There has been an outreach work going on in a very impoverished area of inner city Atlanta for the past ten years now. You can read a very brief summary and see some pictures from the group on our previous post.
In the report below, Pastor’s wife Penny brings us up to date with some exciting new developments in the life of the congregation.
“The months of February to June 2020 will go down in the annals of church history as containing a number of milestones in the progress of Christ’s kingdom in Atlanta.
This is some more wonderful news to report (after also receiving new members recently), which has to do with the purchase of the building that we had been leasing since October. At the beginning of December, we had just a bit over $15,000 in our building fund.
In my article towards the end of that month, I noted that we then had $20,000, and I asked your help to raise at least a further $30,000 in order to have a 25% down payment on the $200,000 building. Well, the Lord was more gracious than we could have thought or imagined! By the end of May we had received over $75,000, and had been granted a 3% mortgage by the Trustees of Synod for a loan of $150,000. On June 1st we had all of our paperwork in hand (title insurance, proof of property insurance, etc.) and were able to close on the building. In addition to the loan, Synod awarded us a $10,000 grant at closing, increasing the total amount of building fund moneys to close to $86,000. This means that in six months, we had raised more than $70,000!
The day of the closing, however, was not without drama. There were technical issues regarding getting the mortgage loan funding actually transmitted to the attorney’s office. By God’s grace, however, the money arrived as we were actually in the process of heading down to the closing, and from then on everything went smoothly.
Because of the gracious giving, the extra donations will allow us to do some much needed repairs, improvements, and even a new sign. We would also like, by means of future donations, to be able to pay off the 20-year mortgage ahead of time.
So, a big THANK YOU to you all for your most kind and gracious gifts. We stand amazed at the Lord’s blessings, and look back at His awesome providences in bringing us this far.
We now have three big causes for celebration, deserving of a party when we are able to do so! The first is one is a party that had been planned for the young Sunday School class of 5 to 10 year olds, on March 22nd, for having memorised the Ten Commandments—not a summarised version, but the entirity of Exodus 20:1-17! And that turned out to be the first day that we did not meet for church in person.
The second is the ten-year anniversary of our ministry in downtown Atlanta which would have been celebrated on April 12th. The third cause of celebration, will be in gratitude to the Lord for the finalisation of the purchase of our own building, planting, more firmly, the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in the heart of this great!”
