St John in the Wilderness

We are pleased to report that the footings for the chapel have been poured before the cold weather set in. We hired three local young men and had a marathon few days mixing and pouring cement after first spending a few weeks between hospital shifts preparing the ground and tying rebar.

All now is finished, at least for this first pour. The next two pours will go much more quickly now that the base has been set and now that we know what our equipment can do. We will complete the cement base for the columns and the floor as early next spring as we can. Then the walls can begin to rise and we will see the progress before us.

Here are some photos of the footings in the ground. We were pleased at the smoothness and quality of the finished cement.

Gravel Screener Borrowed from a Neighbour

Getting all the equipment ready in order to build the chapel was a chore in itself. This is the gravel screener a neighbour down the lake lent us for preparing the gravel for laying cement for the foundation.

Mini Excavator

This mini-excavator will come in handy for preparing the site and for lifting stone.

Nil on Tractor Digging Out the Chapel Site

You’ve got to admit — he sure looks as if he’s having fun!

Mark and Andy Making Forms

Mark and Andy worked hard constructing forms for the foundation.

Hammering Away: Andy and Mark Making Forms

We’re grateful for the help of Andy and Mark who put in a good work day nailing together the forms that will contain the cement we pour for the chapel’s foundation.

The day after the sweat, we all hiked up to Monica Meadows to enjoy the high country. Amazing beauty!

Hiking in Monica Meadows

What a beautiful day hiking in the mountains with our friends! The sparkling quality of the sunlight in the clear mountain air refreshed us.

This is the same hike we had taken a few weeks before with Ron Dart.

Two posts in the same day after a few months of silence!

I wanted to show some photos that didn’t have snow, but that turned out to be a challenge.

I’m including some photos taken on our hike up to Monica Meadows last week. Even though it is now July, the heavy snow is still melting from the peaks. Some places have glaciers which stay all year round. People tell us that in early August the wildflowers on Monica Meadows are exquisite. We hope to make it up there again to see them.

Glacier near Monica Meadows

At the end of last summer, with the assistance of our visiting friend Stephen Ulstrom, we celebrated a groundbreaking prayer service to start work on the chapel building site. Here are some pictures from that day.

We were able to do all the measuring before the winter set in, but needed to break because of cold weather.

This June we began in earnest, between Nil’s full time job and family commitments, to excavate the building site. We still need to screen the gravel to make concrete, and then the building of forms can begin. Everything takes time because our main builder remains busy with his twelve hour hospital shifts. I hope to be more helpful as the jobs become more manageable.

As far as building goes, I am the “point me to it and give me all the baby steps” kind of helper. I’m guessing I’ll be pretty good at sorting through stones and maybe at placing one on top of another. I stink at driving large machinery, but maybe before the end of this project, I will have learned a thing or two.

We walk along this path after docking our boat.

Our snow has quickly receded over the past two weeks, but this is what the road to our house looked like earlier on. We find the snow beautiful here — so peaceful! And we can tell what kinds of neighbors we have by reading their tracks after a fresh snowfall.

The Theotokos travels with us as we cross the lake -- sometimes with terrific waves!

Exiting the marina as the sun sets.

I may have jumbled the order of these photos! The last photo was taken coming home in the evening. We are leaving the marina where we dock the boat and starting to cross the lake. Our boat has a laminated icon card taped to the windshield. When we get to the other side, we dock the boat and climb the road to the house — a brisk five minute walk.

So many times on our trek across the lake we see wildlife — bald eagles, waterfowl, otters. Once when our friend Mark and I were getting out of our car, we heard a splash and ran to the shore just in time to see a buck deer, who had jumped into the lake, swim across about 3-4 km against a strong current. An amazing sight! I wrote a poem about it.

Always we feel the presence of God and his love for Creation. Biblical passages come alive as we battle the wind and the waves. We are grateful that we have been blessed with this experience.

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