Gateway Baptist Church opens its doors for a community appreciation day after flood repairs

“The congregation of Gateway Baptist showed its appreciation to Loveland and the individuals who came together to help clean up the church after the September floods.

A community appreciation day and open house on Sunday allowed those who helped salvage the church after about 2 feet of water and mud coated the interior and exterior of the building. Church members happily gave tours to those who came, to show off all the hard work and restoration done.

Nobody was keeping track of the hours put into the post-flood work, but the costs amounted to around $90,000, which pastor James Rice said could have easily been doubled if it weren’t for donations of both financial and time investments they received from the community.

“Everyone came together with a bunch of different talents and skills,” said Don Wright, church deacon. “At a time like that, you lose some people, but for most of us, it made is closer, brought us together. We’ve made a lot of new friends.”

The church had a lot of outside help, from other churches as well as much dedication from its members and neighbors. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sent over nearly 20 missionaries to assist in clean up.

“This was all under water, so I couldn’t get in here to start working right away. But as soon as those doors opened, we were in here,” said Rice, whose wife and sons put in as many as 14 hours in a day to get the church back up and running…”

Read the rest of the article here: Loveland Reporter Herald Newspaper 

Each day brings us closer to being done with our restoration. Of course, there will be small improvements to make regularly, as with anything else we do. The children’s choir is planning to sing the song, “He’s Still Workin’ on Me,” on Sunday. We are still working on our building and the Lord is still working on us. 🙂

On Saturday, Colton and his crew of helpers finished up the restoring of our landscape islands. What a tremendous improvement to see all the fresh stone instead of the thick muck! We are very grateful for all of the time and effort in transforming our landscaping!! 

Also on Saturday, a group of ladies cleaned all of the items for the lower kitchen cabinets and got them all put away. On Monday (18th) ladies met again and cleaned everything in the upper cabinets and wiped those out as well. 

Later in the week we hope to finish off the cosmetic touches on the kitchen with trim, cove base, etc. We also will need to install the regular dishwasher.

It was certainly wonderful to have the piano back on Sunday! We are in the process of looking for a new organ. 

There are some small tasks to do before our Open House on Sunday. 

Please call the church office if you would like to help out with refreshments for the Open House. We still have need of some additional items.

Ladies, Saturday (16th) is our opportunity to clean ALL of the contents of both the upper and lower cabinets in the church kitchen! Sandra Wright is heading up a group of ladies to accomplish this large task, so please give Sandra a call if you are able to help! We are meeting at 9:00 A.M. to begin work. Please bring along additional dish-drying towels as we will need all that we can get.

The auditorium curtains were added on Wednesday! Our thanks to Karen DeGeal for all of her work in designing and making them!! We appreciate all the time and effort involved!  🙂

On Wednesday we also got our hot water heater for the kitchen! We are very grateful to Rinnai for donating a tankless hot water heater!! How nice to get hot water from the tap again! 🙂

The final few interior doors were installed on Thursday. 

The kitchen appliances are all installed – assuming the regular dishwasher is installed as planned today (Friday).

The renewal of our landscaping islands is almost complete. Community volunteers have worked many long, hard hours to make that possible. We are deeply grateful!!

Hardly a day goes by that Ron Hamilton’s song, “Little By Little, Inch by Inch,” doesn’t come to mind. Little by little and inch by inch, we are seeing progress on our building restoration. 🙂

On Tuesday Cindy Brockmann spent most of her day in our nursery restoring all of her beautiful stenciling and painting to our nursery walls. She did a fabulous job of adding new to the old in a seamless way. We are grateful to the Lord that she shared her God-given talents with us once again! Thanks also to Joan for assisting Cindy throughout the process! There are pictures in the “Restoration” album. 

Men have continued to work in the church kitchen. The cabinets and counter tops have all been installed, the “island” was built, the commercial dishwasher was hooked up, wiring for the island was completed, and some of the new appliances have been moved into place. Still no hot water heater yet, but we are getting closer.

It appears that we might be ready for ladies to plan to meetSaturday morning at 9:00 A.M. to clean all of the kitchen cabinets, wash all of our kitchen items, and put everything back together again. Sandra Wright is attempting to organize a crew of ladies for this task, so please contact Sandra if you would be able to help. 

Elliott, a volunteer who has helped us with several carpentry projects, finished the hand railing for the organ and piano platforms. So nice to see all of that come together. We deeply appreciate all that he has done to help us! 

Ed Smith has built new rolling stands for our AWANA cupboards so we will be able to have ease of use for all of our AWANA materials. We appreciate all of the work that Ed has put into all of the projects that he has taken on.

Thanks to Bill Hughes for continuing to see through the complete installation of the HVAC and all of the wiring that is involved with it. Just a few more details to finish all of that up.

Bob Kaltenberger continues to move our dirt around when he’s not helping out inside the building. It’s nice to see the piles of dirt slowly disappear. He has taken our old landscaping rock and used it to rebuild the “road” behind the church. 

