Just to clarify to everyone, again, not always is it me doing the posting to the webpage. Just as people in business have secretaries, we have volunteers, who do work from their own place, that help with the ministry. It would be impossible for me to have enough time to do what I need to do, maintain the webpage, spend time with our pup pups, time with some of the guys, my everday work, cook dinner, do our laundry, our devotionals and time to relax.

I know many of you say this is a 'noble cause' but I don't think it is. I have never even made that claim. To me, this isn't noble, because it is what God wants and tells us to do; to take care of the poor and the needy because they will not cease from this land. This isn't even a cause; it is an effect that people have been affected by. I know many say 'not in your backyard." But since our meeting at the end of April, how many people have you seen here? Other than a couple of times that we have had friends over for dinner and our parents came to visit us (and stayed in a hotel), we haven't had anyone come and cut our grass and the girl who use to clean our house got a job cleaning at a motel. And, actually last week, we were out of town for 3 days. Which is also why I was shocked when the Zoning Officer called the house (which rolled over to my cell phone) and said she was contacted by a neighbor to come and go over zoning laws for our A-1 zoned area and to check our barn for people. I explained we weren't even in town but she could gladly go over to check. Once we talked about the confussion of the story in the paper and that even before the meeting, we weren't housing anyone, she didn't have a problem. But, I still wanted her to come anyhow. I wanted her to be able to see for herself. Unfortunately, we weren't going to be home until that evening, so we scheduled it for Friday morn.

We went over the zoning laws the next day and she even said (although she is putting it in writing,) that by the ZONING Laws (nobody elses',) even with the family who stayed for 11 days, it wasn't against the area. "Knowing we were going to have the kids the following weekend, I told the family there wasn't enough room for everyone and we needed our time alone with them," I told the zoning officer. After she walked around the house, we went to the barn for her to inspect. If any of you could see the barn, you would know, there isn't any room for anyone to sleep out there, because we have so much extra furniture, we keep both aspects of the barn full, along with a lot our landlords have in there and our whole attic (keep in mind, we moved from a 2465 sq. ft. house to a 1200 sq. ft. house and almost all of our furniture is antique and very large.) We laughed some and talked about why we moved here and wow, we found out, we have something in common! She has family in the town we moved from, Greenville, SC. What a small world.

But, whoever did call to say we were housing people in the barn, did the area an injustice. Because the one thing she did comment on is all the dogs running free in the neighborhood. I did tell her it doesn't bother us, because other than a couple of incidents, we haven't had much of a problem and this is an area where everyone just accepts that. Besides, if we would have had a problem with it, we wouldn't have moved here in the first place and secondly, neither of us would ever think of calling a pound on the dogs. Anytime we have had a problem, we talk directly to the owner; such as when a dog got onto our porch and shredded our trash or another dog (who is actually very sweet, but is in a male competition with our male shih tzu) who has broken through our screen porch 3 times and we just replace the screens (and even last week before we left, he attacked my dog that I was walking on a leash and today he attacked me and my dogs through our porch, so we have another screen to replace.) But, as I said, she saw no violation WE were doing, but did note the violations of all the free running dogs and with no owners in site (Zoned area A-1 it is ok for a dog to run free unless there are more than 5 residental properties in use.)

So here again, it would have been better for you to contact us and say "we want to inspect your barn", because we would have let you see for yourself, than to call a zoning officer down here and her to see the broken laws by others and not us. I had even said at the meeting, I wanted to work with yall, it just seems it isn't the same in return. But, I also wanted to let you know, that if animal control does come down, it wasn't me who called and reported it, because I would have come to you if I had a problem with your dog, not through them 'in jail' and cost you a fine. Unfortunately, sometimes what you put out into this world, is what you get back from your actions.