Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
I pray you are all well, Exciting things are happening out here that we would covet your prayers for. Our Elders recently put a questionnaire out to the congregation to see what their feeling might be with regard to moving forward. You see the facility we have been renting has been truly limiting, to us with regard to our growth and simply not having facilities to do many of the programs we would like to build up. The facility we now use can only be used on Sunday morning, so you can imagine how difficult it is to grow a church with the use of no other facilities. We have asked the congregation to consider perhaps an interim step, of renting an additional facility where we might have some offices and a large room to do Youth, Children's and weekday ministries, OR the consideration of perhaps taking a bigger step and looking for a property that we would purchase and be our own. After considering all the responses of the congregation the Elders found that the Church at large felt that we should move toward a place of our own rather than renting an additional space. The Elders agreed and so we are now moving toward finding such a place where we can truly grow and thrive. There is little if any land to be found here in Lower Hutt that we might build on and what little there is extremely expensive. So we are looking for older building that we can transform into a Church building. At the moment we are looking at two properties that are for sale, one is an old theater, which is for sale but Peter Jackson's folk are using it at this time to film some things, this would be available in six months, and would cost us $400,000 in US dollars. Another building which is just about next to this old theater in an old Grocery store, which is almost as big as the theater and we have already been able to take a look in this one and it would seem that this could be the place for us and so we are looking into the ability to purchase this property. This one would cost us in the area of $250,000. Neither of these amounts includes what it will cost to remodel and both would need extensive remodelling for it to work. As well you all might be thinking that $250 G's is not a whole lot of money,, that a normal house in the US costs at least that much; and that is true if your are an American. But here this is a huge deal and an amazing step of faith for our little congregation. All this to say Please pray that God is leading us. Again there is such a great need for our church and for us to grow. In an area where 270,000 people live there are no other "Christians Churches, except for a non instrumental Church I just found out about in the city. Again only 2% of the population here attend any sort of Christian Church so there is much work to be done. So if you have any good counsel for us out here we would love and appreciate any advise. If you think you can help in any way we would be much in appreciation to anything you might do. Praise God and God Bless you all for you are certainly making a difference in the world, even in far away New Zealand.
Yours in Christ,
Lou
Greetings!
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