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Over the weekend we were able to get into the church property and begin our clean-up.
Lisa and Salvadore, a couple in our church who clean carpets professionally came and got up the half inch of mud that covered all the carpets and chairs. They also disinfected. Their efforts made it possible for us to get inside and get to work. The carpets have all been removed from our ground level and will have to be replaced. We are going to see if we are able to save the auditorium chairs.
On Sunday morning a group of 52 people braved the rain (and possible road closures) and met at our house for encouragement, prayer, singing, a message, and an offering. 🙂 Andy and Heather Hansen shared their harrowing experience of spending several nights in the midst of the flood and their rescue from the Big Thompson Canyon.
We probably had 125 volunteers Monday! A good group of our church family came out to help. The Lord led one employer to give one of our members three days off to help us clean up. Several area churches sent volunteers to help. Campion Academy sent their 30-member soccer team to clean with us instead of having practice! Some of our neighbors and some of the church’s neighbors came and helped.
We cleaned and disinfected everything from the lower cupboards in our kitchen and moved it all upstairs. We also removed the lower cabinets in the kitchen, bathrooms, and nursery.
We cleaned everything (other than chairs) and hauled it upstairs. Every room downstairs was emptied. We cleaned many things out of our shed.
We cut out the bottom four feet of dry wall in the downstairs, removed the lower insulation, removed the base boards, cleaned the bare wood underneath, and bleached and disinfected it three times.
We made huge progress on the parking lot. You can walk on the sidewalks and even to your car without getting filthy. In three days, we went from six inches of mud on the entire parking lot to bare pavement in some places.
Men power-washed a small portion of the front lawn and we found our grass underneath all the mud!
Two water trunks came and sprayed 6500 gallons of water on the parking lot (free).
We remade our electrical panel (with the help of Craig, one of the church’s neighbors) so it could run 25 fans and 15 enormous dehumidifiers. The dehumidifiers pulled 42 gallons of water out of the building in the first eight hours they were running!
One of our men offered to spend the night so he could keep emptying the dehumidifiers. We are SO grateful to not have to go back in the night to do that!! (Bill Hendershot deserves a nice steak dinner!)
The piano and organ were removed to a dry location. Our keyboard, piano benches, and communion table were taken to Max Osterly for repairs. (Thanks, Max!)
We tore all the boards off the main platform and the two platforms that hold the piano and organ, cleaned up the gunk and bleached and disinfected everything three times.
All the bathrooms were scrubbed clean.
Dominoes donated pizza for lunch. King Soopers donated pop. (Thanks, Gwen, for arranging that!)
Karen DeGeal made us all sloppy joes for dinner. She brought chips too.
What a blessing!
Praise God from Whom ALL blessing flow!