"A de wan Gado-sani." It is always exciting to see God work. As you know, we have been searching for land for the Sunny Point church, and found a very good location. We found the price of 18,000 Euro a reasonable one, and made the arrangements. David Champlin and I went to sign papers, but arrived an hour late - almost certainly because I mis-understood the time although I had repeated it to the notaris (man who arranges selling property). Dutch time and numbers are different in order from English. When we arrived, the other party had left, and we rescheduled for the following Tuesday. I was disappointed.

Thursday night the assistant pastor Mejo Banwarie had trouble sleeping. Something was wrong with the property - it seemed to be divided into to three pieces instead of two. He and Kenneth Domini, the pastor, investigated that morning. Later Friday, I received a call that we had been shown the wrong property, and actually were purchasing another piece one road further up the way in the same position. The owner himself did not realize the property he had shown us was not for himself. Further, three families were squatting on the land and had built houses on them. Had I arrived on time on Wednesday and we signed for the property, we would have had a huge problem. We would be stuck with the land. And the laws of Suriname make it almost impossible to get squatters off your property for years, and with a tremendous legal hassle. Furthermore, we would spoil our chances for reaching the area for Christ if we forced families to abandon their homes. But thanks to not signing, we cancelled the sale. Thank you Lord for my misunderstanding, and for Mejo's sensitivity to your leading.

I began thinking of the properties we had bought previously. Our first property where the main church is located is precisely the same area where I dumped my van in a deep gutter. I had been traveling through the area, and went down a narrow street with a gutter covered by high grass. I cut around an abandoned car, and then the road stopped. In backing up, I went into the gutter which I could not see. The van tilted 30 degrees. We sat there two hours waiting for a tow truck after another truck could not pull us out. We passed out tracts. A large empty lot was there, with a telephone pole making it difficult to pull out the van. I joked that this would be a good place to build a church. Less than two years later, the same telephone pole was located between the church and caretaker's house. We had bought precisely that property.

When we were ready to build a church in Winti Wai, we wanted only one appropriate piece of property on a corner. The Muslim man would not sell. Two weeks later he changed his mind, but did not want to sell during the month of Ramadan. I asked him how he wanted the price - in Suriname guilders or US dollars. He said to my surprise: "Suriname guilders." The exchange rate during the month of Ramadan changed from 1 dollar to 35 guilders to 1 dollar to 50 guilders. This saved us $1500.00. He wanted to change to US dollars now, but stayed with his original agreement. Thank you Lord.

The same way, we had our eyes on one property (actually 4 small lots combined) for the Efraimzegen church. The owner did not want to sell. We looked all over without a proper location. Then a nephew asked us why we did not by the lots we wanted. When we told him that the owner did not want to sell. By chance, the owner was at a nearby bar, and the nephew sent him to talk with us. He had changed his mind, but raised the price 10%. However, in that interval, the value of the dollar increased 20%! Again, a savings of $1500.00. Thank you Lord.

So I began to pray for the Lord to work. Do it again, Lord. The man who really owned the property we wanted was out of country. The notaris contacted him. He would sell for 15,500 Euro. Later he found out that he had underpriced his land. But the man who he authorized to sell was a Christian man who said "an agreement is an agreement" - although it cost him some money. Better property, better location, slightly larger, and 2500 Euro (about $4000) cheaper. Thank you Lord. You have shown Your power again! We were thrilled, especially Kenneth Domini, who has taken leadership in talking to the notaris, the owner, and the church members.

Please pray for the Lord to show Himself strong in this building project - not only to meet the needs, but to show His power to the nationals. They will be doing the vast majority of the building work themselves. We are setting up a fund to be supervised by the four preachers of our four to control the use of funds. Any funds given out require double signatures. We have set up controls to make certain that all the funds are used appropriately, with appropriate receipts. The nationals will decide when the church will start repaying the loan, and the terms of the loan. My hope is that this will start them to be able to fund their own building projects in the future, without constant need for outside funds. The Lord will supply if we only trust Him. Thus far we have had $1500.00 donated toward the building cost. Please remember that from a human point of view, Sunny Point is our poorest church. The few men have average jobs. Most women have no job, or work as cleaning ladies.

On a sadder note, after one of our young preachers required church discipline, his brother-in-law decided also to leave the church, although he was not under discipline himself. A few additional members have followed them out. We now face a rebuilding process. Pray for unity within the church family, and that everyone will get involved in pushing His work forward.

Prayer requests:

1. Strength and health for the work
2. Our continued spiritual growth
3. Safety on the road
4. Souls saved and baptized (we had one infant dedication this week)
5. Re-organization of the church to fill the gaps left by those departing
6. Unity, love and working together in the church family
7. Continued work on the Sunny Point church project
8. Independence of the churches