the skies have been beautiful here lately; these photos are from thursday...

a whole lot has been happening, and it's all been wonderful. God is so great, and He's been choosing to show me that over and over since i got here. some of you got an e-mail about the building previously mentioned in this post. i met with the owners on friday, and they showed me around the inside (which, honestly didn't have much to show because the building is just two huge empty rooms right on top of each other. which, although not entirely interesting, is just perfect for a community center!). they had the power turned off while it's vacant so these are the only pictures i could get of the first floor (the top floor has no windows, so there were no pictures to be taken...notice the hot pink paint job!)

the owners were really nice and even though they had told me there was another person looking at the building, they seemed more interested in helping me than selling it to him to start a clothing store (previous incarnations of this building have included a theater, a bingo hall, and a retail store). the building is 9000 sqare feet total (two 45' by 100' rooms) and everything seems to be in good shape; it has separate commercial air conditioning for each floor (top floor is brand new), it has drop ceilings already to aid with energy conservation and efficiency, it's asbestos free (vinyl floor tiles), and it appears to be very structurally sound (all steel and concrete consturction, no cracks as far as i could see). this is way earlier than i expected to be thinking about obtaining a building. in fact, a lot of the programming and other planning questions are still up in the air, but God has opened up this door now, so i am walking through it.

but, as i said, everything is moving very quickly. and as i've been thinking about it, i continue to wonder who's will is being enacted. this hit me really hard on monday, so this week i have effectually "started over." what i mean is, i have felt the need to really strip all the stigma and labels and descriptions off of this vision God has given me (which never really did a great job at describing what i could feel in my heart) and to try and repaint the vision with more adequate words. because, what has happened (or what i feel like has happened) is that i've been using these words ("community center," "youth center," etc.) to try and describe what God has told me to do because i honestly don't know the right words to use to fully describe it. so, in the process, this has clouded, cluttered, and (quite possibly) high-jacked the pure, original vision that God gave. it's like when we use the words "awesome," "wonderful," "great," or "amazing" to try and describe God after we've just used them to describe a taco, a vacation, a movie, or whatever. we use them because we know what they mean and we feel a little bit of that, to a greater scale, when we experience God. but they will never be able to fully describe God. and, i think, when we do this, we take away some of His majesty by removing His indescribable-ness from our minds (though we have little choice besides not saying anything at all!). in this same way, i feel like i've sold His vision for me a little short by placing unfair walls around it with the words i have used. so, i am praying for clarity and for words to be able to share the wonder i feel in my heart with all of you, and to even be able to understand it enough to know where to start. please join me in praying! pray that we would not quench the wonder of God's plans for us with the barriers of our own minds. pray that there would be hope for the youth in a place that sometimes seems without hope. pray that our hearts would truly understand that our minds could never understand the wholeness of God. just pray! and we will see His will be done!

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