Auditorium Project Update #2

Last week was a BUSY week!  Our hired crew worked hard all week on knocking out the wall to expand our auditorium, installing a new door, and doing all the finish work (brick, cement, tile, etc) which is part of a job like this.  In addition to the hired crew, we had about 15 of our church people plus my family working hard on other aspects of the project.  We had to scrape, sand, prime, and paint the exterior wall of the church.  That was a lot of work, but every one worked together and got the job done.  Let me share a few photos from the week.

This picture shows the beginning of our new church entrance.

The next two pictures are two of the hired guys working on the doorway.

Not long after, there was a doorway there!  This picture is one of the kids in our church, Ponlok, using the workers' tools while they were on a break.

Here's my daughter, Deborah (9) helping to haul the broken bricks to the pile.

Finally, a door!  Isn't it beautiful?

Lot's of people helped with the work of preparing the wall for painting.  I was particularly proud of the teen and college aged girls in the church who weren't too prissy to just roll up their sleeves and get dirty. They all have black hair, and white dust was coming off the walls turning their hair gray.  We started calling them all grandma, but I won't put any pictures of the "grandmas" in deference to their feelings:)

Here's two views of the inside of the building after we cleaned up the job site in preparation for Sunday services.  The annoying little white dots in these pictures are not smudges on the camera lens.  There had been so much dust in the auditorium during the work week that the camera was still picking it up even after we had cleaned everything up real good.

This week the electrician is running all new wiring for lights, fans, and outlets.  The electricity has been off in the church for 8 days now, so we are hoping to get it on again real soon.  This Sunday is the goal, but by Thursday night would be tremendous.  Last Thursday night we had our service outside in the parking area.  It's too hot to meet inside without fans.  On Sunday we ran some extension cords from other sources to get fans, and just used the natural light coming in the windows.  We moved our evening service up a couple of hours so we would be done by dark.  These are great memories for our family and our church.  

Besides the electrical work, the hired crew is tying up some loose ends this week, and then the church folks will come back in and start painting, putting up curtains, building a platform, etc.  I am hoping the whole project will be done by Sunday, April 11th.  We have officially set April 18th as the day to celebrate our church's 7th anniversary.  Please pray that the project runs smoothly and we get everything done in time.