be nine months apart was not the plan. If you are a donor to the Turks and Caicos National Museum, this would be a good time to make a donation. We will be needing lots of additional funds in the very near future. You can always send donations the the US friends organization:

Friends of the Turks and Caicos National Museum
Corpus Christi Museum
1900 N Chaparral
Corpus Christi, TX 78401

I will let you know more as soon as I can get back online.

Neal