 Friends,
Greetings from the Southside construction site! Where every day we get closer to the day when we get to send you an invitation to a ribbon cutting ceremony! It’s really hard to believe it, but … since 2015, starting with the purchase of the lot across from our property, Southside has actually raised slightly more than $2.3 million for our capital campaign. That’s a lot of money! It may sound like what we are talking about is money. But the truth is, what we’re really talking about is gratitude—not to mention amazement, or astonishment, or just plain wonderstruckness. We’re also talking about faith—not just our own faith that just maybe we could pull this off, but the good faith of people from the broader Tucson community and from around the country who wanted to be a part of our mission and ministries through their financial support. But we’re not done yet! We are still hoping to raise an additional $150,000 to cover the cost of construction. Which is extraordinary to realize that we have come so far in our fundraising! We invite you to give a gift to help us reach this goal. You can give through the Presbyterian Foundation HERE Or you can mail a donation to: Southside Presbyterian Church P.O. Box 27640 Tucson, AZ 85726-7640 memo: Capital Campaign We also invite you to send us your ideas! Do you have fundraising ideas, ideas of funders who could be approached, or ideas of people in our community who you think would be excited to partner with us as we seek to build the future of Southside Presbyterian Church. For all the ways in which you have contributed to this exciting time in the life of our church, we are so grateful. If you want to go on a tour of our progress, we will be having a tour of the facilities after church on Sunday at 11:15 a.m. Overwhelmed With Gratitude, Pastor Alison
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Friends, As I write this email sitting in my office at Southside, the sound of construction can be heard and it is a sweet, sweet sound! It is the sound of good things to come! Improved facilities, yes — but more than that, an opportunity to better serve our community in a multitude of ways — from a multi-faceted homeless program, to youth activities to an improved space for the Southside Worker Center.  A couple weeks ago, Southsiders took the opportunity to write messages and blessings on the fellowship hall wall before the sheetrock went up. The messages we wrote were varied — some of the kids just wrote their names — their claim to having been here! Some of us wrote scripture verses and others wrote messages to the generations who will come after us. But whether you wrote on the fellowship hall wall or not — your message has been clear. With each and every donation to the capital campaign, you are sending the message that you believe that investing in institutions like Southside Presbyterian Church is important because it means investing in a vision of a community grounded in faith, love, hope, and justice. And if we ever needed to be grounded in these values, it is in times such as these.
As the building progresses so do our fundraising efforts, and we are excited to report that we only have $217,000 left to raise to cover the cost of construction — it is really unbelievable to us that we have been able to raise almost $2.3 million! We are so grateful for each and every contribution and invite you to consider helping us reach our goal by donating today or by sharing this invitation with a friend who might be interested in partnering with us in building the future of Southside Presbyterian Church and the broader community it serves. With overflowing gratitude, Pastor Alison Dear Friends, You would not believe how quickly things are moving here at Southside’s construction site! Foundation is laid, the framing is going up, and the beautiful beams for the ceiling on our fellowship hall were put in place last week. We could go on and on about all the developments, but we thought it would be better to take you on a little VIDEO TOUR! If you would like to come down and see the progress for yourself, we will be having tours after church THIS Sunday, May 12th or you can call the church office to schedule your own tour. Unfortunately, at this time we cannot accommodate wheelchairs and walkers on tours, but do not fear, the final product will be a fully accessible space for all!  Day by day the building grows. And day by day our gratitude grows — we are so grateful for each and everyone of you and your commitment to the future of Southside. And the donations continue to come in. We are still chipping away at the $250,000 that we still need to raise to cover the construction costs.Please consider sharing this video and the story of Southside with your friends and inviting them to join in on this project. We really are doing amazing things together and good things are yet to come!
You and your friends can donate here: SOUTHSIDE BUILDING PROJECT Dear Friends, Since the Spring of 2017, we have been hard at work — envisioning, planning, and raising money to replace our worn out facilities here at Southside — and now we are so excited to report that while the fundraising isn’t done yet— construction is in full swing!  We have to admit it was bittersweet to say good bye to the old fellowship hall wing. But there was so much joy in being able to lay the cornerstone on our new building with our children participating in the actual laying of the stone. In particular we had two of our Tohono O’odham children, Alice and James, lay the stone recognizing our Tohono O’odham ancestors who laid the first stone of our church back in 1906. And soon after that, the building began to rise like a phoenix from the ashes.  Day by day, we are watching this amazing process of seeing the dreams we have for our church become a physical reality brick by brick. We know that there is so much that God has planned for this congregation and we are so excited to be able to live into our call to be a people of faith, hope, love and witness in the borderlands in new and expanded ways. Like we say all the time — this isn’t just about building a new building but it is about having a space where we can be part of working alongside others in southern Arizona to build the beloved community.  We are grateful for each and every one of you who have given so generously to get us this far.
