New Stake Center

We attended a ground breaking ceremony for a new church building last year. We've been a stake for two years now but we haven't had our own building. It's nearing completion this week. There will be a public open house and a dedication ceremony in November. If you don't know, a Stake in the LDS church is like a diocese in the Catholic faith. It's comprised of several congregations and the term has reference to the mobile tabernacle or tent of Zion back in Moses' time which is held down by stakes. There was a command for Zion to expand her stakes and this is one of those instances.

Here's a pic of our Stake President, Craig Ostler speaking at the ground breaking ceremony. He's probably about the finest man you could ever know. He had the contractor place a telephone pole in the center of what would be the chapel and then they tied several hundred ribbons to the top for each child or family to hold out like a may pole so that we would symbolically see the significance of expanding our "stake" and that it was done with people. People doing service and loving and teaching. He contends that it's the largest object lesson in the history of the Church. I'm not going to disagree. It was moving. I wept upon the dove release with the choir singing at the end- Crrrrrr-ied like a weeeee bay-be!

We have been driving by every Sunday after church to watch the progress. Once the shell of the building was kinda done, it was hard to see any progress because the bulk of the work was going on inside with electrical, plumbing, painting, carpet etc. This last two weeks have been busy again with paving, striping, landscaping and various other finish work. Lesa and Shaw took this picture. You can see the new building in the background. We like this picture because it has reference to a favorite Mormon hymn entitled, "Put your Shoulder to the Wheel" in reference to pushing a wagon or handcart across the plains like the Mormons did in the 1840s and 1850s. The work of the Lord gets done by people living like good Christians and putting a little muscle into it.

We'll post a picture of the completed building next week.