Worship back in the heart

waters smashed through the building destroying everything in its path, including the foor to the main auditorium.

“It was sloped like a skate ramp,” said Rebekka.

“When we pulled up our 30 metre by 20 metre hardwood foor, it revealed the damage where the water had rushed in and blew out all the pillars underneath the foor right along one side of the wall.

“When we got the engineers in, they said we had to take all the pillars out and rebuild every one of them on the existing foundation built in the 1930s.”

Over the next 31 months the church family had to move to a hall at Summerland Christian School as money was found and repairs took place.

The church had contents insurance of $230,000 and they received a $200,000 grant from the state government.

“However, our foor cost $600,000 to fx,” said Rebekka.

“So (we received) donations of other churches from South East Queensland and all over Australia.

“Also from Convoy of Hope, Hillsong, King’s Care, Love Our City based out of the Gold Coast.”

Then on November 3, the doors opened again when they held their frst service in the building since the food.

“We invited everyone who had worked on the building, all our tradies, we invited everyone who donated, all those agencies that had come and helped us, obviously our church family and also the Lismore community,” Rebekka said.

“We all work in the community and what I found was people were really interested even if they weren’t faith-based people; they wanted to know how the church was going.”

Upgrades made to the building included putting in a disabled toilet, expanding the kitchen, ducted air-conditioning and a ramp out the front that is up to code.

“The food did us a favour where we could make changes we wouldn’t have been able to,” said Rebekka.

Diary of a Flood Survivor

It is good to see the kind spirit of those who helped in the food is still alive and well.

Last week my son was driving late at night through Goonellabah when he hit a large pot hole.

The front tyre on his little Hyundai didn’t like that very much and burst, effectively leaving him stranded far from home.

As he started the process of changing his tyre, a young man by the name of Daniel stopped to help.

They realised when the spare was put on, like so often happens, it was also fat.

Daniel said he had a compressor at home and could easily pump the tyre up and bring it back to my son, which he did.

The tyre was replaced and my son went on his way.

He didn’t get this man’s last name and I’d say, he probably wouldn’t want to be publicly named anyway, but I would like to note here a huge thanks to Daniel from Goonellabah who took time out to help a stranger.

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There’s nothing I like more than seeing a workman at our house, because that means something is being fxed, renovated or replaced.

This week it was our new builder, Hamish McAllister, who is replacing our temporary front door (which we’ve had for nearly three years) with a lovely, grand one.

We will also get the rest of our internal doors put on, which means no more gyprock blocking the door to the garage to stop the dog from running out under the cars.

Next week I will hopefully have a photo of the fnished doors to show off. Little steps.