To prepare a place

On Saturday, many congregation members gathered to prepare the sanctuary for our first Sunday worship in the new building.

Construction tools and materials, plus a scaffolding, were being stored in the room or had been moved there as the rest of the building came into use during the week. Earlier in the morning, Kendra's senior project blood drive had set up in the fellowship and entrance area. During the cleanup and move in everyone tried not to disturb that operation.

Warren got us all moving by deciding where the tools would be stored, what materials needed to be kept and what could be recycled or thrown away. He also unhooked a power line that had been loosely installed earlier in the week to see what sort of light some of the new fixtures put out -- not enough it turned out.

When that was done, Sue vacuumed. Then we began arranging the sanctuary furniture. Hank, Alida, Dan and Earl lowered the sanctuary's old folding chairs one-by-one from storage in the garage attic. Several people stacked the chairs on a cart or on handtrucks or just carried them by hand into the sanctuary.

Then, the chairs and pews were set up. Banners were hung. The lectern, communion table and sound equipment, among other things, were positioned. A piano was moved out of the way. Deb cleaned and Bob S. vacuumed again.

Once the sanctuary was set up people drifted off to do other projects they had. I was aware of a few of them. Several went to give blood. Sydney set up the nursery and supervised getting several boxes of stored Sunday School material out of the attic. I got Alida to help me move some big concrete chunks from the parking lot into my pickup, and soon Bill, Paul, Earl and Bram were helping. Bob J. worked on a door in the school offices. Dave McC. helped put together nursery furniture and trim up some of the parking lot vegetation.