Las Mercedes Preps - junio 2015

Once again, with so many pictures, I'm not going to take the time to properly sort them out.  I think you'll get the idea anyway.  This first "set" consists of pictures from Jill's camera.

Washing dishes

Looking out at the back yard from the back porch of the house.  The blue and white building off to the right contains restrooms and showers, the kitchen, a bedroom that can be used to accommodate some who come with special needs, and the shop.  

This pictures must have been taken from the kitchen window.  Through the porch, you can see the meeting building / tent.  It looks like they 're getting the sides put up.  To give you a general spatial awareness, the little blue and white building from the previous photo is just out of sight to the right of this picture.

More dishes

The day after we arrived at the grounds was the big work day.  In addition to other things, all the dishes had to be washed.  It took this group of ladies plus a few more all morning and part of the afternoon to accomplish this task.

Looking out at the dish washers from under the house

Here you get a little better look at the area under the house.  Later tarps were put up around the sides and also inside to make rooms for sleeping.

"Pretend you're doing some work," said Auntie Jill, and S obliged.  :-)

The work crew in the upstairs part of the sisters' sleeping quarters

The building in the background here is where I spent a good part of my time during both preps and convention - the laundry.  There will be more up-close-and-personal photos of this space further down.

Every night during preps we ate supper with some of the friends within walking distance of the grounds.  It was nice to get out of cooking at the end of the day, especially after busy days at preps.  

Break time!

Monster cookies and gaseosas (soft drinks)

Me with my baking helpers

Helping in other ways!!!

A few shots of the sisters' cabin all set up and ready to be occupied

The downstairs part has two rooms with two twin beds in each one, a common area with two mattresses on the floor for sleeping, one toilet and one shower.

Room #1 - for our two visiting sisters

Room #2 - for two of our staff sisters

Mattresses in the common room for two of our staff sisters

 The upstairs portion of the cabin is one open room with mattresses on the floor (6 this time) and one half bath.  

At the door looking right

Guess nobody got a shot of my corner here.  It was directly to the left of the door.  Maybe it was too messy when pictures were being taken.  :-)  

Now we're to my photos of this same time period

A, the grandson of the folks on the grounds, was a busy little beaver during preps.  He was a great help - very detail oriented.  Whenever he saw me doing something that he thought he could do, he would tell me, "Don't worry about that.  I'll get it."  

Assaulting the spider webs that had taken over the windows

Lots o' laundry!

The sister workers' quarters provides the back wall to the meeting building / tent.

Making monster cookies

Back to the laundry

Taken from the door

Those are three washing machines.  The one on the far left is like the machines we have at home.  The two on the right are a bit different. Let's take a closer look. 

To operate these machines, fill the tub on the left with water.  Add your soap powder and also the dirty clothes to be washed.  The knob on the far left is your timer.  It goes up to 15 minutes.  After the clothes have been washed, transfer them to the tub on the right.  This is a centrifuge.  The dial on the right is the timer for this half of the machine.  While your clothes are spinning, drain the water from the left tub.  The knob in the middle controls letting water in and out of the machine.  Once the soapy water is drained, and the left side is rinsed out, transfer the "spun" clothes back into this tub and refill with water for a rinse.  Repeat wash process (without soap) and spin clothes again on the centrifuge side.  If you didn't use too much soap, one rinse should be enough.  Now your clothes are ready to hang on the line.  Pretty snazzy!

Standing in front of the machines looking back toward the door

Where our hand-washing, rinsing was done