A Thorn in our flesh...

Wow, this ramp project is definitely our "thorn in the flesh" on this ministry center remodeling... I received a phone call from the NEW concrete guys saying that a city inspector was there and wanted to see me... I asked who it was and found out that it was the 2nd in command... so, I went and found out that contrary to what the other inspector said was okay, we would have some more jack hammering and re-pouring to do! So, on Monday, we will bust up the entire sidewalk and the 5X5 pad at the end of the ramp because the code says we need a 5x5 LEVEL pad at the end of every 30 feet of ramp... That will add an additional $700 to the project... and will mean that we will only top coat the ramp and the side wall of the ramp, instead of the sidewalk and pad also.

In the end, the finished product will be much more eye appealing and if it satisfies the code and we have a safer ramp, we will all be happy.

But what an ordeal this has been... all because the original contractor didn't take his time and lay a great foundation and was somewhat incapable of the work.

Closed Windows...

Lots has happened this week at the ministry center in relation to the windows... the drywall guy came to hang the drywall around the new windows on Tuesday and then the finisher came to spackle... he is almost done that.

And Jim has been busy painting the outside windows that we closed. Don't they look great!

Here's what nice concrete looks like....

After our fiasco with the former concrete guy... it is nice to have someone on the job now who knows how to do it well! Robert Pitts and his business partner Melvin really know how to pour nice concrete! The forms were well done and the excavation just right... and look at the finish job! What a GREAT deal!

Next week, they will apply a top coat to the rest of the ramp and sidewalk that will dress it up!

God sent them to us! One day, while I was there, Robert stopped to see what was happening, because he couldn't understand why someone would be grinding new concrete for an entire day. One thing led to another and we got to see his work and asked him for a price on the pad and top coat and it was so good that we signed on!

First Day of School...YEAH!

Wow! I am getting to be an OLD man... my little girls are growing up! One of the things we always do every year is take "first day of school" pictures. This year's pics... show the speed at which my girls are growing up... I remember when Caroline went off to her very first day... didn't seem all that long ago... but it must have been!

My mom says that my niece, Christine, who is in first grade, returned home yesterday after a visit to her classroom... she now has her very own desk! -- a fact she just loves... so much so, that when she got home from the visit at 3 p.m. she wanted to know if she could go to sleep right away so that "tomorrow would come faster!"

Those days are long gone for us!

Prayer walking is contagious...

Today, Jim and I worked at the Ministry Center --- getting the basement bathroom drywalled. The drywall guys came to finish the windows and tonight we expect the spackler to start that... and the NEW concrete guy will pour a new pad on Thursday and next week he will topcoat the ramp to make it more presentable.

But what I wanted to say here is this... while in the basement working this morning, Fran Todd stopped by to see what we were doing and to say that she had just spent some time prayer walking in the neighborhood. Great thing! I sure hope others will begin this spiritual journey!

Prayer Walking....

Spent some time this morning prayer walking in our new neighborhood! It was a wonderful experience and I hope to do it more frequently! As I walked, I prayed for the residents of the houses and for our ability to make a positive impact in the neighborhood.

I also noticed that the university creates lots of activity in the neighborhood... with lots of students walking or riding bikes to school. What a nice neighborhood!

Anxious to walk other streets and pray and to see others from CoJ do the same!

Mother Teresa and Doubts....

Yesterday's mail brought a copy of Time Magazine which heralded a story on Mother Teresa's Secret Life... I am anxious to read it... but I know that the headline is produced to sell magazines!

Not having the time to read it yet, I searched for the video news story and found it here. After watching it, I am even more anxious to read it.

But here are my thoughts... It talked a lot about Mother Teresa's doubts and questioned whether her faith could be real because of them... WITHOUT DOUBT, YOU CAN'T HAVE FAITH! There is absolutely nothing wrong with doubt! It only makes faith stronger.

The writer of the biblical book of Hebrews says in 11:1... "No faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." To get to conviction... you have to move through doubt!

Now we have to clean...

