by James Ericksen
The choir had a problem. The main light over the choir was out. This was mentioned to Kristin who assigned the task to the Monday Morning Crew. Our first attempt to solve this problem was to bring the lift from the garage.
This would have worked except we couldn’t get the lift cage close enough to the light because of the risers which the choir uses. The second attempt was Steve Sveom’s idea. He got a long pole with a suction cup on the end and tried to remove the bulb. At first we thought this was working but rather than unscrewing the light bulb, we were unscrewing the light fixture.
After that we decided to rent scaffolding. Dave Olsen got the scaffolding in his truck and brought it to church on the next Monday morning. We unloaded the scaffolding and started to read the instructions on how to assemble it. The first item in the instructions said you should be knowledgeable about putting up scaffolding. The rest was even less helpful.
Fortunately, David Johnson had an erector set as a kid and some of us had helped with scaffolding at Habitat projects. We had about 6 people working on the assembly. The first level went up quickly; then we got the second level up. For some reason, we thought it would be nice if there were sides. After examining the remaining pieces, we figured out how to put up sides.
With that done and a small step ladder, the lightbulb was changed. The structure was then taken down and loaded on Dave’s truck. We settled down for treats in the library. The discussion that followed was about how good the treats were and what a good job we did!
Yes, the light does work.