Dear Parish Family,
It is Monday morning and I am getting my usual Monday morning responsibilities taken care of including my weekly bulletin letter. As I write this I am looking out my office window to see if the truck delivering our new front doors has arrived. They are supposed to be delivered today and installed this week. We ordered them in January and many have asked why it takes so long.
First, we did not order the doors until we had the money from our Capital Campaign to pay for them. Second, they are a special order; we can’t just call a company and buy them off the shelf. We have specific needs for our doors. Since the church was built we have become bigger people, and so caskets have gotten bigger! So instead of 48” wide double doors we are getting 60” wide double doors. The panic bars will also be recessed giving us the full 60” to enter the church when the doors are opened.
The existing doors were difficult to keep clean due to the brass grill work. This will not be a problem with the new doors. Actually, as I am writing this I am hoping when you come this weekend you may enter through the new doors!
Some have also asked why we don’t just fix the existing doors. Since I have been here we have spent a great deal of money trying to fix them and have been told that the mechanisms are no longer fixable. I was told by Lou Thibeault (may he rest in peace) when we started gathering information for our major renovations that the doors were always a problem since they were installed and never worked well. He was a member of the building committee when the church was built in 1965. With his wisdom, we moved to replace the doors and increase the size of entry due to meet our current needs.
The tile in the new handicap bathroom is installed and I am also hoping that the plumber will come this week to install the sink and toilet. This has been a long haul but well worth waiting for as we continue to “Make God’s house, a Home.” As I type this the truck just pulled in! Yeah!
Fr. Bill