(choir)
Amazing Grace,
how sweet the sound
(Tom Isern)
All these steeples,
the vertical spikes
in our prairie horizons.
They look like
exclamation points,
but I think maybe
they're question marks.
Where did all these
churches come from?
Who built them, and
where did those people go to?
And what does it mean,
when every other
material expression of who
those people were is gone,
but the steeples remain?
They're expressions
of faith I'm sure,
but I think maybe more
than one kind of faith.
And that leaves us to
contemplate not only
what we can learn about
these prairie chuhes,
but what we can learn from them.
...was blind
but now I see.
(woman) Production funding
for "Prairie Churches"
is provided by grants from...
and by...
[piano plays softly]
(Loretta Bernhoft) My father was
baptized, confirmed, married,
and buried through this church.
This has been where
I was baptized, confirmed,
married, and expect
to be buried from.
Vikur Lutheran Church
was founded by
immigrants from Iceland,
and it's 125 years old.
It unfortunately, these days is
used quite often for funerals.
We don't have a lot of
baptisms and weddings anymore,
again, because of rural
declining population,
but we have some
dedicated people who want
to make sure that we keep
the building in good shape.
[acoustic guitar plays]
As we were working on the
kneeling rail for the altar,
we needed to take off the pad
and preserve the fabric
so we could resow
a new kneeling pad,
and when we pulled the old
kneeling pad away, we learned
that for over 100 years people
have been kneeling on straw.
There are times when you're
doing projects like this that
it really takes you back to what
our ancestors had to work with
and how they struggled to do
the best they can
with what they had and obviously
did a beautiful job.
When the settlers came and
first set down their roots here,
their main social activity
or event was
a gathering
for worship services.
So the church was the focus
of their social life
as well as their spiritual life.
And we've really come
full circle because
we don't have a school anymore.
We've lost a lot of the
businesses that used to be here,
so really, now our church
is once again not only
our spiritual life,
but our social life
because that's
where we see people.
If we only see them once a week,
we see them in church.
So that remains a a very strong
part of our community,
and maybe that's part of
the reason we would hate
to see the churches close,
because then we may all go
in different directions
to worship,
and that would further
break those ties of
the small rural community which
we don't want to see happening.
[choir sings
a wordless melody]
(Tom Isern) I think
for most people who are
caring for country churches,
they're doing it as an homage.
They had ancestors or
predecessors in the community
that they thk should be
remembered, and that church
is the material remembrance
from those people.
But I have to say in some cases
it is just
pure cussed stubbornness that
has kept them going!
There have been a family
or a couple of families
that say, we're not gonna
let the place die.
Many times with a church
that's completely lost
its constituency, it does come
down to one or a very few,
and a person can do that
when you think about it
because these churches
have lost cash value,
and people will buy
a country church
and say, I'm going to see
that it stays around.
Often they don't
have the means
to do the rehabilitation
themselves,
but you can stop
a wrecking ball yourself.
Rehabilitating and maintaining
a country church has
a lot of investment in terms
of sweat equity involved.
It doesn't necessarily require
enormous outlays of cash,
and the groups that you
see trying to restore
and maintain rural churches,
you don't find them conducting
massive capital campaigns.
They rely heavily on volunteers,
and they scrounge materials.
It's really pretty heartening
what people can accomplish,
and if you can keep a church
tight-- you know the basics
for keeping a building together.
It's the roof
and the foundation.
If you can keep those essentials
together,
you can basically put the church
into safekeeping.
Well, I've had a hand myself
in helping to preserve
some of the prairie churches
in North Dakota,
and I'd have to say that's
a point of pride,
and I think it's worth doing,
not just because of
the purposes of the people
immediately involved
with that particular church but
because we hold these in trust.
Of course, I'm a believer in the
future of the northern plains,
and I actually believe there
will be a realized purpose
for these buildings
if nothing else
because they make
a place a place.
(man)
We pray in Jesus' name, Ame.
You may be seated.
I have no doubt that large
numbers of prairie churches
can be saved, but it depends
on people believing
there's some reason
to save them.
