Good morning, HBIC family,

We wanted to send an update that will cover a number of questions people have been asking:

Was it a tornado?

On Friday night, news stations reported that the National Weather Service did confirm that an EF-1 tornado cut across a swath of Harrisburg, damaging a business, our church building, and various homes in the area. Continue to pray for the many people affected by the tornado, which came through shortly after 4:30 am on Friday.

How much damage did the building sustain?

The damage to our building, as we reported on Friday, is not building-wide, for which we are grateful. The sanctuary, open area, youth rooms, and nursery/toddler area are all intact. The office area sustained the most damage, and the children's classrooms and CE Room also have significant water damage from the water that seeped downward from the office. The office and CE Room section of our building are closed and currently unusable.

What are our plans for this Sunday?

We'll look forward to gathering with one another this Sunday. Our current plan for Sunday morning is to hold both our 9 am and 11 am services. We have been planning to take in new members this week, sharing video testimonies from each of them. Hearing testimonies of God's work in the lives of brothers and sisters will hopefully be an encouragement to each of us.

We will continue on Sunday with our scheduled classes for the Nursery and the Toddlers class. The Pre-K class, those who completed K through 5th grades, and our Youth will join us for entirety of our service in the sanctuary.

Though the sanctuary section of the building is fine, we currently do not have air conditioning in the sanctuary. It may feel a bit like the old days at Chestnut St. We'll have some fans to try to keep air moving, but we wanted to let you know ahead of time.

We do hope to be able to livestream the services tomorrow; we'll do so if we are able to have the needed network signal up and running by then.

How can we help?

We have received an outpouring of love and support from our church family, as well as from many other BIC churches around our region and from all kinds of community friends. Thank you for the prayers!

We are working with our insurance company and will be working with contractors in the coming weeks to mitigate the damage. Even as we send this out, contractors are at the building removing the roof debris and working to close up the holes in the roof. ...We will keep you posted if there are any needs for volunteers in the coming days and weeks.

(Our thanks go out to those who stopped by on Friday to help with the work of saving as much as possible from the water damage. We know many more of you would have come if we had put out a plea, but we didn't feel it was safe to have lots of people in the building since things were precarious.)

How can we give?

Some from our church and beyond our church have asked if we have a Go-Fund-Me. The church will not be setting up a Go-Fund-Me account. If you hear of one, please let us know, as it will be a scam.

We anticipate having some unforeseen expenses related to the tornado damage -- at the very least, we have a $5000 deductible on our insurance policy. If anyone would like to contribute toward such expenses over and above your regular giving to the church, we've added an option on our online giving portal, titled Storm Rebuild, or you can likewise mark your check memo line or offering envelope.

If you have further questions we can answer in the coming days, feel free to contact any of the staff directly by phone or email. (We currently do not have our office phone line working.)

Keep checking emails for further updates (and please relay updates to those you know who may not use email).

With prayer for our church family and our community,

HBIC Staff