Saturday, January 15, 2005

Out with the old while making room for the new

Last week we got hold of a letter from the City, Fire Dept., regarding certain things we need to do to comply with the fire and safety regulation. They paid the church a visit a few months ago and the result of their visit was this letter, dated December 22,2004, spelling out what needs to be done, and that this things that needs to be done, be done by the 22 of January 2005 :)

Bob S. (not good to put down just the initials B.S.- hehehe) our elder in charge of building administration brought this matter to the attention of the Board of Elders last week, called a special meeting where we huddled to discuss what and how and how much and all that jazz :) Being the treasurer and financial officer I took a couple of minutes and finally said "let's do it". We have to install smoke alarms, smoke detectors, pull down fire alarms, etc. No choice anyway. Do it or face the steep fine. We also have to clean up the furnace room, the water tank, water heater room, which by now have become a secondary storage space for junk. We thank the Lord our God Who is always Faithful that we have the funds to finance the installation (approx. $5,000.00 CAD).

Well today was the clean up day. I gave Linda S., one of our deaconess, $50.00 to purchase the supplies needed to prepare breakfast for the volunteers who were going to show up and help out with the clean up. Linda, Bob, and Ashley did a great job in preparing breakfast for about 15 of us this morning.

After breakfast we went ahead with the business of chucking out stuff that's been there for many years, mostly junk that no one had the "courage" to throw away. We rented a large size dumpster and when we first came in and saw it this morning we all wondered how we were going to fill it up because it was just huge. You know what, we filled that dumspter to over flowing :-) I even forgot to take a picture of that thing.

Gerry G., one of our deacons, was going through a box, sorting what stays and what goes, when he found five (5) $20.00 bills wrapped in a piece of paper. We used that blessing to order out Chinese food to serve lunch for the rest of the volunteers that stayed until almost 2:00pm this afternoon.

It was a blessing in disguise that we were asked by the city to make the necessary changes. We have freed up a lot of space to put useful and needed stuff, the building is safer and cleaner. We also had a great time of fellowship while working together and breaking bread or sharing breakfast and lunch together.

God is good!! and the rest of you say "All the time!!" :-)