Monday 10th October 2010

I cannot understand why this blog gets so far behind!

The pictures speak for themselves, but I will add a bit of narrative!

This first picture shows you where we were on Sunday (10th). The roof trusses over the kitchen/ coffee shop and offices are complete. Today (Monday) the two beams connecting the roof over the entrance were put in place and the trusses will be fitted accross the space. The plan is that by Friday the entire roof from the kitchen to the offices will be tiled.


This next picture shows the back of the buildings from the car park.
From the left - offices, entrance, coffee shop/ kitchen. At the far end you can see the church gables.


I have included this picture as it is a prayer-need.
The picture is the new church and it stands starkly Alamo-like against the sky. We need lots of prayer here because we have not yet ordered the roof. The reason for that is that we are just not feeling comfortable about the design. We tweak it and change it, but don't get the feeling that it is right. We have said that the roof must be ordered by the end of the week - please pray for our direction.


This picture was taken from near the rectory fence looking up towards the offices (on the left) and the new church (on the right). Down the centre of the picture is the sewer line which comes all the way down the hill, round the rectory fence and across and into the rectory septic tank.
That might seem a bit extreme - why not place a tank close to the church? Well, we have now heard that the Municipality is going to lay a new sewer line down the N2 at the bottom of the property to service the new Tiffany shopping complex. When they do that we will run our line down the northern edge of the property. So we are looking ahead!


Finally, here is a story which we have not told, really because it was a bit embarrasing. The original design for the foundations of the church called for steel reinforcing. However, just before we placed the order for the steel, the concrete supplier asked whether we would not like to use a new product which has chopped strands mixed in the concrete, and which does away with the need for steel. Ever interested in saving money sensibly, we checked out the product and got a very favourable report on it. So no steel was ordered, the concrete was poured and in due course the columns were built. One member of the team woke up in the middle of one night realising that we had made a terrible mistake - although we did not need steel in the foundations, we DID need steel in the columns! And we had omitted to include the steel in the columns. We went straight to Mike J., our engineer, and he suggested that we build buttresses against the columns, and include steel reinforcing. This we have now done, starting with a foundation block, in which the steel is included, and then a hollow box into which concrete was poured. These butresses will be plastered aand so merge into the overall design.


As I end, I would like to ask for your prayers for protection over both 'old' and 'new' All Souls. Last week the sound desk and CD player were stolen from 'old' All Souls and this last weekend a labourer walked off the site of 'new' All Souls with an angle grinder and an electric saw. Petty, but annoying!

Bless you all, and thank you for your prayers -
"Unless the Lord builds the house, the builder labours in vain."