We only have $250,000 left to raise for our construction costs— which is amazing. What this means is that our little congregation in partnership with others in our community have raised $2.2 million! We are so very close to meeting our goal! If you would like to help us cross our fundraising finish line, you can easily give on-line here: SOUTHSIDE BUILDING PROJECT We are excited to keep you all updated on all of the exciting progress and are happy to give tours of the new construction— just contact the church office. We have been able to do so much together and we know that even greater things are to come!  You Can Support our Building Fund by Using AmazonSmile!
It’s easy and does not cost you a thing, but many purchases you might already plan to make on Amazon will lead to a portion of what you spend being donated back to Southside. Setting this up only takes a couple of minutes. Here are directions from Amazon: Shoppers who start at smile.amazon.com will find the same Amazon they know and love, with the added bonus that Amazon will donate a portion of the price of eligible purchases to the charity of your choice. Signing up is easy! 1. Visit smile.amazon.com 2. Sign in with your Amazon.com credentials. 3. Choose a charitable organization to receive donations, or search for the charity of your choice (simply type in “Southside Presbyterian Church” and then be sure to select the one that’s in Tucson) 4. Select your charity. 4. Start shopping! 5. Add a bookmark for smile.amazon.com to make it even easier to return and start your shopping at AmazonSmile. If you already have an AmazonSmile account set up and want to change your charity designation to Southside: 1. Sign in to smile.amazon.com on your desktop or mobile phone browser. 2. From your desktop, go to Your Account from the navigation at the top of any page, and then select the option to Change your Charity. Or, from your mobile browser, select Change your Charity from the options at the bottom of the page. 3. Select your new charitable organization to support, as described in step 3 above. Please forward this information to any family and friends you think might like to help support our building project in this way. After years of planning and fundraising we finally broke ground on our building project this past Oct 30th! It was an amazing celebration and we were honored to be joined by Tucson Mayor Jonathan Rothschild, City Council Member Regina Romero, Pima County Board of Supervisor Richard Elias, Chairman of the Tohono O'odham Nation Edward Manuel, CEO of the Southern Arizona Community Food Bank Michael McDonald, and community activist Isabel Garcia and many of our friends in the community. The celebration was made all the more joyful by the Davis Bilingual Elementary School Mariachis. We are so grateful to all who have helped us make it this far and are confident that together we will be able to work together to build the future of Southside!
CURRENT CONSTRUCTION “FORECAST” (as of Feb. 14, 2018)
The new parking lot (PHASE 1): We expect this work to begin the week of February 19 and to take about 45 days. We are preparing text for inscriptions of the Beatitudes, hopefully in 3 languages (O’odham, Spanish, and English), to be sandblasted onto a series of boulders placed around the Prayer Path that will make this so much more than “just another pretty parking lot,” but a truly special place that may be quietly enjoyed by others in the neighborhood as well. The boulders (of locally sourced Catalina granite) have been selected and delivered to the other vacant lot across from HeadStart, with that lot owner’s kind permission. The new sound system & hearing assistance loop: The new hearing loop began its trial run in the Kiva on Sunday Jan. 21, enabling folks who wear hearing aids with t-coils to better hear our services and other activities held in this space; headsets are also available for people without t-coils. The new sound system for the Kiva is being installed the week of Feb. 12, with its first use during worship expected on Feb. 18. Once it is in place, the permanent installation of the hearing loop will take place. Refurbishing the old sanctuary and new construction (PHASE 2): This is about to begin the permitting and contractor bidding processes, and we hope construction might start in May, with completion of our project anticipated by summer of 2019. Once we have the contractor bids for the new-construction part of the project, we will have the long-awaited congregational meeting to vote on moving forward with the physical creation of this beautiful space we hope to enjoy together for many, many years to come. The old sanctuary will be refurbished first, so it can be used for a combination of storage and some scaled-back church activities during the year of construction. |
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