Well, as of yesterday, the Gemeinde Christi in Bremen, Germany, officially has only one house. Thursday morning Rüdi handed the keys of the old building over to the new owner.I went to the new building yesterday to help with some things and saw this sign lying on a table in one of the classrooms. This is the sign that used to hang on the front of the old building, and one day soon it will hang on the front of the new building as well.
Yesterday I helped paint the hallway on the second floor, which I think is the last area that actually can be painted right now. There will be more painting later, I'm sure, but there's more work to be done before getting to that point.
I also helped Karen and Rotraud go through some boxes that were brought from the old building. Let's just say that after being in that building for about 30 years, the congregation accumulated a lot of random stuff, some of which was seen yesterday for the first time in years. We threw away lots of things and set aside others to be recycled.
Several times recently I've tried to explain to people here what it's like for me and the Abercrombies to be confronted with choices about keeping and getting rid of things. When Mark, Karen, and I left Searcy last fall, we had to make a lot of decisions about what could be given away to someone; what was important enough to keep and therefore take up precious suitcase or storage space; and what just needed to go in the trash. When you're forced to go through everything you own and compact your life into a few suitcases, things tend to lose their value pretty fast.
Because that experience is still rather fresh in our memories, I don't know how much longer they'll let me and Karen empty boxes at the new building! Something tells me, though, that no one will miss those financial papers from 1973.
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