It's not a matter
of shortage of resources.
It's a matter of
shortage of faith.
The prairie churches
are just a symbol
of the way things are
on the northern plains
in that we have more history
than we have people
and taking care of our history,
in particular
our material history then,
it sufferers just from
the lack of available people.
It's a logistical problem.
I happen to have faith
things will work out
better in the future,
and if we gamble some resources
on making
that happen,
have we lost
that much?
Won't we feel the
better for having done it
in the present anyway?
Let's invest a little faith.
[piano plays
"Faith of our Fathers"]
This church was closed
in 1984 over Christmas service.
I was the youngest member
of the congregation.
In 1995, we had an auction sale.
I bought a lot of the
furnishings in here--
the pews, the altar,
the baptism font.
I used my own money.
I was single at that time,
and it was close to about
$4000 I spent on furnishings.
They decided, well,
if you're serious about
buying the furnishings, maybe
you want to buy the church?
So I bought the church from
the cemetery association,
and we kept it.
I got married probably
within 2 months after that,
so my wife had inherited
this little project too,
and she was very
supportive of that.
It gets difficult sometimes,
the financial part of it.
It's a big building.
It's a lot of work sometimes,
and too, as a farmer trying to
save time to work on the church,
do your farming,
it's hard to manage sometimes.
It means a lot to our family.
This church was organized
over at my farm
with my great grandparents.
We were there at the beginning
and also at the very end.
We'd kept it, not just
for our family,
but for other families
to use and to visit.
Usually, once a year,
we had a Christmas service
or a summer service.
We've had baptisms,
we've had a wedding.
We do get a handful
of visitors every year
saying that
"I was baptized here."
"I was married here."
"I had my confirmation here."
So it's a nice thing
to see that they like it,
and they appreciate it.
There is a lot of memories
inside these walls.
There's a lot of memories.
This has been
a very rewarding project.
I enjoy it.
I enjoy seeing the church.
I enjoy driving by it.
Even when you're working
out in the field,
it's nice
to see the church there.
This is where I can see
for miles away and say
okay, there's the church,
I know where I'm at.
This is my lighthouse
on the prairie.
[piano plays
"How Great Thou Art"]
[orchestra plays]
(woman)
Hallelujah
(Gerald Paliwor)
Every time you're driving along
and you see a church
that looks very familiar if you
check into the history of it,
a lot of the times,
you'll find the name
Father Philip Ruh associated
with that church.
He was a very motivated
individual, as you might guess
by the design of the building
and the adjacent grotto,
and as well, he's credited
with over 40 works in Canada.
He was a self-taught architect.
He didn't have any formal
training in architecture.
He was just very well read,
and as I mentioned,
he was obviously a very
motivated individual because
you look at some of his works
and you imagine that,
how would you even go about
designing a place like this?
Well he was,
like I say, obviously
a quite an intelligent fellow.
Now, he was originally
a Roman Catholic priest
from Alsace-Lorraine,
but due to the shortage
of Ukrainian Catholic
missionaries in Canada,
he was asked to convert
to the Eastern rite.
So he was sent to the
Ukraine for several years,
where he learned the language,
then he migrated to Canada.
How he ended up in Cook's Creek,
the faithful of the area
had heard of Father Ruh's
prowess as an architect
and had petitioned to have him
come to Cook's Creek
to help build a new church.
The Bishop sent him
out here to have a look.
His exact words were, "What
a God forsaken place this is!"
He wrote back to the Bishop,
are you sure this is
what you want me to do,
and the Bishop replied yes,
this is where you will serve.
So he said it was not his will
that he be in Cook's Creek,
but it is "The Will" that
I be here so I shall serve.
Now, the interesting thing is--
that was in 1930
that he arrived, and they
started building the church,
and he was the resident priest
until 1962 when he passed away.
So we presume the place kind of
grew on him a little bit.
Some considered him quite gruff
and quite forward and abrupt,
but if you look at any project
of great scale,
usually the person that's
driving the project
has to be a very
take-charge individual.
