Former horse betting facility turned church

SCOTT COUNTY, Va. -

A popular horse-betting facility in Scott County shut down more than a year ago. Sunday, the building re-opened to the public for the first time since then.

200 TV monitors with nothing but horse racing lined the walls of Colonial Downs. A year later -- a congregation full of excited people fill the space which is now the sanctuary of Uplift Church.

We noticed that it had sat vacant for almost a year and we knew it had closed down. So, we put somebody in charge of finding out if it was available, and if they would be willing to rent it to a church, and they said, yeah absolutely, says Patrick Johnson, pastor.

Johnson and members of his church went right to work remodeling, cleaning and preparing for the grand opening.

We started five weeks ago, and this whole building was totally different. Just to come through every Saturday and see how this has changed is phenomenal, says Britney Miles, church member.

Uplift Church has changed a lot too since Johnson started it back in 2012, when he held services in the basement of his home. We first originally started with five families, he says.

Those five families have grown into this -- with attendance numbers no one anticipated -- but couldn't be more thrilled about. It was just amazing to see 239 people come to Christ today. I was definitely excited, Miles adds.

And so was Connor Lovelace who came to Uplift for the first time. I work with a lot of the people that go here and they just make you feel at home. It's just a really welcoming environment. I love it. I love it a lot, Lovelace says.

All bets aside, it's a celebration of a fresh start and a new beginning. It's taken a whole lot of people. What grew out of those five families have now grown to more than that and they've all pitched in, and I mean just really done an amazing work to get all this work done, Johnson says.

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Former horse betting facility turned church