When we purchased the Village side of the Iona House campus a year ago, it came with a barn. In the barn was a beautiful stained glass window that featured an “omega” sign that almost certainly came out of a chapel at some point in the past. The interesting thing was that the previous owners of this land were not Christians, which might explain why we found that the window was actually upside down (probably unknowingly). The omega sign was flipped over and looked like a fancy “horseshoe”.

The original “Omega” window - now cleaned, repaired, and right-side-up

When we took ownership we quickly turned it right-side-up to remind us of the famous biblical title of Christ: the Alpha & Omega, the Beginning & the End, the First & Last (Rev. 22:13). We always wished we could find the corresponding window (the alpha), which we almost certainly knew existed at one point. Since we had no way of finding it, from time-to-time we casually mentioned to visitors of Iona House the possibility of creating an “Alpha” window to correspond to the “Omega”.

To our great surprise, two local volunteers jumped on the idea. Michael Jones and Jim Pimentel are local residents in the Placerville area who are part of the Placerville Seventh-day Adventist Church. They took it as their mission to create this missing Alpha window. Over the course of a couple of months they both repaired and cleaned the old window and created a new one! The results are beautiful. We’re now thrilled to have a barn with BOTH an Alpha & Omega stained glass window.

The result of this labor of love: A craftsman style Alpha stained glass window that features in the front of the barn.

Many thanks to Michael Jones & Jim Pimentel for their dozens of hours of labor in order to give Iona House this amazing gift! May the Village Barn - and all of Iona House - always be an icon directing us to Christ.

Making the Alpha: A stained glass gift