Now that we have a building... we have to clean! Thanks to Doug and Sally Ruby for washing our new windows... they are much more sparkly than they were! And thanks to the many folks who are going to call Jim Replogle to volunteeer to be on a cleaning team! (HINT, HINT) We need all of us that are able to be part of this venture.. it really is true... MANY hands make LIGHT work!

Do overs are easier with God!

Fortunately for all of us ... do overs are much easier with God than it was to bust up the cement pad that the concrete guy poured at the wrong elevation. It took Tri from 8 - 2 today and I helped him a couple of those hours... it was HARD work to correct the mistake!

But with God, all we have to do is tell him we are sorry and ask for his forgiveness and it is granted and we can have a clean slate! WOW! That's called GRACE!

Better pictures of the color on the children's room wall!

More color arrived today on the walls in the children's class room downstairs... soon we will get better sized chairs and it will look more like a kid's room!

Right now it is our prayer team room! A VERY important team in our congregation!

Two worship gatherings coming...

We are stepping out of the boat... due to size of the building and anticipated growth... we are launching a second worship gathering on September 30... we will have a more traditional gathering @ 9 a.m. and a more contemporary blend @ our 10:30 gathering... EXCITED about this move!

Also eager to begin a Saturday p.m. gathering... but that will wait for a while till we get the other gathering up and running. This one will be highly interactive and very contemporary.

As always looking for gifted musicians... vocalists, instrumentalists... contact me!

Adding Color...

Yesterday, Jim and Carol added some more color to our new ministry center... Carol began painting the other children's room in the basement with the blue that Sharon and I picked out to compliment the curtains.... the three doors will get another coat or two and then the end wall behind the chair in the picture will be painted blue.

Jim painted the front-side window that we closed. It looks good... though not as good of a match on the paint color as we had hoped!

The youth are doing their room too! Though they don't want anyone to see it yet... they want it to be a surprise....so, when they finish I will post a pic! It will be an AWESOME room!

Survival Arrival...

Today, 9 of us from Community of Joy passed out 458 bottles of cold water to welcome the freshman class of Salisbury University to campus and share God's love with them. We passed out around 750 connect cards with info about our church too! Thanks to Mikalah, Christopher, and Sara Potvin, Hannah See, Christian Jones, Sharon, Caroline, Emma and Martin Hutchison! It was a GREAT day!

The neatest thing was all the people who had a sense of exactly where we were because they had seen our sign!

Soon time to stop working on the ramp!

The time is almost here when we can stop working on and writing about the ramp... what a MESS it has been. Today, Jim supervised(babysat) the pouring of two new sections to replace the two that were disasters. We still hope that the pad will be busted up and re-poured by the ramp contractor... but he is balking on it... guess we didn't hold enough money back on that one. If he doesn't fix, it by next Friday, we will. And he will forfeit the rest of the contract price!

We WILL be able to use it on Sunday though! Yeah Stacy and Joni!

The Ramp Saga continues...

This ramp project has been the most disastrous of all our projects! After a full day of grinding and working hard to minimize the problems, we came to an agreement that Larry would re-pour some of the sections... So tomorrow, he will re-form and re-pour some of the sidewalk and the pad at the end of the ramp totally at his cost. Then in addition, he will bust up and re-form and re-pour the big pad as well... we will pay for the concrete (though probably it should be his cost). That will at least address some of the major concerns! Then we will live with the sloppy finish job.

What a journey it has been... Jim will babysit tomorrow to get this thing right! WOW!

The Housekeeping shower was fun!

Thanks to the Fellowship Team for pulling off a fun housekeeping shower... the idea was to have a shower where we would give gifts to the Ministry Center that will help us keep it clean. It went very well and we got all the things on the registry!

And we learned that there is much creativity in our congregation... the charge was to right a poem or story to go along with each gift. When the gifts were presented, the poem or story with it was read... Here are a few...

for the handsoap... "Clean hands and a pure heart sets a Christian apart. Pray alot to keep your disposition sunny. And wash your hand in milk and honey."

for the papertowels... "Take a towel, if you must. Rub your hands, until they dry. Think about our God we trust, Raise your hands up to the sky. Pray a prayer for C.O.J. Do it each and every day. If you need to use another, take a moment to pray for others. When you finish say, amen. BUT be ready to pray again!"

