We are very grateful to receive many messages of love, concern and support from members and friends of Vine Street Christian Church. Right now it's 7am Sunday morning March 6 in New Zealand, and we will drive back into the city to meet this morning for worship and fellowship inside our building which has been 'green-stickered' as safe to use!. (Last week 40 of us managed to negotiate the broken roads, bridges and sidewalks and met in the parking lot!)
The piano and organ have both been uprighted and the piano seems to be functioning correctly! We just wanted to amend a comment that Phillippa's house was badly damaged. Happily that is not correct. Her house suffered virtually no damage - along with almost every house in the city, they had a great mess with upturned furniture and broken glassware and crockery etc, but the house itself is fine. She lost a chimney in September's quake but nothing since. However her business's workplace was totally destroyed. The September earthquake which was centred close to us, seriously damaged her original workplace but that was almost repaired and due to open about Easter. However it was also totally destroyed this time. She is very fortunate to have secured, late this week, a suitable office to reestablish her business -for the third time in 13 months!
We have been exceedingly busy staffing an emergency welfare centre and maintaining pastoral care with very limited people resources. Our love is returned tenfold to our dear friends and all the Christian family at Vine Street.