So for some he might have been
a little on the rough side.
Imagine trying to get a group
of volunteers moving
in a direction on a project,
not only such a large project,
but for such a long time--
we're talking 22 years.
If you talk to the old-timers
of the area, like my father,
and even today, I was talking
with him and he was telling
stories of when he was
14 years old, helping to build
the church, and how Father Ruh
would be pitching in,
and his hands, Father Ruh's
hands, were much rougher
than any of the other laborers
because he was always,
always a very hands-on laborer.
He didn't supervise
the job just.
He also was involved
with the pitching
and the throwing of whatever
materials were required.
He had his lighter moments
as well, and he, well,
to put it bluntly, had some of
the best moonshine in the area!
[laughs]
And he was known for it!
So quite a character when
you get right down to it.
It started in 1930, and
there literally was no work
to be found in The Depression.
They would donate their labor
to the church,
and that was how
the church was constructed.
Another interesting note was
there was no machinery allowed
in the building of the church,
not even a cement mixer.
So when you look at everything
in the church and imagine
how could that be built by hand?
Well, that's exactly
how it was built.
Father Ruh was
very strict that it be built
by the hand of man
for the Glory of God.
So that was your "hammer
and a nail, shovel, and a pail"
was the tools of the trade.
There was a lot of innovative
thinking when the structure
was being built
how to make it look like marble,
and the pillars outside
and all that,
and a lot of it was
local materials
they were able to come up with
and some very clever work
in the design of it.
He realized not to overstep
your bounds
'cause in his own writings,
it was "slow and sure,"
better than "speedy
and bankrupt," especially
at that time when resources
were strained, moneywise.
And manpowerwise, he worked
with what was available,
and he raised what was needed
by whatever means,
be it dances, bingo's--
you name it.
He raised funds, and he built
as the funds were available.
He said there would be
no debt incurred
in the building of the church,
and they never did.
Now, it took 22 years to build.
It was completed in 1952,
then it was consecrated in 1954
and dedicated
to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
(woman) Ave Maria
gratia plena,
Maria gratia
plena,
Maria
gratia plena.
Ave ave Dominus.
Dominus te-cum.
Benedicta tu
in mulieribus.
Et benedictus.
Et benedictus
fructus ventris,
Ventris tui Iesus.
Ave Maria.
[piano plays]
(Rolf Berg) This has been
our home all our life.
My wife and I both
have attended this church.
We were both baptized here
just a couple weeks apart
and both went
to Sunday school here,
were confirmed
in the same class,
and my hope and prayer is that
it can continue running
in the years ahead.
This church is the
Viking Lutheran Church.
We had the dedication
of this building in 1909.
At that time, we were considered
the biggest rural church,
Norwegian Evangelical
Lutheran Church in America,
between Minneapolis
and the West Coast.
I think anytime we have
people come here and tour,
they can't believe
the windows that are here,
and the rare thing about them
is how they got here
without any problem.
When you stop and think
about that, you marvel
at what these people have
done here and the work
that they've done
to build this church.
Most of the material came on
train and was carted by horses!
And these picture windows, and
all the things in this church
were brought here
on wagon boxes.
[orchestra plays
"the Hallelujah Chorus"]
I went to Bismarck, and I went
up to the historical society,
and I said, I'd like to have
you see something in Maddock.
I'll never forget that day
'cause Lou Hefernil walked in,
and he looked up
at the chandelier
and looked at that window
and looked at that window.
He said "Rolf, you don't know
what you've got here, do you?"
I says "Lou, that's
why you're here."
Well he said, "The chandelier
and the windows," he said,
"I'm considering
they're more valuable
than the rest of the building
you have here.
The value on them
is unbelievable."
So in 1979, we were listed on
The National Registry.
One thing I notice
about our rural churches,
the membership of these churches
are more permanent.
They want
to keep what they've got.