Lessons from Concrete...

If you look at the pictures above, you will notice that our concrete contractor did not do a very nice finish job...actually it makes me sick!

As I have been thinking about this and what we do about it to make it better... I've thought a lot about the parallels between this concrete job and our words. There is very little that can be done to reform concrete after it sets up... so, the way this looks will be pretty much the way it will always look!

The same is true with our words... when we let them out of our mouths, not much can be done to correct the damage they cause... sure you can seek forgiveness, but in the end the pain that we cause someone with our words is long lasting!

All of that pain and struggle can be mostly avoided in the same way this concrete job could have been better... thinking a bit before speaking/doing!

Our words are powerful things! Guard them well!

Almost Done...

After some sleepless nights and intense conversations... I am happy to say that the ramp is almost done! And it looks better than I ever dreamed it would given the issues we have had with the ramp contractor. This coming week, we should be able to get our handrail in and then call for the final inspection which will grant our certificate of occupancy. YEAH!

It has been a LONG week, Jim and I have spent 6 days working at the Ministry Center ... Jim was there a lot longer than I was...all of it due to our need to supervise the contractor...and one day he didn't even show!

GREAT Day SOURS....

Wow, how quickly a great day can sour... when I stopped back by the ministry center tonight to see how the concrete forms looked, Jim showed me a huge irregularity on the line of the sidewalk and ramp.... while trying to straighten that out, after calling the ramp guy to talk about it and agreeing we would meet in the a.m....6:30 to be exact, we discovered a HUGE design flaw and neither of us know how to correct it! Turns out that at places the ramp deck which is supposed to be at least 4 inches deep was formed to be a little over an inch. Some places 2 inches but most places not four. Not sure how we will correct that... the ramp guy will meet us @ 6:30 a.m. to work it out!

All of this hassle with the ramp is due to a sloppy foundation that was rushed and not adequately laid...and of course inexperience! What a journey this is turning out to be!

What a great day...

Today was night and day different from yesterday... The ramp contractor showed up and was working when I got there at 7:40. It was clear he had been there a while. The GREAT news is that he brought his girlfriend's uncle Pat who has years of experience and was giving the direction to get the ramp deck right! Guess my phone call with the possibility of someone else doing the framing got things to change in a hurry! It will look good when it is done and will be right!

Kevin McNeils and Bill from Riptide Construction continue to do a super job! Kevin finished the outside of the windows and Bill is installing the base trim in the sanctuary! GREAT JOB!

Jim continued his work on putting stucco on the windows we closed... they are looking GREAT too!

And to add to the great news of the day, I got a response from Paul Mundey the District Evangelism and Church Extension Team leader in which he says... "We have interest in supporting Community of Joy, and will carefully and prayerfully review your proposal... at their August 27 meeting and ... In the interim, sense our joy at the acquisition of your new building and the renewed sense of mission and outreach in your midst. We are encouraged!"

So, pray that they will see fit to grant our request for some additional funding to help us do more outreach in our community!

Today all the windows are in and closed!

Today, Kevin from Riptide Construction insulated and sealed all the windows on the inside and patched the mortar on the outside. They really look nice.

And today, Jim and I closed the outside of 4 windows... the two on the west end of the building and the one on the front side and the library window. All had been previously closed and insulated on the inside. The last picture is of the stucco that Jim applied to the outside... and tomorrow it will get painted the same color as the building.

Also today, Belinda, Christian, and Sara, Mikalah and Christopher did some painting in the youth room...

The ramp contractor did not show and we had a heated exchange over his not coming and his promise to be done by Sunday... he says it is still possible... I say NO WAY! But time will tell.... I really need to get some thoughts for the sermon on Sunday... I had not planned to be there at all today, but I have lost confidence in the ramp guy's ability and wanted to be there to "babysit" to make sure we got the very best job possible, but then he didn't come... so he says he will be there at 7:30 tomorrow! We'll see... I will explain more on Sunday and my sermon will be based on this situation of foundations and Matthew 7 and Ephesians 2....

