When we first moved here, we wanted to find a church home fairly quickly so we'd be able to make some friends. We started going to First United Methodist Church of Seattle, nicknamed "First Church," which back then was located at 5th and Marion downtown. We only went to a few services in that building before the church had to move to a temporary location while a new building was being constructed. The old, historic building at 5th and Marion had sustained over $600,000 worth of damage during the 2001 Nisqually earthquake, and was beyond any affordable repair. We temporarily worshiped at the Seattle Children's Theater for almost two years. It was a decent place, but it certainly didn't feel like a church.

It's taken a lot of time, work, and money to make everything happen. Troy and I volunteered last Saturday to help move boxes and furniture to their respective rooms in the building. The moving company had moved everything into the fellowship hall, but everything had to be moved from there to the right place. It was kind of fun, I helped open boxes of hymnals and distributed them to the pews. The church provided Top Pot donuts and sandwiches and chili for lunch. The church still had another week to prepare for the first service.

Finally today, our new church building at 2nd and Denny opened its doors and we had our first worship service there. Everyone was really excited and dressed up more than usual. I'd never seen that many people at our church before. It was emotional for lots of people too. It's nice to have an actual church to go to now, instead of the secular Children's Theater. The building itself is very nice and the sanctuary has great acoustics. Everyone's singing just filled up the room, it was really nice. We sat in the balcony, which has three rows of seats. The ceiling is made of wood on the inside and has side windows for lighting.

The outside looks nice too, with red brick and titanium in the front. We also have our own parking garage, which is nice. After the service, everyone went down to the fellowship hall underneath the sanctuary and had snacks and desserts. It's very nice to have our own church building and I'm happy for First Church.