Let The Renovations Begin

Once we closed on the, to be exact 27,862square ft. building, we began to renovate. One of the first things that we had to do was gut the entire building. Lots of hours and man power went into it. We used a lot of community service and the rooms had been sponsored out to every church in town, every denomination (I felt as though that was part of the vision, all of God's children working together no matter where they went to church), every organization and anyone else who would participate. The building had been setting for not very long, but long enough for the sprinkler system to freeze over the winter and bust over the summer, molding all of the sheet rock. Now a lot of people asked me if it would be better to just tear it down and start all over. The answer to that was NO, the structure was still very good. I had to have an asbestos abatement team come and check for asbestos, it was in the flooring and the HVAC rooms and that was it, so we can cover over the flooring, no problem. We set out to raise money, gain more sponsorship for renovating rooms and some of the rooms will be shown later, first, I wanted everyone to see what type of work went on. I wish you could have seen how many of those huge trash dumpsters we filled and had hauled off. That is what the tractor is doing, dumping it in there and then having it hauled off. I am on my fourth year of renovating, but we are doing this debt free and with all volunteer help. We are totally debt-free at this point. The building was free and the labor has been free. I can't wait for you to see some of the rooms. We gave each sponsor the freedom to renovate, decorate and furnish however they wished within reason of course. This is a God-sized Noah task. This can only be God, but He has His own timing and in His own timing it will be done. Pray for me to continue to persevere, that has been the hardest thing to do when you live in a small town, living and fighting all the rumors, that I am stealing all of the money, don't know what I am doing and so on. I had a couple of pastors tell me that I am way over my head. My answer to them was "you are right, I am in way over my head, but God is not and I may not know what I am doing, but He certainly does and I just have to make sure that I follow His lead and listen to Him". It didn't touch them that I had just gotten this building free of charge when there were several in the town that wanted it and that there was a couple that had even tried to buy it and the company had always said no. I just wrote a letter and even sent it to the wrong address. The next post will let you know what we have done in the past four years. A little bit at a time. You will be amazed at what God has done for us.