Here’s an unusual remodeling effort at Christ the King Church in Mandan, North Dakota. In January of this year, parishioners got together and renovated the rectory kitchen while their priest was on a post-Christmas vacation.
Most of the appliances in the rectory kitchen used by their parish priest, the Rev. Ken Phillips, were relics from 50 years ago. The oven and burners didn’t work, the refrigerator’s noise levels approached the Mack-truck range, and in general, the whole room was in major need of a modernization.
Could the parish pull together a remodel in just two weeks and keep it a secret as a surprise for Phillips, who had left that morning for a two-week vacation in Arizona?
Turns out, they could and they did.
When Phillips returned two weeks later, Deacon Dennis Rohr helped him carry his suitcases in after his late-night arrival, which in retrospect, Phillips said he thought was odd.
“The light is on in your kitchen,” Rohr remarked to Phillips. When the priest went to turn it off, what he found was pretty much a new kitchen full of the parish volunteers who had put in 400 hours of work over 10 days to bring the room up to a new, clean contemporary look, complete with a new floor, countertops, sink, stove, refrigerator and microwave.
See the whole story of how good things happen when people work together in the 25 January 2008 Bismark Tribune.
