Sunday PJR

Today Eastside experienced our first Sunday PJR... post Jarrod Robinson. While Jarrod and Lauren experienced a new beginning with the Riverside congregation in Coppell, we were taking our first steps as a church family after sending them on to their next ministry. I think any time a minister leaves a congregation, the church family gets to choose how they will respond, and Eastside is responding in healthy ways.

We have new elders and deacons to install in a couple of weeks... Kyle is doing a great job connecting with the youth... our fall ministry efforts are underway... new Family Circles are forming... there is a real sense of anticipation of what God will do next among us. I pray that we continue to remain open to His leading... that we pay attention to where He is working and have the courage to join Him there.

The upgrade of the downstairs bathroom is almost complete. I guess is started back in the spring with a refurbish of the wood cabinet. Then we had the vanity top, sink and faucet replaced when we did our kitchen counters. A couple of weeks back we took down the mirror and metal cabinet and started the process of patching and painting. We found this mirror that we both liked and repainted the chrome to match the wrought-iron look. Yesterday we made a trip to Home Depot and picked up a new exhaust fan to replace the really loud old one. We got one with a light in it to increase the lumens in the room. We also got dark switches and a dark metal faceplate to coordinate with the new look.

I spent some hours Saturday figuring out how to take out the old fan and get the new one in. The instructions said these are really better installed in new construction, but it could be installed if I had crawl space access. Well, because of the location of the bathroom, the stairs, the upstairs floor, etc., I had no crawl space access. So, I got the old one out, cut the whole bigger to match the new fan, took the fan unit out of the mounting box per instructions, and let it set so ideas could percolate in my head until this afternoon.

Well, after a lot of thought, a call to my electrician friend, Bruce, quite a bit of sweat, and about 3 hours, I managed to figure enough work arounds to get the fan/light installed... and it works!! I also managed to get the new switch and outlet installed.

As is often the case with my home improvement projects, this one took at least twice as long as I thought it might, but at least I didn't have to make extra trips to Home Depot... and Virginia was proud of me because she didn't hear me yell even once.

We got the mess cleaned up, and the bathroom is almost done... just need to install the little wrought-iron shelf that Virginia ordered... when it gets here... and we'll be done. Although she did say something about a new light fixture.... hmmmmmm.... I guess we'll see.