Not A Robot, But A Ghost

So, the Youth Room progress is booming. I haven't been to the office in about a week and a half, so when I walked into what will be the Rock Gym this morning and looked to the section where the Youth Room will be, I was amazed to see what looks like an actual Youth Room. At least, it looked like the skeleton of a youth room. But either way, it looks like it will be exactly what we want!

If you look carefully, you can see a Kenyan man having a nap.

This place is going to be sweet! But it will take some more work. That dank looking cubby hole underneath the balcony will eventually be our youth office, tucked back in the wall to right where you cannot see. Still underneath that balcony and not tucked into the wall, but opposite of the office, will be a pretty chill hangout area where I will probably spend a fare amount of my office time. We may or may not get a dart board. I haven't brought it up with the others yet, but I have high hopes.
The Balcony will be the obligatory pingpong/foosball section of the youth room. I'm not sure how we are going to get those most essential youth room items, but the Lord will provide.
Those groovy lookin' steps you see are the way up to the Balcony and the way to the Student Seating Area, which brings me to my next portion of the room to point out.
Those bench looking steps, which are, in fact, made to be both a bench and a step (more the former than the latter, but we all know people will walk up and down them), will be our Student Seating Area for when we have a talk or a skit.

We're all really excited as the it get's closer and closer to reaching completion, but we have met some road blocks along the way. A lot of the necessary accoutrements (i.e. paint, carpeting, lights, sound system, etc. ...) are beginning to add up to be more expensive than we initially anticipated.
I don't want to say that this is hindering our ministry, but it's kind of hindering our ministry. We expected to have this room ready to use by last October, but with all the legal hoops that we had to jump through and all the monetary issues we are currently running into, we have been set back to it being finished in the month of...? We finally got through all the legal stuff and now are held back simply from the financial side of things.
Now let me explain myself when I said it is hindering our ministry to not be able to use this space. I am not saying that God cannot work through other means. What I am saying is that God has given our team a vision for our ministry here, which includes in a major way the youth room, and we really want to see that vision come to fruition. Furthermore, meeting in one person's house, although great for the kid whose house we are meeting at, is not great for everyone else. Our offices are in the middle of Diamond Plaza, which is a pretty good, central location for students to gather. Also, it's not someone's home, so there won't be the awkward feeling of "I don't even know the people whose house it is, so I'm not going." All that to say that we feel it will greatly advance our outreach opportunities.

For those of you who got lost as I was describing how and where our Youth Room will be set up, I have edited the above photo to give you an idea of what I was writing about. The edited picture is as follows:

For those of you who were wondering what my post had to do with robots & ghosts, it doesn't. I am currently on an Andrew Bird kick musically and that song is one of my new favorites. Look it up. It's worth your time.

For those of you who like to pray, please keep us in your prayers. We just sat down to map out what this semester's events will look like, and we really could use a consistent meeting place that we can call our own. Oh, yeah! And when you're praying, remember to thank God for the progress he's already granted us. We are very blessed!

Thanks for reading! If you want more to read, visit our blog at Adventure'sCalling!