16th Street

Our ward had an open house/service project last Saturday for our brand new building on 16th street here in DC.  The new building has been about seven years in the making with lots of lobbying for permits and neighborhood resistance but it's finally here.  The 16th street corridor is known for it's bevy of all kinds of churches, so the significance of having an LDS church among the rest is not lost on us.  As a way to reach out to other churches and neighbors, we organized the local "Pack the Pantries" project, to gather boxes of food to give to the Capitol Area Food Bank in conjunction with the open house.  It was so great to see all the volunteers working together like a beehive to get all the food organized and on the Food Bank trucks on Saturday morning.  The Mayor even showed up...you know how I just love politicians...  

The building has received it's fair share of attention, (as it would be where Romney would go to church if elected) and there have been articles about it in the Washington Post and Time Magazine.   In the end, we donated about 750 boxes of food and had a nice steady stream of friendly visitors come through the open house.  Afterwards Brody and I grabbed some lunch and took a lovely stroll through the crisp autumn air, passing pumpkins stands galore that made me giddy for more fall.

The Church did a big article on the event as well, these pictures are all from their site (just a little higher quality than the ones from my phone)