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After much prayer and deliberation, searching and negotiating, the future location of our first church plant has been decided. In Brazil, real estate rentals as well as sales are handled by agents and there were no less than 5 scouring the city for us looking for the perfect location - a difficult assignment considering our unusual needs. We needed a place with enough space to house services, classrooms, nurseries, fellowship area, kitchen, several bathrooms and room to grow. Only certain parts of town were considered due to our target group and proximity to our colleague’s ministry, which limited the possibilities even more. The biggest hurdle, however, was that we needed all this to fit into our limited budget of ministry funds. We found commercial buildings to be either too limiting or extremely expensive. Warehouses all required too much cash to modify for our purposes and carried a stigma that would likely keep our target group away. Homes were just not adaptable enough either - living rooms, though large, would not serve as auditoriums for long as the church would grow, small bedrooms quickly become cramped classrooms, and those that were large enough had a pool in the courtyard (nice baptistry but rather impractical the rest of the 99.9% of the time). What would we do?
God had the perfect place prepared for us! (Of course.) A business woman who modified her home into a party hall (place parents commonly rent to host children's birthday parties here) spent thousands remodeling only to find that she could not get a zoning variance to open this type of business in that neighborhood. Yes, a church is OK, but no bars, party centers, or restaurants. Jackpot! Large assembly area, many smaller rooms, huge commercial kitchen, 7 bathrooms (one with a child-size potty!) fellowship space, the list goes on and on. It was love at first sight but the price was out of reach and she was not willing to budge. In the end though, through the participation of many faithful prayer partners (and her fear that we would walk away), God changed her mind. Now pray He will change her heart too and bring her to salvation (and her husband too).
We will have a facility that matches our vision and goals. It needs some TLC and a good cleaning before it is ready for services but by Easter Sunday (our target date to begin). Lord willing, it will be.
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