Prayer Vigil - Altar of Repose Set Up

One of the things we do at our Church is decorate our Chapel with the Easter Flowers for an All Night Prayer Vigil at the Altar of Repose on Maundy Thursday evening until Good Friday morning. So this afternoon 5 of us set up the Chapel. We now have a labyrinth in our newly renovated Chapel, so we set up the altar so the labyrinth path was clear and able to be used during the Vigil.

Also in the Christ the King room, Fr. Bill set up some beautiful books, showing pictures and text from the St. John Bible project, for people to look at and meditate on before going into the Chapel.





The flowers are beautiful, and after the Good Friday service we'll move them to the Church altar and decorate that for the Easter Vigil and Easter Day services.

More photos of the Prayer Chapel in another post later....

The Labyrinth Experience

One of the cool new areas at our newly renovated Church is in the Chapel there. A labyrinth has been painted on the floor.

Labyrinths are great tools for a prayer and/or a meditation time.
Labyrinths have been around for over 4000 years and are found in just about every major religious tradition in the world; such as Native American, Greek, Celtic and Mayan.
A labyrinth is not a maze or puzzle, a labyrinth has only one path. It is unicursal. The way in is the way out, and represents a journey to our own center and back again out into the world.

The design for the one at our Church is based on the design of the labyrinth that is embedded in the stone pavement of Chartres Cathedral near Paris. The Middle Ages was a time of pilgrimages. Since most people could not make the grand pilgrimage to Jerusalem, considered by Christians to be the center of the world, and symbolizing the Kingdom of Heaven, they would make pilgrimages to important cathedrals such as Canterbury or Chartres and others. Once there, they would end their pilgrimage by walking the labyrinth to the center, and then slowly retracing their steps to regain the 'outside world' and return to their homes.

The Chartres labyrinth was sometimes walked, in place of, the actual pilgrimage to Jerusalem and considered a holy experience. People believed that if you walked the labyrinth with the full dedication of a pilgrim, you would be transformed, the old you will be grounded at the threshold stone a purified you emerging, ready to tackle new directions in your life's journey.



Tonight, during the Wed. Night Lenten Series, we had a friend, Tony Walter, come to tell us more about labyrinths, and various ways to use ours for a unique prayer experience.




We walked the labyrinth, but sometimes "walking" it involves stopping at various points to reflect or say a prayer, or just rest and listen. It was pretty cool!

We have all sorts of ideas for using it during our upcoming all night Prayer Vigil at the Altar of Repose on April 21st. It will be a visual and sensory experience since we also have all the flowers for Easter Sunday set up in the Chapel then too with candles and meditation music and more... can't wait to help decorate for that next week, and then experience it too!

Happy 80th Birthday Dad!! xoxoxox

Hard to believe that Dad is 80 years old!! I think the fact that he has always been active and is STILL working, close to full time, keeps him young too!











I have been blessed with a wonderful, loving, Godly, funny, honest, kind and generous father, and I thank God everyday for him (and mom too)!!
















I LOVE YOU DAD!!! x0x0x

Monday, Monday .... Can't Trust That Day...

Monday, Monday
Can't trust that day.
Monday, Monday
Sometimes it just turns out that way.

On Monday morning
You gave me no warning
Of what was to be.....


I had NO clue that I'd end up on Monday afternoon being locked in the boiler room at church for 40 minutes! *lol*

Here's a helpful hint ... If you are in a place that has recently changed locks on ALL the doors, carry a cell phone and screw drivers with you at all times when you go into one of those rooms!



One of our Church members, who was helping move things, mentioned that the boiler room door was locked... I said that the room was never locked before, I wonder why it is now? Another volunteer there said that the building foreman mentioned that they put a new handle and lock on that door and that the "master key" would open it. I had one of those master keys, so I went down to the Parish Hall, where the boiler room is located to unlock it for them to get into.

The key worked a bit hard, but I managed to get it open, while mentioning that we probably don't want this door locked because so many people need to get into it for servicing the water softener, boiler, using the janitor sink, etc. But, maybe we could unlock it and leave it unlocked. I noticed there was no way to do that though, no lock on the inside, and only a key lock on the outside.

Sooo, I thought, well, I'll shut the door, being inside the boiler room, and those on the outside would then try to open it and see if it was still unlocked.
YEP... it still was locked, and when I tried to turn the handle from the inside, it wouldn't open!

I was inside, with the keys, and my friends were outside laughing!

One of them suggested I slide the key under the door ... good idea! I took it off my keyring, slid it under, and they tried the lock ... NO LUCK, now the key wasn't working! After repeated tries, by many on the outside, they figured they better go get the building foreman who was just going to leave!

Luckily they got him before he left, he and another builder came down to try to get me out ... they took the outside handle off, but the inside part need to come off too. After passing a small straw under the door so I could stick it in the side hole to make the handle come off so the housing for the lock could be exposed, we discovered the screws for getting the rest of the lock off were on my side... and I had no screwdriver!



