Shul happenings make me glad and sad

Good news on rentals
Another congregant and I had a huge fight with the synagogue president this past Sunday after morning minyan over the issue of the rental of the sanctuary before the end of Shabbat/Sabbath. I think we may finally have gotten through to him. At a meeting a couple of days later, he told us that he'd told the office worker in charge of rentals that he risked being fired if he kept renting the sanctuary too early. He said that, from now on, the rental guy will use a Jewish calendar to record the rentals, rather than using a secular calendar and checking the Jewish one whenever he got around to it, which has resulted in the creation of scheduling conflicts such as these. The rental guy is also now under orders not to rent the sanctuary until one hour and five minutes after licht-bentchen/candle-lighting time. Yay! (I hope. We shall see.)

Mourning the morning minyan
Since my husband realized that the congregation had never been officially informed that the shul would no longer hold workday morning services, he announced from the bimah (pulpit), this past Shabbat, that this past Monday and today would be the official last workday morning minyanim. Monday and today, he and I were the only ones there. Since it's now the month of Elul, when we begin preparing for the Yamim Noraim/High Holiday coming next month, there's a tradition to blow a few blasts on the shofar (ram's horn) at every weekday morning minyan until the day before Rosh HaShanah/New Year, so my husband brought his trusty shofar. When he blew the shofar, I was sad that it was for just the two of us, and even sadder that, from now on, if we want to hear a shofar-blowing at a workday morning minyan during Elul, we'll have to go to another shul.