One of Drumheller’s oldest churches is getting a facelift this month.
Starting on Tuesday, demolition will commence on the front entrance and lobby of the Seventh Day Adventist Church.
“We’re going to be starting the demolition with the backhoe on Tuesday. We’ll be replacing it with a new entrance that is wheelchair accessible, with handicap washrooms. We have some members that are getting older, who weren’t able to participate, and we wanted to do a little modernization,” said Wanda Wiebe, treasurer of the Seventh Day Adventist Church.
Demolition of the front entrance and lobby on the Seventh Day Adventist Church will commence on Tuesday, August 6. Then, later in August and September the Seniors in Action for God with Excellence (SAGE), a provincial group, will help rebuild and renovate the church. For the time being, services will be held at the Grace Lutheran Church.
To help rebuild the front entance, the church is receiving help from a provincial group of seniors dedicated to helping churches.
“Our conference, the ogranization for the province, has a group called SAGE, Seniors in Action for God with Excellence. They’ll be coming in September, but we’re getting the demolition and concrete work done ahead of time, so when they come out everything is ready to go for them,” said Wiebe. “They don’t necessarily do renovations. They do various things that need to be done. It’s a service group of seniors, like painting, and they do a lot of more fun stuff, too. This will be their first major construction project.”
Originally, the Seventh Day Adventist Church had intended to complete the renovation in May. However delays in getting SAGE to Drumheller caused the timing of the construction to be pushed back to August and September. Wiebe feels it was a fortuitous turn of events.
“We were originally going to start in May, but we’re so grateful we didn’t, because with all the rain, we would’ve had a flooded church! The delays also let us come up with some better plans,” said Wiebe.
In addition to a new entrance and lobby, a new family washroom with a shower will be installed. Any leftover funds will be used to do smaller renovations to the interior of the church.
For the time being, the Seventh Day Adventist congregation will be meeting in the Grace Lutheran Church.
“We’re going to meet in the Grace Lutheran Church. They’ve graciously allowed us to use their church for the months of August and September,” said Wiebe.
The church is accepting donations, which can be made by contacting Wiebe at 403-919-8953.
