I am writing this from the office, which has a current temperature of 93 degrees Fahrenheit, with high humidity.  It is hot, sticky, and quite miserable to be here right now.  Even though temperatures have been extremely high here at The Open Door for the past few weeks, our cook has been working in the kitchen (OVENS at this temperature!), the Director has been working out of this office, our volunteers continue to show up to serve, people have still been showing to drop off food, and people are still showing up to eat. 
Tempers do tend to flare with the increase of heat, so we have had to deal with a bit more of that.....and drama increases next door, as the tenants of the Madden Hotel find new housing (one last hurrah for the inhabitants of South Street).  While "normal" operations continue, we have also been preparing for the "Coming Together for Hope" festival and fundraiser in Crandall Park on August 14, our "Big Balloon Breakfast" for the Adirondack Balloon Festival at the Floyd Bennett Memorial Airport September 24 and 25, and work feverishly on our grant/find new housing/expand programs efforts that have now taken a new urgency, due to the Madden's closing.
I feel sometimes like I am living in a pressure cooker, or at the very least, a kiln!  The Bible talks about fire being used by God not to make us miserable, but for the purpose of refining us. 
1 Peter 1:7 states: " ⁷ These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world."
Good words, excellent wisdom.....now I am going to go find some ice!

Have you ever been outside during the "calm before the storm" right before a nasty summer thunderstorm?  Thick, humid, oppressive air makes breathing difficult, while the charge of electricity in the air raises the hairs on the back of your neck.  Then the storm comes with a fierce suddenness, seemingly out of nowhere.  

That is what the past few weeks have seemed like, at least for me, concerning The Open Door.  In addition to high heat (the Open Door office stayed at 97 degrees Fahrenheit last week), we have had freezers and refrigerators break down, funds have been frighteningly low, there have been client temper flare-ups, we've been continuing to work on job training skills and GED training, cooked meals in a sweltering kitchen, and just found out that we have 90 days to vacate our current location (for more information, see the link to The Post-Star's articles on our "What's New" page).  We also just found out that the current common consensus is to have us serve meals indefinitely out of local churches, instead of moving to a new location that would be entirely ours. 

While we are extremely grateful for the churchs' rallying support for us at our time of need, and for their ongoing long-time support, we do not feel that it would be in the ministry's best interest to be in several locations, and not in our own central location. 

For one, in order to operate on a low budget, we have an inordinately large amount of food that we store here on-site (which enables us to make nutritious, wonderful meals at a cost of roughly $2 per person.  If we were to serve out of many facilities, we would have a hard time keeping things stored (think of having no cupboards in your house with which to store your food, but instead having to drive to the next neighborhood over every time that you wanted to cook anything!).  Secondly, one of our strengths has been in getting the community at large involved in serving the people here.  We do this by accepting people as they are, and having this be a neutral ground.  If we were in a church, there would be many people who would not feel comfortable serving there.  Thirdly, the many, many other things that we do (GED tutoring, 12-Step program, job skills program, food service job training) would be next to impossible if working out of other churches' facilities.  These are just some of the reasons why we very strongly feel that we need to have our OWN space with which to continue serving the hurting and needy people of the Glens Falls Region. 

Please continue to keep us in your prayers and thoughts as we wait the storm out, and try to make the best decisions possible, not only for our own organization, but for the community at large.