Thursday, August 16

Remember the groundbreaking way back in the middle of January? One of the pieces of that event was the presentation of many, many seashells from the children's Sunday school classes. These shells were part of a discussion in Sunday school about baptism, and a shell is a symbol of baptism. The kids decorated the shells, and the shells were brought to the outside worship service. The shells have been in safe storage until now, and they have been brought out for a very special purpose.

This week, workers began pouring the concrete floors on the lower level. The first section is directly under the chancel of the worship space. So directly under the area where the altar table will sit as indicated by the cross in the diagram below, a special container was buried before the concrete was poured.


















The children's shells, a small chalice and a large Bible were placed in a container, and the container was sealed.

The purpose of this exercise was to ensure that our new worship space was seated symbolically upon Word and Sacrament. The Bible is the Word, and the chalice represents communion and the shells represent baptism.

When the concrete has dried, the staff will gather to say a prayer of blessing over this spot. 

And now back to more secular things! Some of the lower level is still drying out from the recent rains, so more of the concrete floors in the lower level may have to wait until next week.

 

You saw the stairs in the worship space going up to the balcony last week. The handrails are now in place. They are not ready for use quite yet; the concrete still has to be poured to fill in the stair treads.

 

The upper level of the balcony has taken more shape and form this week. The upper level has three rows of pews. The lower level has two rows, but work on the lower level has not started yet.

 

On the roof deck, sheet metal decking, spacers and wood subsurface panels are filling in over the aluminum trusswork around the outer edges of the roof over the main lobby.

And even higher up, insulation panels and wood support panels are filling in over the framework of the steeple base.

You know the water meter box near the street at the front of your property? The one for our new building is just a little bigger than yours!

A visitor to our church told a cute story this week. He explained to his granddaughter that a new building in the South Park area was getting blue insulation panels installed, and that was the building's underwear. This was in reponse to the granddaughter's question about what was going on at the South Park building under construction. The gentlemen lives near our church, and as he was driving up Providence Road this week with his granddaughter, she exclaimed loudly as they went past our new building, "Look, Grandpa, that's building is getting new underwear also!"

So the our building continues to get new "underwear"!