Breaking Down the Walls May 21, 2008
Posted by thedropin in Tacoma, Tillicum, Tillicum Lakewood, YFC, Youth Drop In Center, Youth for Christ.add a comment
Progress on the Tillicum Youth and Family Center seems to have a life of it’s own. Some weeks progress is tedious and time consuming and then other weeks it seems that all we have to do is get out of the way and watch things happen. The latter has been the case in large part to the 63d Aerial Port Squadron of McChord AFB. Led by Tim Bhan a former resident of Tillicum a group of a dozen plus have come to work on the project on three different occasions. Each visit has made an overwhelming mark of progress, and brings the property one step closer to our goal of being finished with the remodel by December 2008.
The back half of the former Wander Inn Tavern was an apartment. Due to terrible living conditions the unit had not been occupied for nearly a year. This apartment needed to be removed to free up space for the development of the facility. With the swings of hammers and prying of crowbars the walls are down!
What an image to consider! Just see what can happen when a group of motivated people get together to do work. Special thanks to Tim and his motivation to get out and make this happen, and a special thanks to the good folks at McChord who see Tillicum as a place worth investing in.
I would also like to thank the youth program at Chapel Hill Presbyterian of Gig Harbor. On Saturday April 23rd thirty high school students and ten adult volunteers paid Tillicum a visit for the first time.
These students were participating in World Vision’s 30 Hour Famine and came to Tillicum to explore local missions. We started the work project with a prayer walk around Tillicum and then the delegation of jobs began.
Some students were on trash detail walking the neighborhood with trash bags collecting what they could find, others were on demo clean up duty while others were on cleaning crews working on the duplex units, mowing lawns and doing just about anything else that needed to be done.
What makes this all so exciting is seeing how all of the resources needed to make this project work are coming together at just the right time and right place. From receiving $50,000 at the Tacoma Narrows Rotary Auction, to a group of volunteers completing demo work down to the timing of the competition of our final architecture plans needed for filing permits. Sometimes we think we have control over how things work and how things are going to happen, I’m sure we do in some ways, but I’m so glad that we are not in others!
Dan Livingston