The people all feel a part
of the building itself,
and I think that's why
the building is still here
and maintained as such
because they're very proud
of the architecture,
the stained-glass windows, and
then the fact that many of them,
it's their grandpa and grandmas
that have done this work.
And so all they're doing
is continuing,
not because they feel
they have to,
but because they want to
continue the heritage
that was here
down through the years.
[orchestra plays
"the Hallelujah Chorus"]
[pipe organ plays
"A Mighty Fortress Is Our God"]
(Ronald Ramsay) Buildings are
total sensory experiences.
Too often because
architecture involves objects,
we tend to think of them
as exclusively visual things.
They're not.
Next time we go
to a religious service,
start to pay attention
to all 5 of your senses.
Don't just look at the building,
but listen to it, smell it,
and there are even instances
where we taste buildings,
especially churches that,
old masonry churches,
that begin to develop rising
damp, and you walk in
and you can almost
taste the mildew in it.
Coming to church
and attending a service
is a multisensory experience.
When people began
arriving here
in the middle of
the 19th century,
they were bringing a certain
expectation
about what a church
was supposed to look like,
came with a kind of
architectural baggage
of the motherland, and whether
you built that
in wood
or masonry or tin
or stucco didn't really
matter very much.
It was the form.
You can read a building
from the outside,
what's going on on the inside,
and in many instances,
you can probably
predict who's inside.
Certainly the Scandinavian
churches have
a kind of
sparseness to them.
I think if
you go back
to the history
of the Scandinavian
immigration,
many of the people who came,
especially from Norway,
were Hauge Lutherans,
and Hauge Lutheranism
was a Lutheranism of
deprivation.
It was learning how to find
sanctity in having less
rather than having more.
And so all these Hauge Lutherans
came here and built churches
that were lean and spare and
stripped of ornamentation
because from their theological
perspective, ornament was sin.
A pair of towers,
either identical
or mismatched,
probably a pretty good
indication that
Roman Catholics
are in there.
Coming from Eastern Europe,
most of the Eastern churches
took as their pattern
the Orthodox pattern
of Eastern Christianity
with domes
of one sort or another
that were not nearly
as prominent in the West.
And so here we have
another ethnic group
bringing an expectation
with them of what a church
is supposed to look like.
It's supposed to look
like the ones back home.
The building is,
after all, a glove,
and the hand that's
in the glove
are the people and the
liturgical practice.
The glove is going to take
its form from the hand,
and it's important as a people
that we keep certain examples
to remind us of where
we've come from
and how far
we've come
and how far perhaps
we have yet to go.
When you look at the building
like this, where at the time,
there were maybe 50 or
60 people in the community,
somebody had a lot of vision
to build something like that.
I'm sure some of them must've
called them, I don't know,
maybe "crazy"
to build such a big place
that would hold 500 people when
there's only 50 or 60 people.
But it's often filled up.
Our church is Saint Joachim
Chevaliers De La Broquerie.
It was completed in 1901.
The bricks were manufactured
just outside of town here.
I know that the wood
was made, cut, and sawed
by the first pioneers, so
we're very proud of our church.
You can see the architecture
is something that
we're very proud of.
I don't know how they did it,
you know, when there wasn't
as many people to maintain
a place like this.
It must've been difficult.
Now it's quite costly
just to heat it.
I remember when I was a kid,
they didn't heat the church
like all week
in the wintertime.
It was just wood furnaces,
and the wood was supplied
by the parishioners.
In some places I've seen
some beautiful churches
that they said ah, it's not
worth fixing, it's too old,
so they let it go, and then
they have to tear it down
and build something else, and
I think it's something lost.
We're lucky that
we still have our church.
It's part of our culture,
of our heritage
so it's nice to keep
those things.
If you throw away this,
you throw away part of history.
[pipe organ plays "Jesu,
Joy of Man's Desiring]
(Burt Imhoff)
We have people come here
from all over the world,
and they can't figure out
what this art is doing out here
in the middle of nowhere.
Did he donate pictures to
churches in Saskatchewan?
Definitely. A lot of churches
he did for free of charge.
