Pastor Nathan fishes devilish balloon from Sanctuary Elipse

During the VBS closing program last Friday disaster struck when a helium inflated mylar balloon left the hands of some careless 7 year old and stuck some 40 feet above and stood out conspicuously in the elipse portion of the Redeemer sanctuary.

Being heavy laden with engineer-types, all sorts of suggestions were made to get the big red eye sore balloon off the ceiling before worship on Sunday. One brother wanted to shoot it with a laser. I was seriously contemplating using my pellet gun. My favorite suggestion was to fill the sanctuary with Hydrogen (can you say "Hindenburg"?) so the helium balloon would be heavier and descend. Of course we could have had a lift company come out and remove it for several hundred dollars. In the end we decided to wait it out and let it fall on it's own, but knowing helium filled mylar balloons can have a half life of 50 years I was irritated by the thought of doing nothing.

Sunday came and it was indeed a distraction, to me anyways. After the evening gathering I had decided I'm shooting the sucker down if it didn't show signs of dropping soon. Then, my trusty associate and McGyver-like friend Pastor Nathan got to work. He happened to have his fishing poll at church as a VBS prop for the week prior (btw- Nathan is hoping I am not "inflating" the story) and together with Mitch Cervinka thought of a plan. He would attach another helium balloon-with a loop of masking tape on top- to the end of the fishing line and raise it to retrieve the balloon and bring it down.

Balloon Fishing from Travis Shanahan on Vimeo.

As you can see, the plan worked flawlessly and the devilish balloon was fished from the ceiling Sunday night.