Christ Lutheran Christmas Eve

I hope everyone had a good Christmas with family and friends.  Our Christmas was good and went way too fast.  All that preperation from the day after Thanksgiving up until Christmas and then, ZOOM! it's over in a couple of days.

We were able to have Christmas Eve services at Christ Lutheran Church.  Being able to have Christmas Eve worship there was very special to so many of us since it was flooded during the 2011 Souris River Flood.  Many people worked very hard to make Christmas Eve a possibility.  First the church had to be cleaned (mucked-out), and walls taken out. Then it had to be disinfected and dried, and the asbestoes had to be removed.  Now, with a new boiler in the boiler room it is clean and dry and ready for rebuilding in the spring.  Here are some pictures of what we as a church and congregation have been through these past six months.

Here is our beautiful church building from the air on Saturday, June 25th.

This clearly shows how high the water got on the main level.  Unfortunately, we were not able to save our pews.  They had to be cut into thirds by chain saws to be removed.  I was there that day and it was sad to hear the chainsaw motors coming from inside and to see each pew come out the doors in pieces.

Once the water had been pumped out of the basement we were able to go in and take a look around.  We hired a big "muck-truck" that had long vacuum hoses to suck up all of the yucky stuff out of the basement.  That was a tough day.  It was dark, damp, and very odiferous (that's the polite way of saying it lol).  We wore special masks, rubber boots and gloves. 

Professional photographer, David Joel came by the church and took some beautiful (as beautiful as a bare-bones church can be) photos.  This is part of the classroom area of the basement, cleaned up, dry and ready to be rebuilt.

Another photo by David Joel of the upstairs classroom.  I remember kicking the paneling down with my feet between the classrooms.  It was a good stress reliever.

And here we are on Christmas Eve.  There were a few lights, even though our main ceiling lights are not working yet.  We had the organ, candles, trees, and most importantly PEOPLE!  For many it was the first time seeing the church post-flood.  It was a beautiful service!

Before church.  I'm glad we got there early because we had a full house with extra seating in the narthex.

Candlelight Silent Night

During the whole process of cleaning and rebuilding we have been worshiping at Bethany Lutheran.  The folks at Bethany have made us feel very welcome and we thank them for that.  Christ Lutheran services are at 5:00pm on Saturdays and 9:30am on Sundays.  We still have our education hour on Wednesdays evenings.
We thank God for his guidance and know that He has been with us every step of the way!  And we have faith that He will continue to be with us as we proceed with rebuilding.