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Loma Linda Spanish Seventh-day Adventists turning gym dome into church home
The futuristic Gentry Gymnasium that was a landmark on the Loma Linda University campus for more than four decades has been plopped down in pieces in a cleared orange grove to serve as the new home of a growing church. With the aluminum panels of the domed-roof gym and orange trees in the background, leaders of Loma Linda Spanish Seventh-day Adventist Church broke ground Saturday for the reconstruction of the building. The rebuilt gym is scheduled to open next fall. Congregants now worship about a mile away at the church's rented quarters in a Loma Linda strip mall. "We no longer fit," Elsa Montano, 72, of Loma Linda, said in Spanish on Saturday as she sat in a plastic chair on dirt upon which the gym will sit. "We stand in the hallway because there's just not enough room." "There are even speakers in the bathroom" for congregants to listen to the worship service, said Montano's daughter, Laura Pantoja, of Yucaipa. Since the congregation was founded in 1985, it has wandered from one temporary space to another -- including a Loma Linda City Hall meeting room and the old university fitness center -- to accommodate a growing membership. About 450 members now worship in the 10,000-square-foot strip mall site. In 2002, the church bought a 9-acre site just outside the Loma Linda city limits, near California Street and Barton Road, for a permanent home. The 29,000-square-foot wood-floored gym will function as a temporary worship center while church members raise money for a formal 1,200-capacity sanctuary, which will be built next to the gym, said the church's pastor, the Rev. Gilbert Vega. The gym will also be used for basketball, volleyball and other recreational activities, he said. Church leaders are planning to eventually add a youth chapel and a small apartment building to house visiting speakers and church members who need short-term lodging. Gentry Gym opened in 1968 and was dismantled last year to clear way for a new four-story building that will house classrooms, laboratories, offices and two theaters. Church member Isaac Mendoza, 48, of Loma Linda, said the gym -- and the permanent sanctuary to follow -- will finally allow congregants to worship together under one roof, rather than sit scattered in several rooms. "We think God wants us to be united as a people of God," he said. Reach David Olson at 951-368-9462 or dolson@PE.com http://www.pe.com/localnews/sbcounty/stories/PE_News_Local_D_adventist18.2faa8a3.html |
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