My grandfather originally
came from Germany.
From Germany, he immigrated
to Reading, Pennsylvania.
From Reading, Pennsylvania,
at his late 40's,
he moved up here
to St. Walburg, Saskatchewan.
He came up here on a hunting
trip with some people he knew,
and there was inexpensive land
up here at that time,
so he bought land, and he liked
the area, and he moved up here.
They moved in 1914.
He hired other people to work
his land and to break it
because he wasn't a farmer.
He was an artist,
and that's all he did.
He decorated a lot of churches.
He was trained in
art schools
in Holland, Dusseldorf
in Germany.
Most of his work was done
in the States, in the Dakotas
and mostly around Pennsylvania.
The list we have of all the
churches he did was over 90,
but obviously, he did a lot
more than that because there
are some churches that he did
that we haven't got lists of.
We're at the Imhoff studio,
the working gallery
of my husband's grandfather
Berthold Von Imhoff.
He started all these paintings
in charcoal first,
and then he would put
3 coats of oil.
And he also only painted
by the north light
because he also had
to mix his own colors.
Couldn't buy the colors
that he used at that time.
That's why all the windows
in this studio
are on the north side,
and he could get
the true colors that way.
When they would contact him to
do a church,
he had numerous amounts
of small paintings,
like you see them all
around the side over here.
He'd take those with him,
and they would pick out
what they wanted in a church,
and then he would paint it
in life size.
All the pictures that he did
were done right
in this building,
and then they were taken
down to the church
and then put up,
unless it was a curved area
like over an altar or
a curved dome or something,
then the canvases were put up,
and they were painted right
in the building right there.
Even though they lived
up here in Saskatchewan,
they would go back
to the States and do projects.
When they did the large church
in Reading, Pennsylvania,
they moved down there.
We're in the St. Peter the
Apostle Roman Catholic Church.
This is undoubtedly
Berthold Imhoff's masterpiece.
At the top of the ceiling here
are 224 life-sized figures
processing towards the altar.
In the sanctuary,
we see St. Paul
preaching to the people
of the East
and St. Peter preaching
to the peoples of the West.
Berthold received a commission
from St. Peter's Church
to paint this procession
of Saints, and he did this
at his studio at
St. Walburg, Saskatchewan,
and put the paintings
on a train, and he
and his son Carl came down here
and installed the paintings
in approximately the mid 1920's.
When he moved up here, yeah,
he was well off,
but everything
he made in churches,
he would put back
in his canvases.
He painted when
he didn't have commissions.
All the ones you see
in here today,
he just painted to paint--
no sale for him--
He never did sell a picture.
He never painted
a picture to sell.
It was just churches that
he was commissioned to do.
In the United States,
he did very well.
Everything he had, he paid for
with the work of his artwork.
Much of the
work he did
in the churches in Saskatchewan,
often they were donated.
It was important to him
that they had something that
reminded them maybe of their
homeland 'cause a lot of these
were European people, and
the churches were decorated
beautifully there, and
so he would give them
a gift that way, a reminder
of their homeland.
And also even in worship,
the art helped them
because it drew them
to thinking of things
that were say,
removed from everyday life.
A decoration from
the Pope came in 1937.
He was knighted
with the Knighthood
of Saint Gregory the Great.
It was befitting that knighthood
was bestowed on him
because Saint Gregory the Great
was noted for his charity.
He used his wealth
to the good of everybody.
When he died,
he was not well off at all.
He was in fact very poor, so for
helping
with Mrs. Imhoff,
his wife gave
a painting to the undertaker
because there was no money.
He was a very spiritual person,
and I wouldn't say so much
religious as very faithful.
He had a faith, and
he had a goodness in him.
I mean, he had to have
to have given so much,
not only in his artwork
but in other charity too.
Like if somebody was hard up,
he would help them out,
and that was not known
until after he died.
(choir)
Faith of
our fathers,
living still,
in spite
of dungeon,
fire, and sword.
Oh, how our hearts
beat high with joy
Whene'er we hear
that glorious Word!
