With Baby Twigg-Harris's impending arrival, a few temporary staffing changes are on the horizon. Jessie will be out of the office for a month on maternity leave. During that time, Pam Behee will be on interim staff in the Faith office. Any emails, questions, phone calls, or concerns normally directed to Jessie will be handled by Pam and Pastor Sharon. Jessie will not be responding to emails, however office contact information remains the same with staff generally available in the office Tuesday - Thursday.

office@faithbellingham.org

(360) 733-3970

 Faith has a new bike rack & shelter! Several years in the dreaming, Faith has wanted to build a safe and covered area for bicyclists to secure their bikes here at Faith. With gifts from the Mike Holl memorial (Mike was an avid cyclist), fundraising from the youth, and and incredible amount of donated labor for design and construction, we were able to make it a reality!

The family of Mike Holl would like to express their sincere and heart-felt appreciation for those involved (especially Sharon Swanson, James Harris, and Chris Behee) in the idea, design, and construction of the Bike Rack to remember him. For those who didn't know him well: he rode in eleven Seattle to Portland bike rides, often rode his bike from home at Lake Samish to work at the Bellingham airport, and biked the back roads of Skagit County and Desert Springs, CA.  He enjoyed biking with the middle school youth years ago on their summer Bible study bike rides, and especially enjoyed helping them to learn to maintain their bikes.     --Nancy Holl

The end of summer brought more Wednesday night fun--lefse-making, hymn-sings, and meals together, as well as the annual Faith Family Camp-Out--complete with tie-dye, croquet, s'mores, and stories around the fire. We kicked off Fall program at Faith on Celebration Sunday (and joined congregations all over the nation celebrating the ELCA's 25th anniversary and "God's Work, Our Hands") with the Blessing of the Bikes & Wheels, Blessing of the new bike rack, the annual church picnic/potluck, and service work in the community garden! We began Late-Morning Catechism (an all-ages confirmation class) after church on Sundays, and we brought our pets to church on Oct. 6 to commemorate St. Francis of Assisi with the Blessing of the Animals. The Spirit lives on in our life together, and we are grateful.

APPLICATION TO ACQUIRE THE VACATED BORDER PATROL BUILDING ON MCLEOD ROAD ACROSS FROM FAITH.....

As many of you know, we have been working with the Opportunity Council and the Whatcom County Health Department in the application process for the vacated Border Patrol Station across from the church.  This is a lengthy process, beginning with extensive documentation for the Dept. of Health and Human Services.

The stipulation for future use of the buildings is assistance for people who are homeless.  The areas that we have identified (together with Health Dept., Opportunity Council and an interested group from Faith) are those of emergency short-term housing for families who are homeless, and also medical respite care for homeless persons following surgery.

It has been clear all along that if we were to have this property deeded over to Faith the project could not be funded by the budget of the congregation.  Funding will have to come from local agencies, grants, and other contributions.  In addition, while being accountable to the congregation, the facility would need a separate board of directors for governance, and staff to oversee things.  A board would be assembled with members from other churches and organizations as well as Faith members.

Thanks to Dick Clark and Chris Behee, the incredibly detailed initial application was submitted earlier in the summer.  We received a response, and an addendum to the original application was sent back in August.  Another, shorter response was called for 3 weeks ago and duly sent off.

We await a final response from the GSA.  At that point, if the response is positive, we will schedule a meeting of the membership to discuss the project and vote on whether to go forward.