Picture of our iconostasis at Holy Nativity

We acquired an old space of 2800 square feet at the beginning of November.  It had been used by a religious group before, but was not designed with an Orthodox Church in mind at all.  Here is a picture of the old “sanctuary” used by the previous group before we did anything with it:

We tore out almost all the walls, re-hung the suspended ceiling, replaced flourescent lighting strips with recessed and globe incandescents, ripped out old gray carpet and replaced with new deep red carpet, painted the walls, built an iconostasis, and built a narthex, all in about 6 weeks!…. thanks to the hard work by many in our Mission community.

Here is a picture of the iconostasis as it was being built.   Catechumen James Miller oversaw all the work with his incredible know-how for a 26 year old!  By the way, he is now the newly chrismated Basil.  Many years, Basil!

We just got our new icons in from www.orthodoximages.com (I highly recommend Ben’s work…. these icons look hand painted and have real 23k gold leafing in the halos…. quite large, close to 4 feet tall, printed on canvas and mounted beautifully on high quality wood, for a VERY reasonable price… Ben even translated the Greek wording in to English for us!).   We are still awaiting our two other icons of St. Michael and St. Gabriel the Archangels for the north and south doors.

If you know of any larger churches that would like to donate any liturgical items to us, we would greatly appreciate the help.  We just received a tabernacle and a Font for Theophany.  We need some altar server robes for a couple of boys, and some cassocks for men.  We also could use some icons for the Sanctuary, especially a Panagia for behind the altar and the four Evangelists for the Royal Doors.

Feel free to share any ideas about further beautifying of our small chapel!  And pray for us, as we are growing rapidly and working toward bringing a priest here to shepherd our growing flock!

With all that said, here are a few of our latest pictures of our new little chapel.  We can fit about 100 – 115 people in it, we think, which gives us a few years (???) of growing room before we move.  Although, it already feels like home, and I think will be hard to leave… (never thought I’d say that when we were tearing out walls).

Christ is born!  Glorify Him!