What's been happening... AMAZING VOLUNTEERS!
We have been quite busy ever since we closed escrow 5 weeks ago. Below is a partial list of some highlights of the action: Note that when it says “we” it is not Elizabeth and myself (though we’re often in the mix)… it means a steady stream of amazing volunteers who have offered their time, talent, treasure, and expertise. It’s a BEAUTIFUL thing watching God put together such a fantastic, broad, and committed community of participants and partners for the forming and shaping of Iona House. All glory to God!
Campus Land Improvements
Fire prevention work: we’ve improved access trails / and widened roads across the whole 71 acres including creating turnouts and other improvements. We brought in 5 truck and trailer loads of gravel… more is still coming. We’ve removed approx. 30-35 large ponderosa pine trees that died as a result of the drought / bark beetle. We’ve been collecting and burning forest debris while we still are able to burn (burn permits typically go away this time a year).
Cleaning out the old ponds: as you probably know if you’ve visited, there are several very old mining era “header” ponds (used for hydraulic mining) that are now just big depressions in the earth. We continued to work on making them usable. Over the past few weeks we cleared brush and trees out of these so that they can become water storage for fire safety, irrigation, and to be a beautiful aesthetic feature.
Prepping for a future orchard: we are still finishing up prepping the area where we hope to plant our fruit orchards. We’ve removed stumps and unhealthy trees and our now ready to start amending the soil (later in the year) so that we can plant trees. The soil is quite acidic from generations of pine needles. So we will need to add lime to the soil.
On the Village side of our campus, we have been clearing away debris, organizing the layout, and more. It’s hard to put into words all of the work that has been happening because it varies from moving wood piles, to raking debris, to flattening bumpy ground, to adding gravel, etc.
Facilities: We spent several weeks cleaning, organizing, and removing unhelpful / broken furniture from the homes. We had each of them professionally deep cleaned. We also purchased and assembled 17 beds + all bedding.
We’re preparing a temporary library space for the books that have been donated
We’re beginning the process of repairing some wood decking and creating a children’s play area.
We are in the process of transforming the barn from a pretty gross place to a very nice barn. The roof and gutters were completely cleaned by one volunteer already. Gravel was added to the floor by an amazing group of volunteers another day. We’ll be painting it this summer.
We moved the round pen for the horse and rearranged the paddock.
We’ve begun working on rehabilitating the fenced garden.
We’re in the process of organizing the firewood storage system.
Though we’re not “open” we’ve had the privilege of hosting some preliminary guests, most of whom have been serving as volunteers in some way or another. One of the joys has been the diversity of people who we’ve had so far: folks from Singapore, Egypt, South Africa, Germany, and China are amongst our first guests. We also had an amazing group from Silicon Valley (Holy Trinity Church) come.
Amongst the varied guests who have visited, we had two Greek Orthodox clergy recently who kindly gave us an icon of St. Columba and who would like their parishes to be involved in the life of Iona House. What a beautiful thing to see Iona House be a place of shared unity in Christ and mutual witness to His goodness! We continue to have folks from many different Christian traditions be excited about this place. Amidst a contentious and divided world, we hope Iona House will be a picture of what unity is possible in Christ.
On that note, we have been focusing on establishing more regular times of prayer (Morning, Midday, Evening Prayer) so that folks from the community can stop in to join us for prayer. We also enjoyed a potluck dinner and spontaneous community night a week or so ago. More to come… stay tuned.
There is no way to summarize in a single blog post the happenings of the past 5 weeks. We are BEYOND thrilled at all that God is doing. As we look toward the coming months, we will be focusing on a number of things: 1) establishing a rhythm of regular prayer and community involvement in the life of Iona House. 2) Preparing for the “Conditional Use Permit” process that will allow us to develop the campus and use it according to the vision we have. This will be an extended process that involves everything from environmental impact reports, historical studies, fire safety planning, traffic impact reports, architectural and site planning, etc. We welcome your continued prayers. 3) Doing some preliminary hosting of guests, as we’re able. A lot of what we’re doing right now is figuring out what infrastructure we need to have in place.
I can’t end this post without saying again how AMAZING our volunteer / serving community is: we have dozens of people involved in a variety of tasks: from laundry, to feeding the horse, to stacking firewood, to spreading gravel, to assisting with forest management, to gardening, to moving furniture, to cleaning, to leading prayer, to helping with food, and so on and so forth…
We are praying that God will take all of our collective efforts and prayers and truly make Iona House a place to reimagine all of life in reference to Christ.