Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Shirlene is home

Shirlene Reed's gallbladder surgery was successful. She is home now.

Sunday, June 26, 2016

Organ Dedication

Today the Norma Elizabeth McKinley organ was dedicated with a recital by guest organist David Powers. We had a large crowd that included members of our own parish and a lot of old friends. Most stayed for quite a while at the reception that followed the dedication ceremony.

Mike McKinley, who generously donated the organ in memory of his wife, was unable to attend because of health problems, but the family was represented by his son and daughter-in-law.

The organ is an electronic organ, but if you are imagining something that sounds fake, the recital was quite a surprise. The first thing we heard were chimes. Later in the recital, Powers showed off the clarinet and harpsichord voices. Modern electronic organs get their voices by taking digital samples of musical instruments and storing them, so when the organist calls for a particular sound, it is not a synthetic guess. It is an actual representation of a particular harpsichord. It was all very impressive.

Monday, June 20, 2016

Bob Reed is home

Bob Reed is home from the hospital and doing well. He was at church Sunday, but (understandably) feeling very weary after his surgery.

Friday, June 17, 2016

Mike McKinley is Home

After suffering a heart attack last Saturday night and receiving a pacemaker, Mike McKinley is now home. He's not ready to receive visitors yet, but he's doing well.

Saturday, June 4, 2016

Two big building improvements

Exterior paint

The exterior painting got finished this week. Our excellent, honest Amish painters were able to do the job for less money than their original estimate, so the final bill was substantially less than we expected.

Note on the painting
You may wonder why the church building doesn't look that much better! This is because the whole building did not get painted. (We didn't have the money for that.) The west side of the sanctuary (facing Mifflin Avenue) and the south side of the building got done. Those areas were peeling to the point where bare wood was exposed, but when you park your car and walk up to the building, you don't normally see those sides. The north side of the building (which you do see as you walk in) is showing dirt and wear, but at least it is still protecting the wood underneath, so we postponed doing that painting.

Landscaping

When I went by the building on Thursday afternoon, the place looked a bit like a desert. All the overgrown old foliage had been torn out and Brandon had just begun putting in the new plantings. There was no mulch yet, and the ground was pretty dry, increasing the desolate look. Friday's weather was excellent for outdoor work, and today's looks to be good too, so I expect Sunday morning to bring a really nice appearance. I don't know what his completion date is, but I would be surprised if the project went more than another week.

We got two unexpected little bonuses from this project. Near the Parish Hall door, there is now a small plaque saying that the plantings were in loving memory of a former Parish member. I didn't recognize the name, and there had been no talk of this being a memorial garden, so it was a puzzle. The answer was that the plaque had been buried deep in the foliage and forgotten and Brandon only found it when he began pulling out old plants. So now we have a memorial garden, not just a better looking entrance-way.

The other bonus is that the stained glass windows in the sanctuary, the ones behind the altar, had been blocked by overgrown plants. Now they get full sun all the way to the bottom, giving the room more light and color. It's a noticeable difference.