Karen DeGeal has been working for weeks on the new curtains for the auditorium. She is planning to put them up this week. Finishing touches! 🙂

What a joy to meet together in our own building once again this morning! We are VERY grateful for the invitation to meet at the Campion Seventh Day Adventist facility for the past seven weeks, but coming “home” to 325 South Taft Avenue was very memorable. 🙂

A nice group of volunteers was out on Saturday and helped us do some additional cleaning and organization. The building was also transformed by the addition of the fabric on the back wall of the auditorium and on the nursery walls.

Colton led a group of scouts and parents in adding fresh rock to our landscaping islands. It’s amazing how much the clean rock improves our landscaping! What a terrific blessing to have community volunteers do so much of our outside clean-up and restoration. We are humbled by the willingness of others to help us with this difficult task. May the Lord reward them for their great kindness to us!

We are planning to move our piano back to our building Monday afternoon. After it readjusts to our building, we can have it tuned later in the week. If all goes well, we are hopeful that we will be able to use it again by next Sunday.

We do hope that we can accomplish more in the kitchen this week. If all goes well, we may be able to have a Kitchen Cleaning Day on Saturday. We will try to keep everyone posted on that possibility.

Today was an important day for the building restoration. We got our new HVAC units running today, so we again have heat in the whole building. That will be a blessing on Sunday! 🙂

We were unable to get the kitchen all put together, so the auditorium will still be cluttered on Sunday because of the tables of kitchen items and appliances that are spread on the north side of the auditorium. We plan to overlook the clutter and just enjoy being back in our building 58 days after the flood. 🙂

We will be without our piano or organ, but again, we plan to enjoy this opportunity. 

We were able to hold AWANA at our building on Wednesday. So nice to be “home.”

We are planning to have our service at our building this Sunday at 10:00 A.M.! 

And then, on Monday, we need to get back to work and see what we can accomplish next week. 

  Hooray! What fun it was to bring down all of our chairs last night! We are very grateful for the many folks who came out to help us! We had two lines of folks down each stairway and out into the auditorium. Many hands truly did make light work. There are pictures of the process in the “Restoration” album.   

We were also able to bring down all of our stored kitchen items (that were removed from the lower cabinets after the flood). These are now lined up on tables in the auditorium until we are able to wash them and move them back into the kitchen. 

  All the platform trees were carried down on Tuesday as well. Folks are working on the pines to see if we can get all of the lighting to work again.    The rooms upstairs have been set back up for Sunday School and AWANA. (We are not planning to offer Sunday School this week since we are not positive that we will have heat back by then.)   The hardwood is now complete on all three platforms. What a lovely addition! So much thanks goes to Jimmie Goddard for tracking down the perfect hardwood and leading the installation of it! Thanks also go out to Max Oesterle for helping us on that project for several days. We also appreciate Max’s work in restoring our keyboard case and our communion table.   The ducting has arrived for the HVAC so we are hopeful that we may soon enjoy some heat in the auditorium and the upper classrooms. 🙂   There is still a small amount of carpet to install, and we hope that will be finished on Saturday.    A lot of baseboard has been installed.    Colton is leading a crew to restore rock to our landscape islands. Clean rock sure looks beautiful in there!    Please remember that we are planning to have our 10:00 AM service this Sunday at our building! We still think it might be best to dress warmly. 🙂   More pictures have been added to the Restoration Album! Click below to access it.

Restoration!

It is exciting to see work continue to be accomplished!   We had a nice group of men working together on various projects on Thursday. The new interior doors were delivered on Wednesday and quite a few of them were installed on Thursday. Despite our protests, a brand new door was placed on the ladies room, replacing the much-appreciated, temporary door that the men had so kindly built for us.   The carpet is almost finished – just some stairs remain to be carpeted.   The hard wood arrived for the platform, and men are hoping to begin that installation Friday morning.   The electrical wiring and gas are ready for the installation of the HVAC units. The men hope to make great progress on that on Saturday.   Men are working to install the cabinets in the bathrooms and nursery. We hope to install the kitchen cabinets on Saturday.   Ladies continue to try to win the battle with all the fine dust that continues to settle on everything.   Some decorating was accomplished in the bathrooms this week. There is still more work to be done in the men’s room.   Late Friday afternoon (Nov. 1), we are expecting the delivery of our new kitchen appliances. Delivery is scheduled between 4 – 6 PM if you want to help us unload the units and bring them inside.    Several men are planning to come on Friday to help us install the baseboards throughout the building. The baseboards have been installed in the choir room.   When the carpet and baseboards are complete, we will have the wonderful opportunity of moving all the things that we have been storing upstairs back to their places on the main level. It will be thrilling to return these items to their places. 🙂  

Cabinets arrived on Monday and were set around in the various places that they belong. Men  came Monday evening and installed the cabinets in the nursery so that room can be ready for carpet.   Carpet installation continues and is looking good. 🙂   Within the past few days (probably with the addition of some carpet and some heat in the building), our building is feeling more like a church again and less like a construction site. 🙂   We rejoice in the many ways the Lord has shown Himself strong and able for us through this whole process. Our God is very good.   Once again, there are new photos added to the “Restoration” album. (Click below to view album.)    

Restoration!