Got up Saturday and my back was feeling a little better from the night before when I shoveled snow. I got my grocery list ready and then headed to IHOP to meet with my best friend since 7th grade, Lori, for brunch and to exchange Christmas gifts. Last year we exchanged gifts in.....June I think it was. We had a fun time catching up.
Then I was off to the Blue Building to help clean it. We/the church purchased this building debt free and will not start any remodeling of the inside until money has been raised - we will not go into debt. The building is a story and a half with the goal of the church offices being upstairs and the outreach ministry and meeting area for our larger groups being on the main floor. The upstairs had been rented out as a one bedroom apartment so it's in pretty good shape but to get to the apartment you need to climb the stairs that are on the outside of the building - brrrr. One thing in the remodeling plan is to build stairs inside the building to access the second floor.
Today in our membership meeting after church we had an update that we have raised a little over $6,000 toward the remodeling fund and had $3,000 left over from the main push to raise funds to purchase the building so we have approximately $9,000. But running the numbers to do Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the remodeling will take approximately $20,000 so we are about $11,000 short. We are praying how God will lead us to raise the additional funds so we can get this building remodeled and start being a blessing to that community asap.
I had planned to spend some of this afternoon cleaning and organizing the office/craft room (Andy's old bedroom). It's so easy to just toss things on a table and think, "I'll put it away later" but putting away later never comes and the pile on the table gets bigger and higher..... But after I got home from the membership meeting and ate lunch I thought I'd read for a while and of course fell asleep.
The weather forecast starting sometime tonight until Tuesday morning doesn't sound too good - we could get up to 10 inches of snow. I'm hoping the weather folks are wrong but then again we haven't gotten much snow this winter so it's about time we got hit. One thing I wanted to do was look for my jumpsuit coveralls and my old, blicky coat I used to wear when I shoveled snow - this coat was long enough to cover my behind. I really didn't want to wear my jeans coat or my good wool coat out working with the snow and my other coats are jackets that stop at waist level - so my behind has gotten a little chilly this winter out dealing with the snow.
I told myself the last time I looked for these things I just zoomed through the house with no plan - meaning I didn't take a moment to pray about this. Tonight I took a moment to pray and ask God to help me find these items that I really need to deal with the snow and said in my prayer that nothing is too small for God. So up I got to search and within a minute I'd found my coat. I'd actually looked right at it the first time I searched a few weeks ago but didn't "see" it. Then I was off to find my coveralls. I was almost done looking for them without having found them when I was in Casey/Lucy/Butler's old room looking at the shelves Mike had built and saw a garbage bag and something said look in it and there were my coveralls!!!!! The next hurdle was - could I still get them on and yep - I could still get them on. So.....while I may not be thrilled to deal with snow after a long day at work - I have a good snow blower and now I have my coveralls and a long coat to wear so I'm good to go.
