Book Review: A Dream So Big

A Dream So Big: Our Unlikely Journey to End the Tears of Hunger 

by Steve Peifer with Gregg Lewis

Overwhelmed by grief from the loss of their youngest child due to a serious genetic abnormality, Steve and Nancy Peifer were in need of a change.  To get away from things for a while, they accept a year-long assignment as dorm parents at a boarding school in Kenya for missionary kids.  After a year of ministry, as they were preparing to return to the States, Steve has an eye-opening conversation with a teacher at a Kenyan school.  At that point he knew he would be back.

A Dream So Big chronicles the experiences of the Peifer family as they adapt to life in Kenya, re adapt to life back home in the United States, and sell their house to return to Kenya for over a decade to try to put a stop to hunger among Kenyan children.  Steve had discovered at the school he visited at the end of their first visit that many children were so hungry by Thursday that they couldn’t stand or even sit up at school because many had not eaten since that Monday.  Haunted by what he saw, he is convinced that he needs to do something to at least help some of them.  As the lunch program he starts grows and is able to provide a daily meal for children in several schools, Steve starts noticing other needs. He believes that the secret to solving Kenya’s many social and political problems lies in educating them, but change within a country needs to be worked by its citizens, not outsiders.  The lunch program drastically reduced dropouts among schoolchildren (public schools are not free in Kenya and have tuition that most parents cannot afford) but without electricity it is hard to teach children skills that they need in order to be prepared to compete in today’s global market.

This line of reasoning leads to building computer centers, powered by solar panels, for a few of the schools being serviced by the lunch program.  The Peifer’s goal is to enable the country to raise a generation of educated individuals who can enact change and vote for a better government.

I was touched and convicted as I read about the journey of the Peifer family as they are blessed through following God’s will.  Through pain and service they were blessed beyond words.  I went back a forth between laughing and wanting to cry every time I turned a page.  Mr. Peifer has a great sense of humor and constantly made me laugh trying to picture some of the situations he ended up in!  His description of a Kenyan wedding was particularly entertaining!  I could NOT stop laughing!

By the end of the book, I was almost ready to volunteer to spend a year in Kenya myself!  I felt so connected to what was going on from reading the book that I wanted to do something to help!  Descriptions of places and even conversations are so vivid and entertaining that not only did I feel like I was there, I could not put the book down once I started reading it!

I highly recommend this book.  Reading it is a personal journey and an eye-opener I think everyone needs, if for no other reason than to learn how to appreciate what we have.  If you decide not to read the book, at least check out www.kenyakidscan.org to read current updates from Steve and Nancy Peifer and learn about their ministry.  However, this is one book I would STRONGLY recommend!

I received a review copy of this book for free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review and the opinions and thoughts I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255

The House Project: Demolition and Dirt Work!

Late last June (2012) we had our first group of contractors show up to begin demolition! Of course, we had done a good amount of it ourselves already. Bruce and our friend Jason had gutted the kitchen a few years ago, and before the contractors came out we finished the job on the interior (except the rooms we had already put back together of course). Here is what used to be the kitchen:

Over to the left in the first picture you can see where the laundry room and new pantry have been framed out already (courtesy of Bruce and Jason).

The main goal of the hired hands was to remove all the less than appealing cement brick from the exterior and remove a portion of the roof over the garage where we had to have the front corner of the foundation cut out and re-poured since it had cracked and was sitting lower than where it belonged. They also took out the back patio and sidewalk in the front as well as the portion of driveway where we were extending the garage. Here is the aftermath:

Getting rid of the mess was another ordeal. You'd be surprised how expensive it can be to have someone haul off trash! Combined with the demo we did ourselves, and the framing, roof and other material torn out later lets just say we were frequent visitors to the landfill! We did have some of it hauled off at one point and later on had a huge dumpster delivered to our house, which we filled at least twice!

