Saturday night, January 9, our church auditorium sustained significant damage when our sprinkler system pipes froze and subsequently thawed out. About 1200-1400 gallons of water spayed directly onto a section of pews. Most of the auditorium and about half of our building took on about a half inch to inch of water. It really was a very sad sight.

A number of things were in our favor: somebody was in the building, the fire department arrived in 4 minutes, quite a few church members helped move furniture to dry areas, the ServicePro cleaning company began the cleanup process within a couple hours, our building is on a concrete slab, we have tile floors and commercial grade carpeting, it is winter time and we have little humidity and no heat. All of these things combined to prevent further damage, especially the potential for mold. The ServicePro representatives have measured all of our damaged areas extensively for moisture.

As of now, the building is completely dry! The levels of moisture are extremely low. The entire building, even the flooded areas, are completely safe. We were particularly careful to check the moisture levels in the nurseries and they are completely dry. 

We are thankful for God's continued care for our ministry.

Beginning this Sunday, we will be able to meet in all of the building, for all of our services, with very little disturbance.

We are in the process of putting things back to the condition they were in before the water damage. Although our carpet is dry, we may replace some of it due to damages. It will take a few weeks for the carpet order to arrive. We will also need to have 3 pews completely refurbished. In the meantime, we will use the auditorium without the use of three pews. The only other noticeable differences in the building will be a hole in the auditorium ceiling and the missing baseboard trim.  Of course these will be replaced over the next few weeks as well.

So it looks like our services will have only experienced one week of "displacement." We are thankful for that.

This Saturday, we would like to have some men come for a workday to help put the building back to order for this Sunday. The workday would be this Saturday, January 16th, 9-11 a.m. Would you consider serving in one of the following areas?

Chairs:  a crew of 8 men to transfer chairs from the Fellowship Hall back to the auditorium and classrooms.

Nursery: a crew of 2 men to return all the nursery furniture.

Pews/auditorium: a crew 6 men to put a few dislodged pews back in place temporarily and to do some cleaning in the auditorium.

Baseboards: a crew of 4 men to take all of the damaged baseboards to the dump.

If you could help with any of the above areas, your help would be greatly appreciated. Please let us know if you can come by replying to this email.