Base Demolition!

This is the story. So just recently YWAM Skien has become sole owners of its property and of the nice jail it has been living in for some years. As the summer has been just awful...rain, rain, rain this new purchase of the building has proved itself to be a good and horrible. We now own the building (or are trying to) and now we have the freedom to do what we would like to it----and what we have to do to save it. Since this rain has come without stop we are flooded from the 3rd floor and down. It's a little backwards here, I guess since we are so far north things flood from the top floor to the bottom. Well actually, the roof is rotten. Oh joy! And dripping and ruining the rooms below for months now. So what shall we do when students come very soon? We must fix it so the conditions are suitable for living. So at this GOFest...last weekend we asked for a special offering for the base and we were amazed at the generosity to repair the roof of this 1800's jail. What a rotten task that we do not hire anyone to do...but do ourselves a month before the students come. The repairs are about 1 million Krones in estimation---making that like $168,400. At the GOFest most of the people were full time missionaries and they were so generous. We raised over $47, 000 towards the repairs in one offering. We still have quite a bit to go, but it will come. If you want to contribute to the cause. Just send a letter and a check to written to Erika Hydeen : YWAM Skien Base Repairs. Send it to 518 Albany Ave. NE Orange City, IA 51041 USA. If the Lord knocks on your heart---let the gates open. We have a month to demolish the women's bathroom and fix the roof there and then finish the boys and then the whole upper floor. We are going to remove 6 large chimney's that have brought heat through this building to every jail cell when it was in use...now they are dangerous and almost toppling treachery looming high above the house. Any sort of special wind.....and its gone. We found hundreds of rotten wood planks that have held tight to thier job for this long, but now they would split in a few for years. We are blessed to get the base and now to be in the process of making it better. Rebuilding the ancient ruins and restoring the places destroyed. It is about building the house. In which the Lord will do. So, we trust him.

This is the girls bathroom on the 3rd floor last Wednesday afternoon. We started major demolition on Thursday and Friday. I used to get clean in this flood water madness. Yuck. The ceiling fell in by the weight of the insulation 'sponges' earlier this summer. We had actually just installed this nice 'leak free shower' in which we had to damage so that the water in the main bathroom area would drain. What a bummer to be so thrilled about no leaks and then make it leak a month later...not cool.

This is the same room as the above picture. This is Thursday and here is Marianne and Elisabet working on chipping thier way out of prison one brick at a time. The dust was just horrendous. It kind of felt like a bomb dropped here and we slowly took away the debris. The boys worked on the roof just above us preparing to take down the first chimney. They made a bed of wooden planks to catch the falling bricks from rolling off the 4 story building. Later we heard this 'dut, dut dutdutdut...dut CRASH.......hooray!!!' The chimney had come down, and no one died!!! Hooray!

How about a dust shower?

Friday morning before working on the bathroom. We had done some incredible demolition the day before. The whole roof was out and now as you can see it is obvious that this room is 'OUT OF ORDER' I had to laugh to myself...well really I laughed out loud with just me there...as I peeked in the room and saw the sky and the Methodist Church next door with the Norwegian breeze in my hair. Hmmm, shall I use the toilet? Shall I take a shower? They can't be serious that this room is really out of order. NO KIDDING! In the course of the day we took everything down. The tile, plaster, and shower back plus removing the heaviest door in the world between the toilet room and the shower room. This was my job. Dirt that had not been shifted in hundreds of years---was now all over my body.

Birgitte was just showing off her skills. Norwegians don't waste a thing. We just cut the wood and stacked it up for the winter. Like beavers.

Again. If you want to help out with our major project just let me know and I can get you more information. Otherwise just pray for us here at the base. We thank God for his faithfulness already. It will be so grand!!!