All the windows are now in....

Today was a HUGE day for us... ALL the new windows are now in! Thanks to Riptide Construction for a fine job! They will be back tomorrow to finish the outsides and insulate. Then Haines construction comes back to do the drywall and then we put up the window sills and we call it a finished job! Wow do they ever look great!

The third picture is the almost finished window that Jim and I have worked on... today, Jim put stucco on and soon he will paint it to match the rest of the building. We have 4 more of these windows that we closed to finish on the outside. And we will work on a couple tomorrow.... because I want to be around to guide the concrete guy on the forming of the deck to our ramp... he has lost my confidence and I feel he needs some supervision, so ... not sure what Sunday's message will be yet, but tomorrow will find me at the ministry center.

The ramp walls were finally poured!

Today, the ramp walls were finally poured! It has taken a long time... hopefully we have a completed ramp for Sunday! But that remains to be seen!

WOW... the windows really look nice!

At long last the windows are more than half installed! And boy do they look great! Kevin McNeils and his crew from Riptide Construction out of Berlin have done a great job! Today they were ambitious and removed three BIG windows and installed three NEW windows... You can see the progression in the pictures... and the final picture shows the "build-as-you-go" window that Jim and I worked on installing in the back entry way to provide natural light in that space! Jim built the frame and painted it and then we spent the better part of two days getting it installed and closed up on both sides...we are real happy with it too!

REAL progress today...

Got the two windows in the library installed... still need to be trimmed but at least they are in. The BIG windows will start tomorrow.

Jim and I worked closing the final window we are closing... but this one had a twist... besides being hard to access due to a stairway underneath it, we are placing a new fixed window in part of it so that there is some natural light in the back entry way. Tomorrow we will finish the outside!

Oh, and the ramp made very slow progress today... they will finally pour the walls tomorrow morning! Which still should have us on target for Sunday!

Known for what....?

Yesterday, I met someone who was inquiring where our church was located... and when they finally got which building I was talking about, they exclaimed, " Oh, that's the one with the pretty red doors!"

I hope that real soon, we won't be known by some architectural feature of our building, but by the acts of service and love we share with the community! We are the hands and feet of Jesus...

Slow... but progressing.

The ramp is SLOWLY progressing... the good thing is that now is the time to take time and make sure everything is in line... a good foundation will serve us for a long time... Should be ready by next Sunday.

What a shine...

I spent the better part of the last two days stripping and cleaning and waxing the floors in the basement at the Ministry Center. What a beautiful floor it turned out to be... especially in light of what it looked like to start with. (the second pic shows the contrast)

As I was doing this, I was struck with a spiritual comparison... the old messy floor is a lot like our lives when we neglect the things that keep our connection with God strong. When we go at life our own way and don't tend to even the little things of the spirit... we dull and gunk up... but daily prayer and quiet time and bible reading and being in community and serving and worship all help bring out the God shine in our lives! What a beautiful thing!

I know it was there...

I was sure that there were three windows in the library at the ministry center and two in the back stairway... but now I only see two and one respectively... that is from the inside... when I go outside, there are three and two! Thanks to Jim's hard work at camouflaging them... you can't even tell they were there! Find the window... I dare you!

The new windows are due to be installed beginning Monday!

Organization...

I am thankful for folks who have the gift of organization... yesterday Carol and Judy spent the day at the Ministry Center organizing our stuff! Thanks! Now we will be able to find things--- at least until someone puts it back in the wrong spot.

Speaking of organization... too bad our ramp contractor isn't more organized... he could almost be done by now if he were... he spends lots of time reacting to situations that he wasn't prepared for...like I just got back from running him my corded drill because his was at home and mine was closer and his battery operated drill was not holding a charge.... I also loaned him drill bits and a socket wrench today... It is always best to be prepared for the task at hand... being organized helps make that possible! Sure glad that we are locked into one price and not paying by the hour... it could get costly... the ramp should be done next week!

The ramp progress today...a mess, but coming!

Here's the ramp progress for the hottest day of the year! It is a mess, but it is coming nicely! YEAH!