Florenceville [UPDATED]

Another shot, with cars for size comparison. (Also with satellite dishes for anachronism fun.) More about this later.

[UPDATE] This ark was built by the pastor of Burnham Road Cathedral, an ambitious church recently established in Florenceville, NB. (Which we also learned on this trip was named after Florence Nightingale - who knew?) To quote the church's website, "God gave Pastor Paul a vision of the Ark, showing him the location and its purpose. A few years later, in 1993, the construction began as the Lord provided."

The ark is supposedly 2/3 of the size of the biblical ark as described in Genesis, and it is a pretty impressive specimen. The ground floor hosts "healing rooms" and other facilities, and the upper level consists of dormitories for people attending the church's "School of the Spirit", some kind of bible study/religious training. (Hence the satellite dishes for television.)

Finding and photographing the ark - which we'd heard about - was the flimsy lynchpin that we hung this weekend's vacation on - really it was an excuse to spend some downtime (it's the New Brunswick Day long weekend) in a part of the province that's especially beautiful and which both of us have spent dozens of days in for work, but never together and never at our leisure. Home base was Woodstock, and we drove all around the region from there.

It was a lot of fun and sparked a lot of conversation about whether it's believable that "two of every sort" of "every living thing of all flesh" could be stored on a vessel half again as large* as the ark we saw. ("I mean, Africa alone..." I ventured. "Maybe not of every continent," Husband theorized. "Just the animals they knew." "It says 'every living thing'," I said. "Maybe the animals from other continents booked charter flights.") Not to mention the "sevens" of "every clean beast" to account for sacrifices. And seven of every fowl. And the food to feed this menangerie. And the Noah family, and the food to feed them.

Let's just say I for one wasn't persuaded. But I have to admire the effort and commitment that went into an impressive expression of the church's faith. And it was a great mini-vacation.

ronnie

*I initially wrote "1/3 larger" but Husband pointed out my error.