Lost and Found

So my church has no home, which has been fine so far but we're getting pretty big now.  There's an old church building in the student part of the town called St Peters that hasn't been used in years, and along with another church in the town we're co-buying it, doing it up and putting it back to work.  It'll be great to have such a large space we can use whenever we want.

A group of us went over there a few weeks back to talk about what work was going to be done and have a pray about it, and while I was walking round I saw a bit of card leaning against a wall.  When I turned it over it was caked thick in dust, but it turned out to be an original pencil sketch of a church - but not the church we were in!  I don't know how it got there or when it was drawn, but (being me) I was worried it might get forgotten and damaged in the works so I asked to take it home and look after it, see if I could clean it up a bit.  Maybe even find out who it belonged to and give it back to them.  

I spent most of the afternoon stripping off the old mouldy mount and cleaning the sketch up with an eraser and some cotton buds, trying to remove the dust without hurting the picture.  It came out really nice in the end and it's really a lovely sketch.  Next I had it re-mounted and hunted down a frame.  It turned out to be signed T.A. Clarke, and was of Loughborough Parish Church; All Saints.  After a bit of research Mr/s Clarke couldn't be found so I emailed All Saints' rector instead, to tell her what had happened and ask if they'd like it back.  The nice thing about Loughborough is that you're only a few links away from anybody.  A member of her congregation has friends that live on my street, only a few doors down!  I dropped the picture off with them last night.  Felt really good to see it on it's way back home :)