Thanksgiving and Office Transformation

I'm in vast danger of becoming an ex-blogger if I don't post something soon. If I tried to write about the whole fall it would just be a horrid over-simplification and boring, so I will write as if I have been posting regularly and if you want to be filled in on some missing details just send me an e-mail.

We got to celebrate Thanksgiving three times this year in Allendale. T1 was the Saturday before thanksgiving with the Shreveport branch. It was a pot-luck thanksgiving, the food was wonderful, and its always great to spend time with the branch and find out what God is doing in their lives. T2 was our neighborhood thanksgiving celebration on Tuesday. There were 47 people there!! And we (household, Seitzes, plus Chris Veick and Ellen Reed (here from headquarters to help us figure things out in Allendale - Praise God)) only made up 14 of those people. That means we had about twice as many Allendale neighbors as came to thanksgiving last year. We made a turkey and two hams and a few desserts, and relied on the Lord and our neighbors to bring the rest. There was more than enough food for all. We had a sit-down dinner in the great room of 34 and before dinner we praised God together and Nathan talked about how God wants us to work with him to build his Kingdom. T2 was a real tangible sign that we are building city-life in Allendale.

T3 was a whole weekend celebration involving the Work College graduates, the Indy missionaries, Jen, Amy and Kathleen from Dinkytown, and J.T. making a return visit to Allendale. People arrived and left and various points in the weekend. We turkeytrotted, the guys had a turkey-bowl (football game) with neighborhood guys, we played volleyball in the rain, built puzzles, made music, and cooked and baked and ate and talked and cooked and baked and ate and talked some more. On Sunday those of us still here all went to Sunrise baptist (the church that the Chatmans attend) and the pastor there read the Isaiah for Allendale prophecy (its in the Allendale issue of Vine and Branches) while Sean and the communications work section videotaped him and other parts of the service. They are making a movie that will go up on U-Tube.

In typical Allendale fashion we put all our guests to work on Friday. Doors got moved at Windows Doors and More and we painted the two back rooms of 42 (the house where the guys used to sleep but which is now a common house). Then when rain spoiled our plans of going to a lake on Saturday, many not up for volleyball in the rain volunteered to keep painting. One thing led to another, and by Sunday night we had decided that now was the time to execute our plans to transform the common office. Thus began a whirlwind week. The office is now totally repainted, all of the desks and stuff that had piled up in it are gone, we have beautiful tables and shelves that we made from doors (thank you again Windows Doors and More), and the new design will allow more of us to work in common in the office. All that was possible thanks to Genevieve, Cathy, and Chris coming up with the plan, Nick leading the charge on painting, everyone pitching in on painting, guys working till 10:30 on thursday night making the tables after a long day of work in 1430, and much much more. Thanksgiving honestly feels like a really long time ago because of how much work we got done this week!

So as I was thinking about all of this (both our wonderful thanksgiving celebrations and the miraculous transformation of the office) I am truly in awe of the life the Lord has given me. A life where people will drive 13 hours through the night just to get here and spend the whole next day painting or moving doors. Where people who don't even live here have so much ownership in the life that they are all too happy to spend their vacation redoing our office. The Lord really cares about paint, and furniture, and arrangement of space. When Jesus said I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly he really meant it. These past two weeks of celebrating and working have been full of abundant life and much of the work has been to make our daily life more abundant. Thank you Lord.

I'll post pictures as soon as everything is set up...