A new church location for the community at St. John's

It's official! Today at our spring general assembly meeting a motion passed which will enable our parish to start working on a new church building. Our parish has been in existence for about 6 or 7 years (four of which I've been a member), and we're quickly outgrowing our current space (which is in the basement of a shopping center-- a modern day "catacomb" :D).

Father took Job and I to the new site last Friday, and it's amazing how much potential this new space has! I mean, it's just a neglected, old furniture store (or something weird and obscure like that), and yet once I walked around and saw it all, I could envision the space as a church with great ease. Then again... perhaps anything seems better compared to a windowless, little basement with visible water pipes in the nave (which I've grown so accustomed to!).

But it's like God's design was imprinted on this building--He knew it would serve His servants as a center of worship even when it was originally built as a furniture store in the 70s. I just think it's cool. It's also such a blessing to be a part of a parish that's constructing a new church. I look forward to helping out this summer

It'd be wrong if I didn't help, since my patron Saint Xenia, the Fool-for-Christ secretly helped in the building of a church in St. Petersberg:

"During the day she wandered the streets, dressed in rags, enduring heat, cold, snow and rain, mocked by people. At night she went out into the fields and prayed all night, and at other times she spent the night at the Smolensk Cemetery. It was at this cemetery that she helped the workmen build the Church of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God, by secretly carrying bricks up the scaffold during the night. One night the workmen hid to find out who was helping them, and discovered that it was 'crazy Xenia.'" (by Jane M. DeVyer, taken from the website indicated above)

This new church location will serve as a temporary site, as the ultimate goal is to buy some acreage and build an entirely new temple from the ground up. We'll be at this new location for about 7-10 years, and then hopefully by then we'll have the land and the funds and optimum church growth which will help us make one last move to a FINAL, permanent church home.

That's the new news :) It probably doesn't mean much to anyone else outside the St. John/greater pan-Orthodox Portland community, but it's what's on my mind! hehehe.