Sunday, April 04, 2010

The Book is Here


Thursday afternoon one of our church secretaries received a call from a freight line, informing us of a shipment due to arrive in 15 minutes. It was a bit of a surprise as I had spoken with my contact person at the printer who had told me that the books probably wouldn't ship until sometime on Friday and would most likely arrive this coming week. I was okay with that, as it still meant that the books would be here a full week and a half or so before our 150th anniversary celebration on April 17th and 18th.

When the secretary told me she thought that it might be the books coming in early, I experienced the excitement of a father-to-be awaiting the coming of his newborn baby. I was thrilled when a big freight truck pulled up with one pallet containing the books, fresh from the printer. We had ordered 500 copies and they actually wound up delivering an extra box of 20 for a total of 520. I made an executive decision with our minister of education who has been heading up the anniversary planning committee's work to give a complimentary copy to each staff member as well as our pastor emeritus. I also plan to give one to the artist whose commemorative painting helps grace the cover and to his son-in-law who helped with the graphic design of the cover.

This morning we had a huge Easter crowd in both morning services and some of our ladies were selling copies of the book before, between, and after the services. I had the opportunity to sign copies for many of those who chose to purchase a book today. The end product turned out to be 262 pages long. The history book was a major focus of my life for about 9 or 10 months, and I'm really excited to hold it in my hand in its final form. Several have asked me what I'm going to do with all my free time now. I'm not sure what the next major project will be, but for the time being, I'm enjoying the feeling of having wrapped this one up.

1 comment:

Gary Snowden said...

Thanks, Brian. It's not published by Helwys, but then it's a bit more limited market focus than your book.