Elk, WA – Jan. 4- 10, 2026

How blessed we are to begin the new year here at this lovely facility at Loon Lake, WA.  We enjoy seeing flocks of turkeys walk through our yard every day and daily visits of several deer that we can feed from our hands.  Our Long-Term Volunteer group began arriving on January 1 to re-start the project. We are from Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Virginia and Oregon.  There are also two Rosedale Trades students from Michigan and Delaware who will be at this location for six weeks.

We welcomed our first group of weekly volunteers on January 4 – five young men from Kansas and 3 young women from Alberta.  They brought much energy and joyful spirits and were eager to learn new skills. They worked hard on the following jobs:

Steve’s House

– Plumbing and framing inspection complete

– Floor joists strengthened per inspection

– exterior wall insulation complete

– crawl space/flooring insulation complete

– Drywall started – ceilings completed, walls begun

Linda’s House

– ADU house siding 95% complete – work suspended due to cold temps on Friday

Bill and Native’s House

– Floor joists strengthened to comply with anticipated inspection

– The volunteers loved being introduced to Native’s “pet” wolf. On Wednesday afternoon, the group took a field trip to Darilane Farms near Elk, WA.  It was very interesting to see a dairy operation of 230 cows that was fully automated.  On Saturday, several of us LTV visited Spokane Hutterite Community.  It was a very interesting tour.  Potatoes are their primary crop.

Cindy Steiner, Office Manager

Dan, Andy, Malinda, Eileen, Dave, Steve, Thomas, William