After the initial demolition was complete, our next group of contractors came in to pour the foundation. We hired one contractor for this stage (different from the guy who did demo and framing). This gentleman, Lowell, actually engineered the foundation and drew up the plans. Apparently, when you have one person engineer a foundation and give the plans to someone else to build it, neither party will give you any sort of guarantee or warranty. The only way to cover yourself is to have the engineer build it, so that's what we did!
They had several crews come in. The first group did the dirt work, which seemed to take a long time. Lowell himself got out there with a skid steer and moved some of the dirt himself! While they did the dirt work they also prepped the section we had cut out so it would be ready to pour when the first cement trucks came out. Here are some pictures of the results:

This is the soon-to-be-repaired section

The dirt shows where the addition is going!

As you can probably tell from the second picture, the addition contributes significant square footage to the house! We actually put in two additions. The one in the back is a Master Suite, since the original master bedroom was tiny, and the master bath was converted to a Jack and Jill which is now shared with another bedroom. The second is a garage addition. We added nine feet to the front of the garage, since we borrowed the back portion to enlarge the kitchen, as well as a third bay.

 Another issue we dealt with is that the house had a septic system at one point, and the tanks happened to be located where the addition would be going. In order to preserve the integrity of the new foundation, they had to be filled in with cement before the slab was poured over them.

Now, we knew there was one tank because Bruce had been dumping left over cement, mortar, dirt, and other such construction waste products as he had worked on the house. However, Lowell discovered the second tank while moving dirt around trying to figure out how big the first one was and if it needed anything added to it. Turns out Bruce did a pretty good job filling it to where it wasn't going to cause any issues, but the second tank had to be filled with cement. The first cement delivery was only one truckload, and it was enough to fill the tank and re-pour the section of garage in front.

Here is the second septic tank...

And here it is filled with cement!

New section of garage floor!

All this happened over a few very exciting days! Bruce was out of town for work, so it was my job to oversee all the workers and communicate to Bruce what was going on. He had a few stressful moments while trying to figure out something I was trying to explain to him or trying to figure out what the pictures I sent him were actually showing. I had to learn to take pictures at a distance and then close up, so he could get the big picture and the details. I finally had to start uploading them on photobucket because I couldn't text them fast enough! I would text him a picture, and he would call to ask something about it while I was in the process of texting him a second one! I learned how to take more descriptive pictures and he learned to wait until they ALL uploaded before getting stressed out!

But seriously, imagine having people at your house tearing it apart and doing very expensive, difficult-to-reverse work while you are in another state! He did very well with it all, and I like to think I made it easier on him with the incessant pictures! The funny thing is that while writing this entry, I found myself wishing I had taken even more!

I will post in another week or so with more of the foundation process. I found this stage very fun to watch, and so did my next door neighbors and their girls! Actually, that would be most of the neighborhood! Everyone was very interested in what was going on all summer and no one complained about the noise!

My next blog, however, will be a book review. I am reading an excellent book about a family's journey to serve God in Kenya. I'll try to save the recap for the actual review but I will say I have a hard time setting the book down! It is very cleverly written and makes we want to laugh out loud at one page and cry at the next! The author will be in Grapevine next Monday for a book signing and I really want to go! Hint hint - a book has to be pretty darn good if I want to meet the author!

Until then, enjoy your week everyone!

The House Project: The Early Days

For those of you who don't know, my husband and I are the proud owners of a house that has been an ongoing project for years. We moved into a fifth wheel a year ago as we prepared to move on to the more disruptive parts of the remodel, such as the addition, new roof, new rock on the exterior, etc. We couldn't stay in the house, and felt our money was better spent on a trailer than somebody else's pocket in the form of a rent check. Last summer I started posting pictures on photobucket for family and friends who wanted to see the progress on the house, but now I am feeling the urge to blog about it! My next several posts will be geared toward telling the story of our journey with the "House Project" over the past year. As we move forward with remodeling the interior this summer (the "fun part" for me!) I will update progress with more blog entries!

Although our plan was to move forward with some work on our house during spring break, we really haven't done much on it this week. We did open up the soffit to make minor changes in the wiring of some external lights, but other than that all we've done is plan ahead and try to organize what needs to be done next when we have money to spend on it.

