Part 39 (2/2)
I took a moment to search out the answer. ”I just . . . I just want to do, you know, what Jesus did: I want to go about doing good. Win some souls, change some hearts, bring some light into this world. I want to tell people about Jesus because he's a wonderful Savior and Friend.”
”You think G.o.d put that in there?”
I actually got choked up. ”Since I was a kid.”
She gave me that smile that always made me feel like a conqueror, and then she rose and hugged me from behind. ”Then we'd better check it out.”
MR. FRAMER owned the building, and met us there. ”It needs a little fixing up. It hasn't been used for a church in fifteen years.”
Standing there on Elm Street with Avery Sisson, his wife, Joan, and Marian, I saw only future potential, not present condition. The plywood over the windows, the paint peeling off the lap siding, the wrinkled, moss-covered roofing didn't discourage me at all. This was an adventure, a vision to be fulfilled.
”How's the roof?” Marian asked.
”It leaks,” said Framer.
”What about plumbing?” I asked.
”Just a sink in the bas.e.m.e.nt and no toilet. There's an outhouse out back.”
”Any pews?”
”Burned 'em. There's nothing in there but a bunch of lockers.”
The old chapel sat forlornly in the middle of an unmowed field, looking as discarded and neglected as the rusting harrower, burned-out van, and immovable old bulldozer that sat in the gra.s.s alongside it.
Mr. Framer led us through the gra.s.s and weeds to the front steps. ”That bulldozer belongs to my son. He can come and move it if you want. I don't know where that harrower came from.”
”What happened to the van?”
”Kids set it on fire. I was hoping to sell it, but now . . .”
The front door sounded like it hadn't been opened in a while. Inside, Mr. Framer turned on the lights-the building did have electricity and four simple chandeliers hanging from the vaulted ceiling. It was cold in there. It smelled musty. The floor was old tongue-and-groove planking painted gray.
All we could see was lockers. Stacks of them. Rows of them. Ugly, green battered lockers.
”My son got these lockers when they tore down the old high school. I don't know what he was planning on doing with 'em, but they've been sitting in here for eight years and I'll be happy to get rid of 'em.”
I squeezed through the lockers to the front and found the platform and the square footprint of unpainted planking where the pulpit used to stand. I stood on that spot and looked back at my congregation-three people and maybe Mr. Framer, standing among the lockers. I could see pews in that room and a hundred people filling them. I could see sunlight coming through the windows, feel the warmth of the oil stove, and hear the sound of singing. I could see people kneeling at the front pews and at the foot of the platform. There were Bibles and hymnals in every row, and boxes of Kleenex up front.
And the bell! ”Does the bell work?”
Mr. Framer walked to the back of the room and unlooped the rope from its hook on the wall. He gave the bell three gentle yanks to get it rocking, and then we heard it ringing from the steeple outside, clang, clang, clang, like a sound out of history, a sweet, oldtimey voice of hope reawakening in a new generation. Marian broke into a wide grin and clapped.
”Praise G.o.d,” I said, and beckoned to Marian. She joined me on the platform and looked out over all those lockers in the yellow light of the chandeliers. ”What do you see, Marian?”
”We could put the piano over there. And maybe we could get some carpet to run up the middle and sides. We need a cross, a big cross to go on that wall. What about cla.s.srooms?”
Mr. Framer looked at us funny. ”It's got a bas.e.m.e.nt with a sink, that's all.”
We went down the steep, narrow stairs. The bas.e.m.e.nt wasn't much more than a crawls.p.a.ce barely high enough to stand in. It was dark and tomblike, smelled of earth and dead mice, and the floor timbers hung low above our heads, festooned with spider webs.
”We could divide this into four, maybe five cla.s.srooms,” I envisioned.
”Where are we going to put the bathrooms?”
”There's an outhouse out back,” Mr. Framer reminded us.
I tried the sink. The water came out a rusty brown. ”We could fit a kitchen in here, I suppose.”
”It's going to be a lot of work!”
”All in good time. A building does not a church make. We could meet in our home while we're fixing this place up.”
”As soon as we get a home.”
We could read each other's eyes. This was it. We had to be here. This was where G.o.d wanted us.
”We'll take it.”
”WELL, it needs a lot of fixing up, but if you want to put the work into it, I'll count that as rent.”
To this day I'm not sure what it was, a storage shed or an old bunkhouse or perhaps a shop. It sat out behind Mrs. Whitfield's place between her barn and her chicken coop, roughly ten feet deep and forty feet long, with a sagging shed roof, three doors, eight four-paned windows in the front and four in the back. It had s.h.i.+plap siding on the outside, and on the inside, bare studs and the backside of the s.h.i.+plap. It was divided into three rooms, all cluttered with farm machinery, engine parts, old lumber, poultry feeders and brooders, and broken bales of straw. The middle room had a toilet and sink. The wiring was exposed and very basic: a bare light bulb in each room and maybe an outlet or two nailed to the bare studs.
The roof was good. Mrs. Whitfield had it redone just a few years ago. The floor was good-as much as I could see under all the junk.
”What do you think?” I asked Marian.
She cringed, and then she gave the place her best try. ”That could be the living room. This could be the kitchen, and maybe we could put a wall in here to make this the bathroom. We could make a bedroom out of that last room, but we'll have to put in a closet.”
”Dad'll help us. If it's church, he's in.”
”My dad'll help too. He loves doing things for his kids.”
Avery nodded confidently. ”One month and you won't know the place.”
I turned to Mrs. Whitfield. ”We'll take it!”
WE WERE STAYING with the Sissons, sleeping on a borrowed hide-a-bed in their garage and sharing two bathrooms with Avery, Joan, and their four kids. Our small, apartment-sized collection of furniture and almost everything else we owned was locked in a rented storage s.p.a.ce in Spokane. We would be living in a renovated shack between a barn and a chicken coop, and pastoring a church without a usable building for who-knew-how-long. Neither one of us had gainful employment and we had only three to four months of savings.
But we were the happiest we'd been in five years of marriage.
22.
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