Category: Pray

Good news. North Madison Christian Church (of Madison, IN) called today to tell us that they would like to take part in the "29" thrust, committing $12,000 up front, with the remaining balance spread over the next 3 years.

Jim Thomas shared that the Missions Committee felt that by investing these resources through Team Expansion, they would leverage the contribution to accomplish a whole lot more than if they were to parcel it out to individual efforts in different places. Hats off to Palmer and Tina Gregg, who have been most excellent in establishing a long-term relationship with them, reporting to them regularly, and casting with them the over all vision of Team Expansion. The church recently sent a delegation down to Emerald Hills to visit and — bam — they're in!

Praise the Lord for this encouraging development, on the heels of a challenging week — when our excavators hit some fairly serious rock, a portion of which will have to be jack-hammered out of our basement area.

This could impact our excavation budget somewhat… or maybe quite a lot. On top of that, we received bids back from contractors for the electrical work and the HVAC. Previously, an electrical supply company had been verbally offering to supply all our wiring for free, save light fixtures.

Unfortunately, with the economy in the shape that it's in and with copper/fuel prices skyrocketing, his discounted bid still had to come back at nearly $200,000. HVAC (heating and air-conditioning) came back almost the same. I guess vendors are raising their prices on just about everything. So a building in 2008 is going to cost quite a bit more than a 2004 version would have cost.

As a result, we are redoubling our efforts to fund-raise *Plus* kicking into gear the idea that we might have to rely on volunteers a lot more than previously anticipated. Unfortunately, if the volunteerism ends up taking more time (which it almost always does), this means we might have to end up asking people for a bit more patience. As painful as it is for me to have to admit, it just might nix our hopes of being in the building by Christmas.

However, if we receive a windfall of support — or even a major gust — we'll be able to hire some crews and still, we trust, accomplish our goal by the end of the year. It will all depend on money.

So please open your minds and hearts to additional ideas for "29" projects.

We still have 8 of those to go. In the meantime, we'll try to get a current "Up-to-date" figure of how these bids affect our budgeting

*** Our excavators at Emerald Hills have hit rock at a somewhat more shallow depth than what the geological soundings had originally predicted. For more information, see:

http://www.emeraldhills.info

(Note that you'll be able to use the top-line menu item, "Pictures" to look at past picture items at any time.)

Please pray for the engineers and builders as they give opinions and figure pricing, then report to Joe Wilson, our Facility Coordinator. Help us to make good decisions that will safeguard the beauty and functionality of the property, while also maximizing our stewardship.