OneWay Facility Progress and My Reflections

The following was taken from an email I wrote to the OneWay Ministries family today...and below are some comments about my recent project managing construction experience!

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The miracle of God's provision continues to amaze us as the facility work progresses! We have ripped up carpet, put in new floor and new carpeting, painted almost the entire building, and are starting to get settled as the 10 summer interns get some desks and workspaces! To see frequent facility updates, click here.

A sneak peek of the work:

Conference Room

Sanctuary

We rejoice in how He has not only provided the building but also how almost all of this work has been done by volunteers! Someone came in the other day and exclaimed, "All these people work for you?!" I should have answered, "No, but they all work for the Lord!"

The work continues on the 3 rooms which will comprise the recording studio - a control room, a piano room, and vocals/instrument room.

Future Studio Control Room

Finally, we just want to publicly give thanks to God for His marvelous deeds, and to you, who by serving Him with your time, talents, and treasures, make this work possible. Soon the building will be humming with work that directly advances the gospel to the masses of unreached around the world. Praise the Lord!

In His grace,
Katie Willemssen (and the OneWay Team!)

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As I have helped to coordinate workers and the various projects for the building, I have learned a ton! Some lessons include:

- trees look nicer when they are trimmed

- paint colors that I think won't look good together REALLY look GOOD and I don't know ANYTHING about interior decorating

- air conditioning guys charge you a lot to come for about 5 minutes to fix it

- ripping up carpeting isn't easy, and just a little easier when you ask college football guys to come help

- when you put down floor it's nice to know ahead of time if the concrete slab below is flat (ours isn't)

- how to collapse extension ladders (harder than I would think)

- paint does NOT come out of jeans like I hoped

- you can scrape paint off of glass

- painting takes FOREVER

- I am a good power sander, not a good painter

- organizing cleaning and mowing duties for a commercial space is a bigger job than I would have guessed

- the security alarm is both a good and bad thing (good to keep away burglars, bad when various team members have a key but not the alarm code, and the police show up to "protect" the building.)

- Elizabeth can sleep through construction work on the other side of the wall of the room in which she is sleeping.

- God is very real and active in all aspects of this project - sometime ask me about the Craig's List guy who had the exact desks we were going to buy for $1400 at the store, and sold them to us from $250! AND of all the people on Craig's List, he already knew about OneWay. Hmmm...

All in all, it's been one of the most eventful 2 months in a while! And while it's been fun, we look forward to when it's all done and we can just...do the work of the ministry.:)

And in all my mistakes and follies of the whole process, the verse that has spoken to me the most would be this:

"His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse, nor his delight in the legs of a man; the LORD delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love." - Ps 147:10-11

Praise God that His acceptance of us is not based on what we can do, but on our dependence upon Him. Can't get much better than that.