If you stopped by Sunday night,  you might have noticed the size of the detention basin. If you haven’t already, I’d recommend a walk down into it sometime. It’s hard to appreciate how big it is until you get down inside of it. And of course, that size came about through a combination of serious earth-moving and more blasting. Here is the video of last Thursday’s blast:

Here is a picture as the smoke is clearing:

And here are the after effects:

Seeing this handiwork, you’re thinking to yourself, “Who can do this? It must be some sort of wizardry.” You’d be right, of course. Here is the man, with his two helpers:

He’ s no wizard, of course. He’s our own Lt. Col. Pritchard. And though he hasn’t been blowing anything up (at least not that I’m aware of), he has been a huge help to me. He has carried Children’s Ministry very competently and thoroughly, which has freed me up to work on the building. Thank you, Doug, for all of your hard work.

Two final shots of this week’s progress. First, the stump of the locust (THE tree on the hill) has been unearthed in preparation for construction:

Finally, when digging near the building pad, the contractors unearthed a sand patch. It looks like water may have been up near the top of the hill at one point:

It was a pretty cool rainbow spectrum of color. Bonus points if you can guess who’s flip-flop-clad feet are on display.

Until next week.