The Evolution of a Dream Part 1

Last Saturday was a very big day for Daphne and I and for our whole church.  Not only was it Bailey Day - the main festival of the year for the town of Bailey (and my first attempt at organizing the entire event), but we officially opened the doors of the newly renovated Bailey Country Store for the first time.  Nine long months of hard work, sweat, frustration, delays, financial shortfalls, amazing partnerships, generous donors -- and we're finally here.  The Bailey Country Store and Sasquatch Outpost are officially and legally open!  But I'm getting ahead of myself;  there's an  amazing story to be told here, and I want to tell it with pictures.  

August 2012

When Michael (our Senior Pastor) first proposed the idea that we lease this old country store, I thought he was insane.  The paint was peeling off the walls,  half the lettering gone - it was in truly horrible shape.  Vacant for four years, time and the weather had taken their toll.  

    

    The state of the inside of the store was - if this is possible - even worse than the outside!  The floor was uneven and rotten, most of the old fridges and freezers didn't work anymore and 

it was full of accumulated junk from countless owners.  The building itself is over 130 years old... and it looked every bit of it!

 

   This is how the old shelves looked when we took over the lease.  The former owner was known for his meat - and that is virtually the only question people asked us when we started working on the building, "Are you going to sell the Tri-tip roast?"  Seems no one really cared about the groceries, just the meat!

 

This is how the back room looked - bare concrete walls, concrete floor.  The plywood square in the corner covered a 12 foot deep cistern... probably the original well.  The transformation in this room is probably the most dramatic of all... but I'll save that for Part 2 or 3 :)