SUNLIGHT HAS NOT yet pared away the morning's darkness when the Lord's carpenters and their wives gather to pray in their Colonial Beach campground. Marian Meyers reads to the circle of Lutherans from the Bible's Psalm 23 by flashlight: The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
The eight retired couples, members of a national church-building group called Laborers for Christ, pray about the recent bomb threat in Culpeper and for the families of the slain Amish girls. They pray that they do not become proud and presumptuous, that they forever walk in the footsteps of the Lord.
Finally, they lift their heads, and the darkness lifts, too. "Rejoice!" they say, releasing one another's clasped hands. The wives say their goodbyes. The husbands, bound for the Laborers' half-finished church in King George County, honk as their van dusts off.
Another day has begun in the lives of the wives left behind at Monroe Bay Campground, where, in that moment, only the whistles of blue jays ruffle the morning stillness.
Laborers for Christ
This marks the 26th year that retirement-age Laborers for Christ have fanned across the country to help build schools and churches for the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. The Laborers, hailing from all over the country, do their Lord's work as couples traveling in RVs. Though both women and men may obtain the denomination's blessing for the construction jobs, few women are in the work crews.
Two women are certified in this group, but only men are building Peace Lutheran Church's new sanctuary on State Route 3 because of the difficulty of the labor.
The women here say their role instead is supporting their husbands--packing their lunches, cooking their meals, brewing their coffee, cleaning the RV, offering encouragement.
They represent the other half of the Laborers, perhaps invisible to the drivers ghosting by the work site near Hopyard Farm.
Yet they are vital to those in Peace Lutheran's congregation, and to their spouses. Together, the women bond during the long days their husbands devote to construction, about 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Here, their situation is unusual, the wives say. Most projects allow the Laborers to park their RVs on the building site, but the lack of utilities there has driven them half an hour away to Colonial Beach.
On this day, as is their daily routine, the wives josh around with one another after the men have left, and discuss plans for the day and the week before taking a walk around the campground.
Lucy Busse and her husband Dale's goodbye kiss attracted the apparent envy of Linda Bellow, who cracks after the men leave, "Some days Harold [her husband] kisses me."
Dale's beard had scratched Lucy's face. "These men are too busy to even shave," she says.
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