And, the hinges for the door were also on my side, inside the boiler room, and I had no way to get the bolts on the hinges off.

I started looking around in some of the odd boxes in the room, filled with dust and dirt from the recent renovations ... all I found were nails, and dead bugs!

A butter knife from the kitchen was passed under the door, but what I really needed was a phillips screwdriver, the knife wasn't working and was stripping the screws as I tried to make it work.

The friends on the outside were still laughing... and said there were about 10 people there now trying to get me out... although some were sitting there, saying they were going to bring out the beer and chips soon to watch the fun! grrrrrrrrr.. *lol*

I wasn't too worried ... as I looked around I saw I had water, the sink, there were some rolls of toilet paper there too... sooo, in the event of an emergency and I needed a bathroom, the sink could be used... luckily it didn't come to that!

I was late however by this time, for an appointment that Kasey and I had to get to with our tax man. So, I called Kasey from the boiler room to tell her I may be later yet... She thought I was kidding!

After several ideas were passed around outside by others, one which they were thinking of breaking the wood louvers of the small vent at the top of the door, I noticed the screws for the frame of that were on my side, and they weren't phillips screws ... so I was able to use the kitchen knife and get all six screws out, bang on the louvers a little, and voila!! Off it came, and just in time for the fire alarm person, who was waiting to get into the boiler room to service our new fire alarm system, who happened to have a small phillips screw driver he passed me through the opening.

After unscrewing the two screws on the lock, it came off on both sides, and they pried the bolt from the wall socket, and I was FREE!!

I think that the guys trying to get me out were more anxious about it all than I was! *LOL*!!





It was a good thing that this didn't happen to someone without a cell phone, who might have been down there with NO one around!! And good thing it didn't happen when we went back tonite to take the Fire Department through the building on a walk-thru and to see the layout! Yikes!! The fire guys all seemed to get a good chuckle from the story, as we shared it!

So, for now, that door has NO lock or handle on it ... and tomorrow is another day!

A Sunday Celebration & Thanksgiving!

What an awesome worship time in our newly renovated Church building today! After being in a small storefront temp site for over 11 months, we were ALL thrilled to be back!

We had a guest speaker, author of the book "A Wretched Man, A Novel of Paul the Apostle", R. W. "Obie" Holmen. The Book Club had spent 9 weeks reading and discussing his book, and invited him to come and meet with us. On Saturday night the Book Club had an informal dinner and discussion time with Obie, and on Sunday he was the guest speaker during the sermon time at both services.





Some of the music ministry shown here (Tanya and Ron), were in a new part of the Church now too, and still getting organized. Our pipe organ won't be back and installed for another week or two yet, and they are still working out arrangements for the piano, keyboard, guitar stands, sound system placement and more.
But the accoustics were SOOOO WONDERFUL!! The music sounded great and it seemed like we had a heavenly chorus singing along with us!
"Surely, the presence of the Lord was in this place!" PTL!

The End is Even MORE Near...

More photos from the Church renovations and move back...

The Chapel ... the altar and one of the lecterns here are what John made from pieces of the wall that was removed from the Church Nave area ... it turned out BEAUTIFUL!!



The cross that is hanging in the center is a cross that was once on the church steeple. The steeple was hit by lightening and burned down, not just once, but TWICE! This is the cross from the second time. The story that was told to us, by an eye witness at the time (who is now deceased), was that flaming cross fell and embedded in the ground upright still on fire! I love that it is now in a hallowed space - it looks great there!





The Church Altar area looks great too!





More to come when I get some time.....

39 Years Married ....

Happy Anniversary to hubby and me!! Hard to believe that 39 years have gone by already .... whew!

Who the heck are those KIDS in this photo anyway?? *lol*

The End Is Near .... or so they tell me...

The Church we are members of, and where I work, has been in a temporary downtown storefront site for 11 months. This last weekend and all this week (and next few weeks!) we have been and will be moving back to our newly renovated building... a daunting task!

The Church Building is not all the way finished, but we are moving into parts of it... slowly. Here are updated photos of some of the work....





My office area... at least the desk is functional, but the opposite side of the room is a mess! And there are many MORE boxes to unload and move in there yet too.




Just ONE of the Sunday School rooms to unpack ... and Deb's office area - we have a combined office area now ...the parish secretary is on one side, there are storage cabinets and a copier room in the center, and my office on the other side.

What was once an office, will now be the library ... but for now, it's a room to hold the boxes and stuff we need to unpack and put in the correct spaces, and find room for too!





Various other areas around the building.... new handicap bathroom, the new elevator, installing beautiful light fixtures in the Christ the King room.





The new side narthex entryway doors....The Columbarium received a new wood floor and paint... the new kitchenette area in the Christ the King room.





The new sacristy and the labyrinth on the floor in the Chapel.




Tomorrow night we'll have a Taize service in our newly renovated Chapel, though things still have a long way to being organized, we will be having our first Sunday service here this coming Sunday too ... LOTS to do before then!

More photos to come....