A New Building!

Tonight was the Dedication of the new church building in our area. The Church has been growing a lot! We’ve had several ward boundary changes, more are sure to come, over the years and recently created a new Stake! Several people that have lived in the same house for years and years have been in at least 3 different wards!

It’s pretty cool that this new Stake Center is ready now instead of in May as originally planned and we will start meeting there tomorrow at 11! The new time kinda makes things interesting for nap time so we’ll have to figure out what to do there. Hunter will be one of the first in the Primary to give a talk in the new building! He loves giving talks- this will be his 5th, I think!

The Dedication was pretty simple and only about 45 minutes. I didn’t know what to expect other than a special prayer. The Stake Presidency just bore their testimonies and talked about the building process and choosing the site and materials and such. Neat stuff. President Tolman emphasized the need to take care of our building as it should last us at least 50 years.

Afterwards we explored and just wandered the halls. We discovered this building has lots of bathrooms on either side. Yea! The colors (sort of a pinkish and maroon and dark wood) are the same as in the Branch Crossing building and the chapel looks identical, if not very similar as well. There’s a nice big gym with a pretty, shiny wooden floor. Nice stage area too. The auxiliary rooms are all nice and big. The baptismal font is part of the Relief Society room. The only real pianos are in the chapel and the Primary room. The Young Women and Relief Society rooms have these neat keyboards that can play the hymns with just a push of a button! The R.S. President told me about that and was like, “But we still need you! So don’t think you can escape!” So I guess I’ll have to figure this thing out! Easier to move around if necessary I guess. And at first I thought it was cool, but the more I thought about it the more I thought maybe not– the mother’s lounge is through one of the women’s bathrooms! I thought well that way you don’t have just anyone opening the door from the hall, but what if the husband or someone needs to get to the mom?! Perhaps it’s not a good idea then. There were only 2 chairs in there and we definitely need more than that, just in our ward alone! And the pavilion isn’t as big as I was imagining, but at least it’s got lights. Harris is disappointed there’s not a nice field area like at Hafer, but it looked like some sort of grassy area out there. We’ll have to look at it in the light.

Hunter and Hayden were being kind of loud and of course had to go to the bathroom in the middle of it, but it still was a neat experience to be there and hear the prayer asking a blessing on each auxiliary room, hallways, classrooms, offices, parking lot, etc. History in the making.