Openhouse completed

Hey friends,

It is now Monday and I am writing this after enjoying a nice long day off yesterday. Sam, Christy, Dion and I went out to Laguna Beach for the majority of our Sunday. It was a great day off after a long week of work. I definitely got a good amount of sun, but that's what SoCal is all about, right? Getting skin cancer. Yeah. The water was a great temperature, and though the beach was quite crowded, we had a blast body surfing and enjoying the rays. It was enjoyable getting away from the church for a day, getting a break. And I'm actually taking most of today off as well because we worked all day Saturday getting ready for the open house.

Let's back up a few days. This past week has been spent getting ready for the "soft opening" of Corridors Cafe. We had an open house Saturday night from 7-9 and it went terriffic. We had a lot of things to do this past week, but God didn't put more on our plates than what we could handle. We ended up having just the right amount of time to get everything done that needed to be done by Saturday. We got our stage delivered and installed Monday, we figured out food costs and how much our drinks should cost, we decorated the backdrop of the stage, we installed a sound system, we hung and installed a projector, and many other things that I cannot recall at the moment. Oh and Marlene was an incredible help as she painted the awful yellow trim in the cafe. Now it is an aesthetically pleasing chocolate brown. The cafe is looking better and better each day. The stage really fills out the room.

Now on to the open house. We had passed out a bunch of fliers to the local businesses and our neighbors the week prior. The night was supposed to be a thank you to those who had helped out in the construction project over the past couple years, as well as a way to show the community what our vision is for the church building. The night went great. This guy named Erik Larson came and played music with his buddy for the evening, and they were perfect for the occassion. They were pretty chill, just acoustics and vocals, but they sounded great. I made a bunch of different drinks (with the help of my friends Leo and Rebecah) and we passed them out in sample cups. We also had little appetizer foods available. A few of the student leaders from Crux lead tours in the church to show people what goes on in a typical week and how we have revamped the building for different ministries. There was also a group there called Heavenly Treasures who are a non-profit group that sells different kinds of fair trade items. I think we are getting our coffee from them actually. In addition to that, we had several pieces of art by people in the community that were on display on the stage. Everything went great. People really seemed to just be having fun there. It wasn't like people were just obligated to be there, but they wanted to be there to hang out and have fun. It was neat because it felt like God was giving us a taste of what we envisioned the facility to be like. God really blessed us that night. We were tremendously encouraged because we saw a picture of what it looks like to facilitate a community that allows people to belong before they have to believe in Jesus. Our superintendent, Steve Fitch, seemed to be really excited about the direction of the ministry. Overall, it was just an amazing night where God really blessed us and blessed the community. There were about 80-90 people around at any one time, with the max being about 120 people in the church at one time. It was a good turn out!

We are going to try to do local concerts every Friday and (hopefully) Saturday nights, along with poetry slams and art showings from the community. Who knows how fast or slow God will take us, but we're excited to see what happens! Please continue to be in prayer for the ministry down here. We are having our "hard opening" on Monday, the 27th, because that is when school starts at Pasadena City College. This week is pretty mellow, but there are still a lot of things to do (program register, get signs, and many other things..).

Mitch is back in the hospital as of Saturday. He had a rough day yesterday, as he started getting more chemotherapy treatment and he spiked a fever. Please be in prayer for him. Hopefully he'll be out by his birthday (Sep 18).

For those of you in Spokane, I'll be around this Sunday (due to Big Daddy David Perry's wedding Saturday in Omak). If you're around it'd be fun to see you, I should be at church at Timberview.

Til next time,
Doug