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The traditional adobe building with its massive vigas was last used for services during Christmastime a dozen years ago. Soon after, the 60-year-old building's basement flooded, damaging the structure's roof, walls and floor.
The chapel was part of a Catholic training center for boys that was established in the 1930s off Second Street in the South Valley. When all the pews were in place, the chapel could seat several hundred people. Our Lady of Lourdes at Joy Junction cannot be used because of years of water damage.
Once the chapel renovation is successfully completed, the chapel will be used regularly for church services and Bible Studies. Currently, the shelter's multipurpose building is used for religious services.
Joy Junction’s official opening in 1986 was celebrated with a service and a potluck supper in the chapel. A short time later the chapel was also the site for our first annual Thanksgiving Dinner followed about a month later by our Christmas Dinner. However, I didn’t know that Christmas 1986 would be the last time we would use the chapel for many years to come.
One Sunday morning in early January 1987 I was walking by the chapel and noticed water seeping out of the basement. A closer look revealed that the approximately six feet high basement was flooded with water up to its ceiling. Immediately concerned, I called the landlords who pumped the area dry. However, the damage had been done.
The water in the basement had probably been collecting slowly for a couple of weeks before I even got a hint that anything was wrong. It had already started to wreak havoc with the building’s structure. After all, it’s no secret what you get when you mix water with adobe. You end up with a muddy mess, and of course a muddy mess meant that there would be no services in the chapel for a long time.
Over the next few years, we watched the chapel deteriorate. We made no attempts at repair, because at the time Joy Junction did not own the property on which we’re located and we didn’t think that it would be a very wise use of funds to fix a building on property which we might never own. However, it was always in my heart to see that old chapel restored to its original purpose as a house of worship.
Throughout the years I have frequently visualized the chapel as it will hopefully be one day soon. As a faith-based ministry we have always wanted to see the chapel be the focal point of shelter life, filled with the guests staying at Joy Junction, worshiping and praising the Lord and listening to sound life-changing Bible teaching from Joy Junction’s pastoral team.
The first step toward making that dream of restoring the chapel a reality came just over a couple of years ago when Joy Junction was donated 10 acres of the 52-acre 4500 2nd Street site and we were able to purchase the rest. Now it was Joy Junction’s chapel and we could go to work. I was excited, to say the least.
However, restoration wasn’t as easy as I had initially thought. Press releases asking for help from the media to give publicity to the building’s sad state produced one news crew from a local television station. While the story was excellently produced it aired on an early newscast (one not typically watched by a very large viewing audience) and produced no tangible results.
While nothing was happening with the chapel, it was never far from my mind. It was also on the minds of our board, who thought it especially appropriate with Joy Junction being a faith-based ministry that we should make the chapel our first renovation project. Such a move seemed to symbolize the very reason for Joy Junction’s reason for existence: that despite being considered an agency by many we are a ministry before anything else.
Click [HERE] to access the Chapel renovation archives. |