Faith of
our fathers,
holy faith.
We will be true
to thee till death.
[resonant clanging
of a churchbell]
(man)
Let us pray.
Most high God in the heavens
cannot contain,
we give you thanks for the gifts
of those who have built
and maintain this
house of prayer.
We used to have a membership
that was very large here.
(man)
You made all things.
(John Boen)
We have a picture down
in the basement of one of
the special occasions up here.
That photo is
approximately 3 feet long
to cover
the number of people here,
and they were all
church members.
And now when we took one
about 10 years ago,
that's about 10
by 12 inches square.
We are struggling to
keep the church going.
It has been here
for 134 years,
so we'll try and make it
go for a few more.
I believe my great grandfather
was a member of this church.
I've been a member
here all my life.
Betty and I were married here,
and our 2 daughters
were married here.
[piano plays softly]
It's had many good happy events,
but it'll be a shame
to board up the windows.
I hope it doesn't
happen in my day.
[violin plays softly]
(Sheldon Green)
Saints Peter and Paul Church
in Strasburg, North Dakota,
really is symbolic of
the immigrant experience.
Yes, they came to the New World,
and they came to start fresh,
but they also came
as people of faith
just like they had been
in the Ukraine.
They did not leave that behind.
The Strasburg church
was built in 1909 to 1911
at a cost of $45,000,
so at that time
that was the finest building
for miles around.
The feeling among
the German Catholics was
only the best house for God,
and so there was this tradition
that the church was the finest
that they could possibly build.
We're going to spare no expense.
In fact, there was
a real feeling that we must
sacrifice personally,
or our family must,
in order to build
this magnificent house.
When Saints Peter and Paul
Church was being built,
not everyone was 100% behind
donating their own labor
to build the church.
Some of them thought just
if I pay the money,
I can stay at home and farm.
And so there were several
vocal farmers that said,
why should I give up my time
to build this church when
my work is needed at home?
And it wasn't more than
a few days after that
that severe hailstorms swept
through the area,
and the hail decimated crops
far and wide.
Generally they destroyed the
fields of the people who were
vocal about not wanting to give
their labor to the church.
The people who had sent laborers
in or sent sons or fathers in
to work on the church, somehow
their crops were spared.
And so the following day,
the work site at the church
was swelled
with all these farmers
wanting to come in and work.
Apparently, they didn't want
to run the risk of hail again.
As soon as the building
was finished,
a lot of the parishioners
started donating statuary art
in honor of an immigrant
or a family member.
Quickly the church filled.
There's something
like a dozen angels.
There's 10 statues to saints.
There's the glass windows.
Most of these were given
in the name of someone
that was being honored
or recalled.
There was a priest
in Strasburg in the 1980's
that wanted to remove
the high altar,
and during the congregational
meeting when this was put out,
there was a voice from the back
said, "If that altar moves,
your backside will be
filled with buckshot!"
And so the diocese moved that
priest to a different church.
The parishioners in Strasburg
wanted to maintain that link
with their European past and
honoring the pioneers that came.
They didn't want
to touch anything.
Over and over and over again,
the people who are
most familiar with these
rural heritage gems,
are the least impressed by them
because they're so used to them.
They've seen them all their
lives, and they seem to have
an impression that it's
the same way all over.
They're everywhere, so why
should we save this one?
It takes someone
who's not from the area
to say no, this is
really special.
You guys really have
to do something with this.
The Manitoba Prairie Churches
Project has 2 principle funders.
It's the Thomas Sill
Foundation of Winnipeg
and the Kaplan Fund
out of New York City.
Being with the Manitoba Culture
Heritage and Tourism
Historic
Resources Branch,
we often help
people when they
come to us to try and organize
a project to save something.
I got a call from the
Kaplan Fund in New York City,
and they were funding
a prairie churches program
in Saskatchewan
and North Dakota.
It was like a cross-border
northern plains thing that
they were doing, and they
were saying well,
do you have any interest
in churches in Manitoba?
Oh, do we have an
interest in churches?
