Monday, August 23, 2010

Running and Digging


I thought I'd share this photo of Chapel construction in progress. As you can see "lots of dirt". The photo is looking at the excavations for the Chapel foundation. I have a friend who talks about the "red dirt" in East Texas and you can certainly see red dirt in the photo.

Beyond what you can see in the photo there has been a lot of work done on the parking and some work done where the re-located ball fields will be. Thanks to cooperation between the school and construction crew things have gone pretty smoothly with the beginning of school on August 16. It has been hot and dry which seems to be the best weather for this part of the construction. We could use some rain but I'm sure the construction crews would prefer to keep moving dirt.

I have been able to keep up with my runs..........hot but good. I hope to schedule another "batch" of runs soon. I'll keep you posted.

Chapel funding is about $600,000 short of having the construction and initial furnishings fully pledged thanks to so many generous members of the Cathedral community. I recently visited a church under construction in another diocese and they were just about the reverse of our situation with about $500,000 in the bank and looking at debt around $5,000,000. Even though we continue to work to cover our entire cost of just under $5,000,000 we have to be very grateful to God and His generous people that we have only several hundred thousand still to cover.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

August 12 Hot and Fast

A bit of an update on the progress with the Chapel of Saints Peter and Paul. The dirt is flying on site and with the start of school looming on the horizon the construction crews are working hard to have as much drive and parking area available as possible. They are working on the foundation of the Chapel also so as you can imagine the corner of Loop 323 and Easy Street is a busy place right now.

We have had some great meetings discussing the interior liturgical design of the Chapel. Another busy agenda there with stained glass, altar furnishings and pews to look at. The basic theme that is developing is a journey of the saints depicted in the stained glass windows along the Chapel walls and culminating in the main window over the altar with Christ in Glory surrounded by the 12 apostles. The initial drawings are very exciting and even though we have to keep costs down as much as possible we agree that the windows will be beautiful and inspiring.

I'll do my best to share some site photos once it is more than dirt moving and then also share sketches of the windows etc. as they develop.

Running has been good lately too heat advisories and all!!!!!!!!!!

I really have tried to be sensible about the heat and run in the late evenings as much as possible. It really has felt good. After school starts I'll have to put together another set of runs!!!!!!!

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Scenes from a Groundbreaking



Finally have a chance to share some pictures from the official groundbreaking for the Chapel of Saints Peter and Paul by Bishop Alvaro Corrada on June 29,2010.

Hello Again............its August


Sorry for letting July slip by with no posts. It was a busy month with several trips out of town.

Great things are happening with the Chapel of Saints Peter and Paul. Crews are working hard to get things in shape for the beginning of school and other activities.

I have been running but haven't organized myself around another "set of runs". I'll try to remedy that soon. I have to admit I will probably wait until the temperatures are mostly below 100 degrees instead of trying to get in too many runs with 100 plus temperatures. I may be a crazy runner but I'm not that crazy!!!!!!!!!