The first Sunday for Harvest to be in the new church building happened to be one of the coldest days in recent decades! Unfortunately the building is unheated, so we have only a couple of space heaters mounted on the walls and a borrowed floor standing propane heater - and it ran out of gas. We had it running for two days straight, moving day and Sunday. The building is a warehouse type of facility located in an industrial estate (an "estate" is a term for a neighborhood). But it is in a good location with plenty of traffic. It is just up the road and around the bend from the county Motor Vehicle Department.
It is quite a nice move up for us. We moved from an upstairs building that was approx. 750 square feet to one on the ground floor that is 2800 square feet. And, yes, they still use imperial measurements here. It is a mixed use of the metric (centimetres, kilometres) and imperial (inches, feet, miles) in the UK. With all the snow lately, news broadcasts gave depths in centimetres first then inches. However, temperatures are in Centigrade and Cindy and I have to keep converting the Celcius to Fahrenheit .
The temperature in the building before service peaked at about 10 degrees Celcius, which is 50 degrees Fahrenheit. That was when there was still propane in the canister. By the time service was to begin, the propane had run out (we and Pastor William had arrived two hours before service was to begin to heat up the building and, uh oh, ended up using up the gas that remained!) So we decided to meet in the children's room which was toasty warm due to two floor standing heaters which had been running for two hours. The whole church squezed into the room and worshiped together, then Rick briefly shared with the children and William gave a (for him) brief message.
The video clip on this link is the fellowship after service. We always have a leisurely time of fellowship (and food, of course) after every service. The larger building affords a permenant area for fellowship and the chairs in the sanctuary area beyond it now don't have to be stacked up after each service. I think this setup creates a first impression when you walk in that really reflects what Harvest is all about. We are family gathering together in the Lord, and what do families do? We huddle together in the cold - and eat. :-) But families support one another, accept each other and build up one another. This is truly what the "building" of Harvest is about. It's not four walls and a roof, but a group of people in love with Jesus and desiring to see the other person grow stronger in the Lord. So even though the room was cold, there was still alot of warmth from each other.
Please pray for:
- Continued wisdom in effective use of funds for building improvements
- To be a place of light and ministry in the estate
- To grow - in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and in numbers as He wills