We probably
have the best
variety of
country churches
on the
whole continent.
You have to
come see them.
Here we've got Mennonites
and Poles and Icelanders.
It's just a wonderful, wonderful
variety, and the churches
are part of that cultural
landscape
which again, sadly, is
disappearing.
And if you are fortunate
enough to drive around
and see some of these,
you'll see what I mean.
They're all different.
Some are just
spectacular churches,
and I don't know who
the architects were.
Some of them look
like Turkish mosques.
Some of them look like simple
little gable roofs with
a teeny-weeny little dome where
the mammas and the grandmas
and the grandpas and the
grandkids all came to help out.
We've got quite a few
churches that are preserved.
There is a couple of
churches not far from here
that haven't been used as
churches since the mid '60's,
and they're just
now religious landmarks.
The people who used to go there
or have family buried there,
they go back, and they cut
the grass and paint the church
every 10 years and roof it,
and it hasn't been used
like for 30 years as a church,
but it's this wonderful
landmark in the countryside
attesting to the settlers
and what once was here.
So even though it's only
used once a year or not at all
doesn't mean you can't
save it as a landmark.
So every little one's a big
success because it was part
of the cultural landscape,
and it would be really,
really sad to have what used
to be a landscape dotted
with grain elevators and
churches and domes poking up
over the tree line than to
have nothing on the landscape.
So things like this are
very important to preserve.
[choir sings]
(Dot Connolly)
We were sitting
at the restaurant,
a bunch of women and myself,
and somebody came in and sad
vandals have broken
into the church.
We walked through the doo,
and as you walk in,
there's a large red carpe.
In the center of the carpet,
the cross lay on the floor
smashed in 2.
There was cigarette butts,
and there were pop cans
and beer cans.
The icons on the wall as
you go into the iconostas
were stabbed in the heart.
The people felt such
a feeling of sadness.
It was just overwhelming
to think
here's another thing
that is lost,
another part of the community,
sort of the final nail
in the coffin.
I had my granddaughter with me,
and she said Grandma,
why don't you fix it up?
Why don't you patch the roo,
paint the walls,
and patch up the cracks?
And I thought what
do we have to lose?
We still all figured
that there was no way,
but we thought,
well, we'll try.
And so we
tried one step
and the next step
and the next step.
The first thing to do
was the basement
which was
the biggest project.
We got quotes that that
was going to be $80,000.
Well, how could we get $80,000?
But we wrote to the governmen,
Hugh Packland in Winnipeg
with the Winnipeg Foundation
and the Kaplan Fund,
which of all is the
Welch's grapefruit people
out of New York City.
Well, I would go
and find these people,
and then I'd come back
in the community
and say the Welch's grapefruit
people out of New York City
want to put some money
into our church.
And people would just
shake their head.
"Why are you putting money
into that old church
when there's
so much else to do?"
"Why don't you fix the roads?"
So the first year they
thought we were crazy.
The 2nd year they were
pretty sure we were crazy.
We're going into our 5th year,
and the local people are
starting to think that ths
is something pretty fantastc
that the community did.
This church now is
coming alive once again.
That first service that we had
was an amazing thing to happe.
The old people who were sure
that they had lost their church,
that they would never have
a service in that church again,
they came,
and in the center,
they put a picture
of the Madonna,
and people come up the carpt
on their knees
to kiss that picture.
And there were the old people,
the local men,
the big macho men
that you see
in the coffee shop
every morning,
on their knees
with tears in their eyes
coming to kiss that pictue
because they thought
that they would never
see that happen.
[woman sings,
with piano accompaniment]
Our Father
Which art in heaven
Hallowed be
thy name
Thy kingdom come
Thy will be done
On earth as it is
in heaven
Give us this day
our daily bread
And forgive us our debts
As we forgive our debtor
And lead us not
into temptation
But deliver us from evil
For Thine is the kingdom
And the power
And the glory
forever,
Amen.
(choir)
Amazing Grace,
how sweet the sound.
[choir hums
the melody]
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