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by John Francis

It was late in the spring of 2006 and I was in our Monday morning meeting at WYSIWYG, always a gala event. We were meeting at our Treasure Island studio and people would begin to show up as early as 9am for the 10am meeting (which usually didn’t start until about 11am).  I know that sounds a little counter-productive, but that’s the way we’ve met for years and it works out well for us. Especially when you’ve got all of your kids in the meeting and people are coming from all over the Bay Area to meet. WYSIWYG had grown to about 40 employees and about a dozen volunteers. The Monday morning meet has always been a good place for prayer, ministry and getting the work week underway.

This meeting was no exception. This was an important day because we were making plans for our yearly film festival. This event happens in October and we were getting a good jump on it. We really wanted the studio to look as nice as the the church was looking. The church was going thorough a big renovation. For about three months, the church was being torn up from its foundation as well as installing new plumbing, carpet, seats, and paint throughout the whole church and school. Things really looked great and those of us at Treasure Island wanted our facility to look nice for the awards banquet.

This leads me to what was going on with our Treasure Island Studio. We were at the tail-end of our funding; in fact, we were out of of money altogether. So, to say the least, things at the studio were becoming quite “dicey”. As we finished up the usual business and began to tackle “How can we make the old airplane hanger look good”? We began to throw ideas around. There were going to be pirate sketches at the Film Festival, so the natural flow was to make a big ship’s bow as the stage. That would have been impressive but when we asked the Lord, He wasn’t interested in in it. There were some other ideas but they went the same way as the ship’s bow. Then we figured out “Why don’t we just finish the painting that we started last summer and do a studio tour?” Ken Ealy, the same contractor that was doing the work on the church, had painted the lobby of the studio. It looked very nice and they were fast. Ken brought in about 10 painters and knocked it out in a matter of days. In fact we all left for vacation and came back and the work was done. So the painting elves came in and finished all our work. It was great. We asked the Lord if we could proceed and He said “yes”.

Sandy had gone through the building and chose what was going to be painted for the studio tour. There were 5 major areas that we thought would be interesting to see. Costumes, Props & Sets, Sound, Art, and Grip. The main studio floor wasn’t going to be seen but it was going to be dimly lit for effect. Oooo. Awww. It was a good plan. We could easily get this work done and build the stage and decorate in time for the October event. But there was a problem. We needed paint, and a lot of it. Ken had left a good amount behind because he knew that we were going to paint the rest of the 144.000 sq ft building. So we made priorities and began to paint as the Lord had instructed us.

Needless to say, about two weeks into the project we had run out of primer and certain colors of paint. Some of the rooms that we were working on had not been painted since World War 2. That was no exaggeration. These walls were sucking in the paint and we finally had to stop on a Thursday afternoon. Being pleased with our progress we took the rest of the week off and felt we would bring this up in the Monday morning meeting.

After going through the the business on Monday, Richard was going through some prophetic words we had gotten from Peggy Cole. And in her message she was stuck on Jesus turning water into wine. She kept referring to the miracle, I think up to four times. Then Richard was explaining how it applied to our situation on the island and how God was going to turn things around for us. By this time we were facing having the power and water turned off and the city was beginning the process of eviction. Like I said, things were getting dicey. All of a sudden, Joel Landis spoke up and said that He believed God would turn water into paint. That silenced everybody, but it wasn’t a silence of unbelief. It was the silence of people receiving faith when somebody spoke faith. Joel felt if we took the empty paint buckets and filled them with water God would turn it into paint when we needed it. That jazzed everybody. We began to find every empty 5 gallon paint bucket in the studio and filled it with water. In fact we painted some walls with that water in faith that God would change it to the color we needed. Even though the walls didn’t change color, we still, walking in faith, kept working as if God had preformed the miracle.

That next Sunday morning service Victor Emenike was there and the Lord was there doing unusual things. Victor was healing the sick when He handed the mic to Richard. He explained that someone had given gallons of paint to the church and he felt that it was the fulfillment of us pouring all the water into buckets. And when he finished saying that, he handed the mic back to Victor who continued to minister. Then suddenly, a brother in our church stood up and announced that his company would buy all the paint and sundries for the painting of the studio at Treasure Island. All 144.000 sq ft of it.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Shortly after the film festival, we were at the Treasure Island studio until the end of the year. We didn’t have any power for the festival itself. (That’s a whole other blog.)

We painted there a week before the city asked us to leave. The total amount of water God turned into paint was $250,000 worth!!!

John Francis is team leader in set design, and has built sets for the film “Roman Trilogy”.