Saturday Volunteering Part I & Part 2

Well 9:00 Saturday morning arived and so did...

• 70 middle school youth group kids from the greater Pittsburgh and North Hills Area
• 7 chaperones for this wild bunch
• 20 CMU Frat boys
• 2 random walk-ins from CMU
• A gathering for state rep. Joe Preston
• and Union Project Staff - Duane, Andrea, and myself

This was by far the most amounts of volunteers we have ever had in this building. The work they accomplished was immense. The youth group cleaned and swept the entire great hall, set up the chairs for worship service on Sunday, cleaned and organized our tool cage, the entire dirt basement, moved all clay and reorganized the glazes, restacked doors and wood, took out trash, moved stuff to the dumpster, all during their 30 hour famine. It was quite impressive. We had a quick meeting with them when they were done their work, thanked them for the blessing of working for us, talked a little about fasting and what it ment as a body of Christ, and told asked them to keep us in their prayers as we would keep them in ours. Over all, I think we had a great time with them today.

The CMU students and Frat boys successfully de-leaded and cleaned 3 kites and 4 eyes of stained glass windows. They did a great amount of work to prep us for our stained glass classes. They also helped move out excess dry wall from the coffee house construction and straightened up the construction area.

After our youth group volunteers left for the day, I continued to work with the CMU students who were working diligently on the stained glass windows. Today I finished the reconstruction of my window. I had finished soldering it yesterday, and cemented and polished the window today. Now I wait for the cement to dry and I will be re-installing the window into the great hall later this week! How exciting! Look at what the window used to look like, and how it looks now!

Impressive, I must say.

While having the 99 volunteers working very hard, Sen. Joe Preston's supporters had a meeting in our atrium and expressed no problem with noise due to the volunteer work going on. I would have to say that it was quite a successful day. Yet they day is not over, for Duane and I have our meeting with volunteers coming in who are interested in getting involved on a more routine basis. With the amount of interest and work that was accomplished already today, I am very excited for what may be another productive meeting with volunteers here at the Union Project.
Stay tuned for an updated post on how that meeting went and how the Union Project is going to grow.

Thank You all for your support!

In Him,
Reed

Part II was no good

Wednesday UPdate

Isn't that a great title - UPdate... wow that’s great - Get it? UP-date ... UP... ok, sorry, you get it

Moving on!

Stained glass is amazing. Example These windows that were installed in our atrium! They are a great design. I get to build one of these lights soon for our coffee shop.

That’s Duane on the right; he wouldn't get out of my picture. But these are the great windows we installed. These are brand new windows, unlike the 100 year old window I took out today 4 stories above the ground. That thing was falling apart, and in absolutely horrible shape. But this weekend, we have 50 middle school and high school kids coming into the UP to do some volunteer work, and they are going to clean 4 windows for our stained glass class.

Enough of that. Today Duane and Justin and Margaret went to CompUSA and bought a 50 inch Plasma screen TV for out board room. Maybe you don’t understand the size of that. Here is a good way to describe this thing. Reach out your arms side to side, now curl in your hands. That’s about how big this TV is. Now why in the world would you need a thing like this. Well, this is the board room where we have professional meetings with power point presentations, movie and digital media showings, and other Video needs. This TV needs to be seen by everyone in the board room, and also needs to be flush against the wall. Therefore, flat screen TV is in order, and boy oh boy is it sweet! I’m really looking forward to wiring up the rest of the equipment to run the media. The best part about this is that this is part of a Technology grant that the government gives non-profit organizations to successfully run their technology in their programs, specifically, The Union Project.

So tomorrow night is our first volunteer meeting, and I’m really hoping that we have a nice turn out of people interested in joining the Union Project Group. It should be fun. I get to take a leadership role in explaining what we would ultimately like the UP to look like and how we see that the volunteers can become specialized and help us, while also giving them personal benefits, experience, and success. - quick side note... I'm 21, I have a Mohawk, I dress all funny, and I’m in a rock band Worship band... and I've been getting emails from students, student service groups from universities, and business professionals all saying, " Hello Mr. Verdesoto, my name is...” I think that is so formal and so funny. I mean, look at the picture, I’m a nut!

Other then that, this is me working on one of the windows, you can actually see much, but that's me with my crazy hair. It has been great to hear from many of you that emailed me, or posted comments. Hope you all are doing well. I would love to hear your thoughts about whats going on, or hear your questions as to what ever I am doing at the UP or at The Open Door, or at Cornerstone, Ultimate, or School, or anything else.

I hope you are all doing well, and I cant wait to see you all again.

Take care, and God Bless

~Reed

UPdate

This week at the UP we are knee deep in the construct of our Coffee house. Walls have been knocked down, framing has been put up, and a nice new mezzanine for Duane and I has been put up. (We plan on putting lawn chairs up there and chillin). But there is so much work that still needs to be done.

We are doing all the wood work ourselves in order to cut down on costs and are using volunteers to do the work. Our volunteers have come in to the UP to stain the wood, stain the door frames, and do other types of manual labor around the building. Each Saturday, we will entertain volunteer groups and have them help us in the construction of the coffee shop, the recording studio, and even disassemble and clean the 100 year old windows for our stained glass workshop that meets on Thursday nights.

We are now ready for our volunteer group to grow and to become specialized. We now start our program of volunteer group leaders leading specialized communities in disciplines such as promotions, marketing, business, web graphics, and venue management to mention a few. Our first meeting is this Thursday February 16th from 7-9pm and Saturday February 18th 5-7pm.

I personally am extremely excited to start getting emails from people interested in volunteering for the union project and that are willing to be the leaders of these communities/groups. We (Duane, and the union project, and myself), are truly engaging the community and its leaders. The work that they do will build a wonderful organization that will support its community.

I think I love this so much because it is mission work, it' a place where my church meets, it's a place that I fellowship with Justin and Jess (my bosses) and Garrett the ceramics teacher and good friend, and Duane, whose become an invaluable support and brother in my life.

In a side note, there is a conference in Pittsburgh on Feb. 24th called Jubilee that is sponsored by the Coalition for Christian Outreach. The conference is for students looking to go into the workforce and wish to do so with Christ as their focus. This conference is attended by thousands of college students and young adults every year. I wanted to attend this conference... but I have no money... so I sent my church at home a letter asking for support... three weeks later, I got news that my church does not give out scholarships... so I was back to square one. So I asked my church out at the UP called The Open Door for support, and they agreed to support what they could. When I asked Jess at The Union Project for support, she immediately agreed to support me with what ever money I needed in order to go to this conference.

I would like to publicly thank the Union Project for supporting me in my work, my faith, and in making me an integral part of their family. I am truly thankful for your support.

Personally, life has been testing me, but the Union Project and Cornerstone (the college ministry I attend) have been a huge support in my life. I have a lot of work to do and even more stress to deal with, but this project is bigger then I am, and has the potential to impact more people then just me. I want to push this through to fruition and am having a hard time seeing the big picture. Thank the Lord I have Duane, the UP staff, Cornerstone, and my friends here at Pitt.

Well that is all for now. Hope all that read this Blog are doing well and are in good health. Looking forward to posting again.

~Reed