Tuesday, March 29, 2011

It's Finally Here!!

Hi everyone,

If you ever visit my Facebook page, you will see that one of the most exciting events this year happened on Friday !! The container with our new church building structural steel arrived Friday afternoon. Over FIVE MONTHS in customs, but it's finally here !! There was lots of singing and shouting when the truck finally pulled in the church parking. We have been praying and working and waiting to get the building out of customs since the first week of October !! Many, many trips to the customs office and the dock for Pastor Guy and others, but it's finally over and now we can start erecting the steel as soon as we can get our crane and crew together. When Pastor Guy made the announcement at church this morning, the church erupted into shouts of praise !! We are so thankful ! Once the structure is up, there is still so much more to do to get it outfitted and ready to use for worship services, but even all the work still to be done can't dampen the excitement ! Hopefully we can have our first worship service in the new church building in a couple months.

One of the Foursquare pastor's here in Haiti is Pastor Bellande. He has a church a few miles away from us in a rented building. But he also has an orphanage in a rented home way up the mountain that takes an hour and a half to get to (and that's on a good traffic day !) Pastor and his wife Merland both work in separate jobs and travel those long distances every day. Recently a US church donated the money to purchase a very nice piece of property near their current church so we could build a new church and orphanage for the congregation and orphans. The property has a beautiful stream running through it and it is so close to the current rented church building it will be easy for the congregation to move to the new site. As we we've been talking about the property we realized it would also be nice to have the adjacent property as well for gardens, and our fish and chicken projects - but it was not for sale for anything reasonable. However, the next property over (on the far side of the one adjacent to ours) is also nice. We've been praying for the Lord's direction on the purchased property but to date we haven't been able to get any construction started. But just this week, Pastor Bellande found out that the "next property over" belongs to a teacher Pastor Bellande had in school. And, because he knew Bellande, the man is willing to sell his property to us for the exact same price he paid for it !! Praise God ! Now we have to pray for the middle property owner to decide to sell cheaply or switch properties with us so we can have two adjacent properties (or maybe even give his to us !). What an opportunity for a church and orphanage site with tons of room to grow and expand. The other day I was there with a group from Canada and they walked the entire property including the adjacent properties and prayed for a miracle - and now we are seeing that miracle develop before our very eyes !! Thank you Lord !

Every day is something new and interesting ! And even though there are continual setbacks, obstacles and difficulties - it is obvious that God is doing something special here. I am honored and humbled to be a small part of what's happening.

More this coming week.

God bless you all

Mark

Not much to see here, but half a new church building is in that container !! (the other half will be delivered tomorrow). And from this container will rise the new National Church building for Foursquare. Can't wait to see it!


The property in the foreground is ours to build on for Bellande's new church & orphanage. The double wall in the back left is the center property we want and beyond the second wall is the teacher's property who wants to sell cheaply to us because he knows Pastor Bellande. What a blessing!!

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