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Pastor Josh Update

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You may remember that, several months ago, I asked you to pray for God to provide a permanent meeting facility for our church. I explained that we were in the midst of discussions with an established church in our area that has less than a dozen people actively attending, and I said that their building would be very suitable for our needs and is in a great location. However, the amount of money they wanted for the building was just too high for us. Although we put together an offer of $300K (intending to write another $100K into the loan for renovations), they remained firm at their price of $500K (citing the fact that the building and land were worth well over $1M, which is true). Things were at a standstill, so I asked you to pray.

And...it turns out that God answers prayer! 

It brings me great joy to report to you that the pastor of this church requested to meet with me last week and accepted our offer of $300K. God is so good!

Of course, this deal is still a work in progress and includes a few complexities, which I don't have time to get into in this email. Things can still go wrong. Please pray that we would be able to work through all of those issues.

In addition, please pray about the process we are going through of financing this purchase. At this point, it seems likely that we will need to take out a loan, so we are currently working with 3-4 lending institutions. The total amount needed is $400K ($300K for the purchase plus $100K for the renovations). Of that amount, our church has saved up $150K (though we'd need to hang on to at least $50K so that we still have funds available for emergencies). This means that we're able to offer a down payment of $100K on the $400K loan. 

However, one issue that we're running into is that lenders are uneasy with the fact that our church is so young. Because of this, they are hesitant to approve a loan and desire a higher-than-average down payment. Thankfully, a very generous donor has already stepped up and offered us an additional $50K, making it possible for us to offer a down payment of $150K. Would you pray that God would raise up others to help? 

And lastly, there is the matter of renovating the building. As I mentioned, we're setting aside $100K for this. However, the building is in such a condition that it won't be hard at all to spend that amount...and then some. Because of this, we are asking for as many mission teams as we can get—preferably within the next 2-6 months. There is a need for both skilled and unskilled labor. The building has rooms and rooms of junk that need to be removed as well as plenty of cleaning to be done. Of course, the people of our church will do as much as we can ourselves, but there is plenty of work for anyone else who desires to help.

If you think you may be able to get a team of people together to travel here and help us with these renovations, please reply to this email and let me know. I would be very appreciative. As I said, there is still room for the deal to fall through, in which case renovation teams would obviously not be necessary, but things are moving along pretty well so far. 

Again, thank you so much for your prayers. There is not a doubt in my mind that all of the blessings God has given to our church so far are the fruit of the prayers that have been lifted up on our behalf day after day. We could not be more grateful!

By the way, the picture above is of the auditorium, and additional pictures of the facility can be viewed here

Serving Him,
Josh & Becky Tancordo