So how about the beginning? Well, when I met Bruce in 2008 he already owned the house, and had already refinished one of the bedrooms and demolished a bathroom as well as the interior of another bedroom, the living room, and the dining area. I believe he had also removed the furnace and AC, rearranged the floor plan a bit in the front of the house to turn a hallway into more usable bedroom/living room space, and replaced the hot water heater. Oh yeah, and rewired a good portion of the electrical...

My point is that I walked in on a work in progress. His company had him staying in a rental house for work most of the time, so he spent little enough time there that the state of his house didn't bother him, and it gave him something to do in his spare time. Well, needless to say, after I came into the picture and thoughts of a family entered his head, the project morphed to the point where we are basically rebuilding the house! By the time all is said and done, the only original parts of the house left will be most of the foundation (we had to re-pour a section and put in two additions) and some of the original framing! I can't seem to find a good "before" picture, but here is one through the car window, another I took last June right after the exterior had been demolished, and one I took from the back during the demolition process.

You can see the not-so-attractive pink cement brick, and you can barely see the horrible orange front door! It's all gone now... Here are some current pictures!

Since those pictures were taken, the front door and trim has been stained so it looks much better. As you can see we still need garage doors, but other than a few things, the exterior is pretty much finished!

Before we really laid into it last summer, Bruce and I had finished remodeling the front bathroom and demolished the kitchen. For a period of time before we moved into the fifth wheel we lived in the front wing of the house with the finished bathroom, but no kitchen. I got pretty creative with a hot plate, microwave, and toaster oven! The fifth wheel is nice because I actually have a small oven and stove as well as a kitchen sink, but needless to say I can't wait to be back in the house with my dream kitchen! (Check out my previous blog post about Trailer Life)

My next entry will focus on the demolition and foundation. It was an exciting process to watch, and after years of planning it made the distant dream start to take shape and become reality!

Spring Break!

As a teacher, I love Spring Break! It's that time of year when work really starts to drag on and teachers just need to hit the reset button so we can get through the rest of the semester. Spring Break is right after a round of TAKS retesting, for those of us who still have high schoolers taking the TAKS test, and it's about halfway through the longer spring semester. Before I started teaching, I thought breaks were for the students, but now I know better!

My husband and I usually try to plan to go somewhere, but end up just staying at home catching up on things instead. Fortunately. Bruce happens to be home from work for the break again this year, so we have been discussing house plans so we can get back to work on the remodel. The plan was to work on some circuits this week, but so far we've just been planning them out. You'd be surprised at how many decisions about the design of vanities and details of bathrooms and kitchens have to be determined before we can run the circuits! It's rather exhausting!

In addition to housing plans, we have been taking the dogs on nice long walks every day! I had been walking them twice daily the week prior, while Bruce was away at work, but it's so much nicer to do it together! I had to walk them separately, which resulted in some unplanned weight loss on my part (not necessarily bad, just not what I was trying to do). The dogs are behaving much better with the frequent walks, and are both learning who does the walking and who does the following! Both are stubborn bully breeds and constantly vie for dominancy, so we are putting them in their place. Scooter and Louie are also enjoying the weather and extended time outdoors, since I'm not gone at work all day every day this week!

Here is Scooter enjoying the deck!

Louie telling me I need to refill his water bowl...

"OK Mom, put the camera down and pet me already!"

Needless to say it's nice to have them both come inside tired and ready to sleep in the corner by the end of the day!

And have I mentioned the weather! It's been such beautiful weather to be off work for a week! It's been sunny, but not too hot and not too cold! Today it was sunny and warm with a cool breeze that made our daily walk to the lake a joy! Louie got a little tired on the way back, but we live about a mile from Lake Lewisville so it is a bit far for an English Bulldog when the sun is out. He was panting but fine, as he still had plenty of energy to pester Scooter as soon as we got back and they were off the leashes!

Happy Spring Break everyone!