While work on the major renovation of the Parish Centre is complete, a One Heart, One Soul project the parish raised money to do, a great many little “jobs” were left over. Among them was repair to the centre’s garage door. The automatic opener hasn’t functioned for years, and manual opening and closing wasn’t much of an issue for what was essentially an unheated storage facility. But with the renovation of the centre, including turning some of the storage space into a meeting room with a picture window looking out onto the parish gardens, access to the garage became an issue. Without a functioning door opener, the many garden tools and grounds-keeping equipment could not be accessed except by walking through the parish centre, the new meeting room and out the emergency exit into the now smaller garage. Only then could the garage door be opened manually from the inside.
Susan and Glen Brotzel were standing as godparents at a recent baptism, and in the time after the liturgy during the usual chit-chat, Glen mentioned how his dad had a business installing automatic garage doors back in the day when they were both a novelty, and rather expensive for most homeowners.
“I used to go with him on the installations and the service calls and got pretty familiar with them. So now I don’t mind helping a neighbour who needs one fixed, if it isn’t working properly,” Glen explained.
This all seemed prompted by the Holy Spirit to Father Whitfield who asked if Glen knew that we had a busted system in the parish centre. Glen said he didn’t, but would be happy to have a look. Two weeks later he came out to the parish and in a matter of a couple of hours we had a functioning door, and a small savings to the parish.
“These little jobs add up,” said Father Whitfield. “Saving a little here and a little there helps free up resources for things like the youth group, the music ministry, and so on.”
Glen said he was glad to help, and not leave any of his talents unused when they can be of service, even one as particular as being able to fix an automatic garage door.
“It’s like the parable of the slave who buried the talents (a kind of silver coin in the ancient world), explained Glen. “I don’t want God asking me why I didn’t use them when I had the chance.”