Sunday morning about 2 hours before church was to start on the 6th of January, in the cold Scottish winter, our temporary heater stopped working. The building’s heating system had been vandalized over a year ago and the estimated fixing costs were between £15,000-30,000 (30,000-60,000US) from a heating expert we paid to look over the damage. The owners of our building said they were not going to fix it and we would have to make do, and so we gave up on the old system until we could purchase the building.
This autumn, Tim Shirley got us a great deal on a jet engine looking burner, which took a bit of the edge off. By November our jet engine was not quite getting the job done and so thanks to a generous gift we were able to have 4 radiant heaters installed. We would not have been able to make through the cold of November and December with out the combination of the two heating systems. But last Sunday the jet engine died, and I watched our people (whom I affectionately refer to as “the frozen chosen”) shiver and attempt to sing, but the cold was too much for most.
By God’s hidden hand of providence, and without warning, the current building owners sent some men over to the church and they repaired the vandalized chimney system. This gave Wade Thompson the inspiration to call together a work day to reassess the buildings boiler system and see what needed to happen in order to get it fixed. We assessed 6 things that needed to happen.
- The Chimney system was completely blocked from the vandals. Although the owners fixed the damage, they didn’t clear out the debris… inside were broom handles, huge bricks, and it was clogged tight with dirt and garbage.
- The radiator system needed to be cleaned out and refilled with water.
- The door on the boiler room needed to be fully rebuilt and reinforced.
- The Gas needed to be turned back on.
- We needed to get power to all the equipment.
- We needed to get all the ancient equipment to run after not operating since October 1st 2006 (our last day in the building before we had to move out… they day I shut it down.)
We are just a bunch of missionaries, without much money, and without some of these professional skills, and so we prayed. We prayed for the wisdom to understand what was normally out with our understanding. We prayed for God’s aid. We needed a miracle.
Nobody worked harder than Wade Thompson, he called people together and he lead the charge back into the boiler room, and single handedly took on the dirtiest and most difficult task of getting in that chimney and clearing it all out. I remember after several trips to the hardware store and hours and hours of work finally hearing him celebrate from the chimney “I see day light!” With those words we all gained hope that we just might be able to get this system working again.
Andy Ashworth was there every moment rebuilding the door and the door jam which had been completely destroyed by the vandals. He had help the first day with Mike Libolt and on the second with Guy Taylor. Those guys had to fight through obstacle after obstacle but finally we got the door fitted and fixed.
After several phone calls and testing many points throughout the system we discovered that the radiator system was not drained and instead still had the chemicals preserving the pipes from rusting and needing to be refilled, saving us a couple thousand dollars. Again good news raising our hopes for the impossible… working heat for our building for Sunday.
Stephen Irwin, among other things, got the gas up and running for us as well as continually getting us quotes from professional contractors for the water and electrical system.
Speaking of the Electrical system, we discovered some major obstacles with the wiring. When some previous electrical work was done, the wires for the boiler pumps caught on fire and were cut. Quoted repair costs £668 plus tax, without any guarantee that anything would run after their work. We had until the end of the night to decide if we needed them or not. To make a long… very long story short. We kept discovering things were not as bad as we thought they were… and late last night got power to everything that needed power. I remember the moment Wade and Andy and I were in the boiler room looking at old switches from the 30’s or something. The power should be working but nothing was on, and then Wade flipped some random switch that shouldn’t have done anything and the pumps whirled to life!!! We all jumped like 3 feet, then stared at each other and started celebrating.
So then we flipped the switch to turn on the boilers… the fan clicked on… we had wide eyes as we looked at each other waiting for the flame to come on… It didn’t happen. What? It should be working… We tried it again… fan…off. We stood there for a few minutes thinking what else could possibly need to be done. Occasionally we would push the button again simply because we had no other ideas. And then one time, the fan didn’t shut off and we looked inside the ancient boiler and saw a tiny flame which grew and grew and grew until it blazed. We laughed, we cheered, we took pictures, we thanked God. I have been walking around on cloud 9 ever since 11 last night.
This was God giving us insights. This was God’s people’s generosity from the other side of the world coming at the right time. I want to say a special thank you to the generosity of God’s people at Christ’s Church in Federal Way, Washington, and at the 3rd Christian Reformed Church in Lynden, Washington, who gave sacrificially and generously towards our heating crisis. Thank you. I also want to thank God for the team of missionaries whom God has brought together here in Glasgow. This was true Synergy with our team doing together that which exceeded the sum total of our talents and abilities. Thank you for all your hard work.
The fire still burns!!! There will be heat for Sunday!!! God is glorious and I am completely wowed by his sovereign hand at work globally to bring us to this point the very week our temporary heating system died.
God you are amazing! You have done great things for us, and we are filled with joy and awe! Thank you.
