A miracle worth waiting for

MOSES LAKE — Sometimes, miracles take a while. Like the new Moses Lake Seventh-day Adventist Church building. 

“It's been a real journey of faith because it took so long,” said lifelong member Judy Twigg, who serves on the church board. “You learn to trust and obey in times (when) you don't always see the future. You don't see the end date.” 

The beginning date is in the late 1990s, when the church sold its school to Walmart and bought a 9.65-acre tract of land on West Valley Road across from the Grant County Fairgrounds to build a new school, called Crestview Christian School. In 2006 the church sold its church building downtown at Fifth Avenue and Division Street, which it had built in the 1950s and occupied ever since, with a dream of building a church on the same property as the school. 

The end date is this Saturday, when the new building will hold its first Sabbath service. The church will host a meet-and-greet supper Friday evening, when the Sabbath actually begins, and a breakfast on Saturday morning before the service. This will be followed by music and testimonies of the journey to build the church. The service itself will begin at 11 a.m., with guest speaker David Jamieson, president of the Upper Columbia Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, the umbrella organization that includes all of eastern Washington as well as North Idaho and northeastern Oregon. That will be followed by a potluck and more music and testimonies. The public is invited to the festivities. 

Long process 

The Seventh-day Adventist church is the second oldest in Moses Lake, formed in 1919 when the town was still Neppel. The population of Neppel was about 250 at the time, and 30 of those made up the fledgling Adventist congregation. The church shared the Neppel School building on weekends with the other existing church in town, Moses Lake Presbyterian. With one church worshiping on Saturday and the other on Sunday, the two had no difficulty sharing and often had social events together, according to a history of the Adventist church written in 1979. 

Once the building downtown was sold, the church moved its services to Crestview School, partitioning off half of the school gym for a sanctuary, said Pastor Clinton Meharry, who has led the church since 2012. The shell of the building went up around 2010, Meharry said, and the landscaping was underway when he arrived.  

“I guess there were some issues with that,” he said. “It took about a year to get the landscaping permit finalized.” 

Permits were one of the things that delayed the construction, Meharry said. The city’s requirements for landscaping were very specific, he said, as were other permitting requirements.  

“One of the things they were requiring us to have (was) a grease tank, because normally, churches will cook a lot of meat. Well, we don’t,” Meharry said, referring to Adventists’ tradition of vegetarianism. 

At the same time, he added, the city of Moses Lake was accommodating when it came to the parking lot. 

“The city was going to pave Valley Road, and they were looking for a place to put their machines when they weren’t done,” Meharry said. “We were willing to allow that, and they were willing to pave (the parking lot) and gave us a huge discount.” 

Little changes in plans led to more permitting delays, Meharry said, but finally all the T’s were crossed and the I’s dotted in 2019. Then it was a matter of actually putting the building together. 

Much of the construction was done by church members, and a lot of materials came from a member who owned a building supply business. Church members did all the painting and the insulation while the permits were in process, Meharry said. 

The frame was made with steel rather than wood, Meharry said, which necessitated hiring a contractor for that.  

“There were some who felt like if we had done wood, we would have been in a long time ago, because we could do more of the work ourselves, because the steel framing a little more technical,” Meharry said. Good workmanship was important for the church, he said. 

“The Ark was only used once,” Meharry said. “It was important, it was valuable, (and) it was well built.” 

There’s still one phase of construction left: the main sanctuary, which is sealed off from the public. Saturday’s services will be held in a gathering area outside the sanctuary that can hold 300 people. When the sanctuary is finished it will hold about 300 people. 

“We’re getting bids and estimates for what it will take to finish it,” Meharry said. 

“We just got a $30,000 matching grant at the end of August,” Twigg added. “And we are within $1,500 of making that match. That was huge, in a month and a half, being able to come up with that.” 

Room to grow 

The new building is conducive to growing the congregation, with lots of classrooms for Sabbath school classes for both children and adults, some of them with portable dividers so they can be sized to fit the class. There’s also a bright, roomy kitchen for church potlucks and other events. 

“I am so excited to be in this kitchen,” said Azure Goltz, whom Twigg described as the head of the kitchen. “We’ve been sharing a kitchen with the daycare at the school, and the ladies there are lovely, but there’s a smaller space, and … our storage was literally a closet under the stairs. And now we have this. Thank you, Jesus!” 

Most of the landscaping is done, with lush green lawns, rock flowerbeds and a small decorative footbridge. All the landscaping was done by church members, Twigg said, and a few areas are still in progress. 

“We had a crew out here, about eight or 10 of us, last Sunday, and the wind was howling,” she said. “When I went home that night and took my makeup off, I realized that the cloth that I used was dark brown, so I had quite a bit of dirt on.” 

Blessings 

Saturday’s Sabbath service will be the only one Meharry conducts in the new building, he said. He will be moving to a church in Louisville, Kentucky, which is close to where his and his wife’s children live, and they’ll leave the following Monday. 

“Gosh, it's a big loss to this congregation,” Twigg said. “I'm happy for him, but I'm (also) grieving.” 

Meharry likened the process of building the church, with all its delays and difficulties, to the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, in which Jesus multiplied a child’s small meal to feed a crowd of thousands. 

“Jesus was thankful for having something to bless,” he said. “So just as the little boy brought what he had … let’s bring what we have and ask God to bless it.” 

“He’s blessing all of us with as many blessings as we could possibly ask for,” Twigg said. 

    Lifelong Moses Lake Seventh-day Adventist Church member Judy Twigg, left, and Pastor Clinton Meharry stand in the entryway of the new church building, which will be opened Saturday.
  

    Moses Lake Seventh-day Adventist members Azure Goltz, left, and Judy Twigg stand in the kitchen of the new church building. The kitchen will see some use on Saturday as the church welcomes the public for meals, worship and fellowship.
  

    The new Seventh-day Adventist church building in Moses Lake has lots of classrooms for both adult and children’s Sabbath school.
  

    Until the main sanctuary is finished, Sabbath services will be held in this open space at the new Seventh-day Adventist church. The space can accommodate 300 people and will serve as overflow space when the 300-person-capacity sanctuary is finished.
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