NEW WORSHIP CENTER UPDATE #2

Wow! Things are moving fast up at the work site!!! It's really exciting to see how quickly things are moving along. Of course, as a general rule, it is always easier to tear something down than to build something up, but it is still encouraging to see things progressing so quickly. As I type, a crew is up there busily dismantling the building's steel skeleton. I anticipate that the next update I bring you will show a completely bare spot where once stood the venerable old Tabernacle.

As I said in my last post, it is really striking, in a strange sort of way, to see the building without its walls, and now with the roof gone it looks even stranger to me. It has been over fifty years since the sun shined on that concrete floor.

I feel like a little boy again watching the crew work.

Of course, taking down a steel building can be noisy, and we have had a group from Thanksgiving Korean Church meeting in the Mt. San Jacinto Chapel, which is right next door. The workers have been really accomodating by trying to keep the noise down, and by working around the campers schedule. Of course, the campers, and the work they are doing here, is the reason why we exist as a ministry, and it goes without saying that the campers are the most important people on the grounds at any given time, so we were more than willing to put their needs first, and we were grateful for the construction guys' willingness to accommodate our requests.

Please forgive me if my language isn't technical enough. I don't have a background in engineering or construction so I sometimes don't know use the proper terms to describe a building's components. (I'll try and avoid descriptive terms like "thingy" or "Thing-a-ma-jiggy" though.) Yesterday afternoon, the guys started taking down these beams, which run north to south.

As you can see, when I went up to the site to check things out this morning, all that remained of the extreme north end of the building were the base of the supports (...or "Gilly-Wompers" as I call them) in the corners.

Here they are disassembling the building.

...and taking the pieces down to the ballfield.

Pretty exciting! Keep on checking here for more updates as they become available.