Easter Fiesta

     Our largest group of teens for the summer just drove off into the sunset (not literally as it was only 9am). They were a collection of different teens from different churches in the Cumberland Presbyterian church (don't know what a Cumberland Presbyterian is, google it... I didn't either until 7 days ago).
    They accomplished so much, had many dance parties, played a whole lot of kemps and mafia, ate some great food, and got to experience a lot of new things. It was truly an amazing week.
    As promised I have a whole bunch of before and after pictures for you on some of the projects they did. I truly am overwhelemed by how amazing everything is looking. After a rough week having a window break, getting some bad news about the a/c, and all the other things that are costly, we truly see God's provision through His people. These projects absolutely could not have been without such amazing and generous people. I can only imagine how this building can now be used as a tool to reach the community in amazing ways.
    Without further ado, here are some pictures.

The computer lab room before (I don't have pictures of what it's looked like for the past few weeks, but we collected all the computers that needed to go to recycling in here... the room was FULL of old computers, printers, etc.) The CPC crew took all of them to recycling for us. It was a huge task

 The new "Oasis" I'll take a better picture with some lights on later. This room will soon be a parent/infant room. For parents to take their infants to if they are fussy. It will be painted soon, but it's made so much progress!!


 The before pictures of my office. Completely unworkable because of all the stuff. Very crowded... and well, you see the paint job.





After pictures of the office

It's hard to tell it's the same room! Now I just need an over sized chair and an area rug (and some non hideous  art)


 These are the before pictures of the hallway, the duneland teens did some work here too (they painted the gray parts on the walls) the CPC kids came in and redid the white, and cleaned everything up


 After of the stairway
We just need a chair rail and to put maybe 1 (instead of 3) bulletin boards

 The boys' bathroom before (The guys said when you paint a men's bathroom blue, it looks like it was painted for a child, so we went a very different direction)

 Afters of the men's restroom

We think this will look great with some cool art with lots of hunter green since the colors go well together, and maybe some other manly type accents. The guys really liked the change. 


 The cafe before. The room really needed help. They also discovered mold under the sound buffers, so everything had to be bleached. We ate outside for 2 days, which was perfect. The weather was beautiful and we are grateful we could complete this. (The church also is easier to breathe in with all that mold gone, they wore masks and gloves, for those concerned, we were trying to be very careful)

 The Cafe after


 The room looks bigger and lighter now, and it got an extreme deep clean which is awesome as well. We also learned that we can feed 70 people down there with a little room to spare.


The women's restroom before. This was maybe the ugliest paint job of the whole church, some girls really took ownership, chose a new paint color and mirror, and it's vastly improved




women's restroom after

Once we get some appropriate art (not too much), it will look even better! The girls did such an amazing job

 Downstairs storage before. We have a ton of things for vbs, block parties, etc. but while being in labeled bins, a lot needed to be thrown out or put in the garage sale pile. A team took everything out and reorganized it.

 Downstairs storage after. It's hard to tell from the pictures alone, but this is significantly nicer, and easier to walk in and out of, plus the whole thing was vacuumed for the first time in at least a year

 The right of the stage storage before. There were tables of toys that needed to be put into bins for the garage sale. It's hard to tell in this pic. but there was dust on a lot of things, and the carpet was horrible

 Storage after (the bins in the front are all for the garage sale)

The before of the upstairs closet

 
The After (this is where our Easter fiesta stuff was discovered)


This doesn't even cover all the things they did. Another group completely cleaned our basement, washed the outside of our house, started scrapping paint off our porch, unclogged the grossest drain (that the plumber said was impossible to unclog due to a broken pipe... but they did it somehow), and cleaned up tons of yard waste. I don't have pictures of everything, because I was so busy working and just loving getting to know these teens and leaders. I'm so grateful for all their hard work.
Their last night here, we threw them an Easter fiesta (they found a box labeled easter fiesta with tons of decor, so we busted it out... no an easter fiesta is not a nazarene thing, but it is an awesome and hilarious thing). I felt like the Easter fiesta was a fitting end to the week. The resurrection is active here in Hammond, resurrection is happening, and it is worth celebrating. So to celebrate all the hard work of these awesome people, here are some more pics. that I managed to snap this week. Enjoy!


This entry was posted on Friday, July 11, 2014. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response.

2 Responses to “Easter Fiesta”

  1. barrentreeJuly 11, 2014 at 6:41 PM

    Awesome. You should consider b&w photos for the bathrooms. Landscapes or architecture or whatever-it's easy to personalize and change out and will match any colors. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. RCanslerJuly 12, 2014 at 12:11 PM

    Good idea! I bet mac can even take some around hammond. We were thinking of doing vinyl scriptures too.

    ReplyDelete