The God of the Impossible

Sorry for the long absence; the last couple of weeks have been pretty busy.  I had a great time counselling up a Camp UTIBACA for a week.  About three young men trusted Christ as their Savior.  I got home just in time to run VBS at church.  That also was a blessing since we had about 40 in attendance and some new people who came to the Friday program to see me get a pie in my face.  But this Sunday was one of the most exciting days in the history of our ministry in Salt Lake.  After two years of planning and praying, we had groundbreaking on our new land.  Pastor Higgins asked me to share a little about the history of the project that day.  As I stood in front of about 100 individuals to give a short history, I was hit with the reality that God’s timing and provision is the history.  Two years ago, as a unified congregation, we felt that our current building was hindering our ministry.  We had been there for 15 years and people still wondered what that old run-down JW building was for (It used to be a Jehovah’s Witness building).  God led us to a retired land developer named Dave Coats who began to asses our alternatives.  Just down the road (about one block)  3.08 acres sat completely barren.  No one could figure out who owned that property.  But after several months, Dave discovered it was owned by an LDS bishop (now the mayor of West Jordan, UT).  We asked the owner what he wanted for the property and he told us $480,000 dollars (the property has appraised for about 1 million).  Our congregation could never afford that so he agreed to give us a free one-year option on the land.  We had exactly one year to come up with $100,000 dollars down-payment, and he would carry the contract at a reasonable rate.  This seemed impossible, but we started to pray.  With one month to go, we were short about $55,000 dollars.  Within that one month $45,000 dollars came in through God’s provision.  But we only had $90,000 and we needed $100,000.  Without mentioning any numbers, we asked the owner how much he would be willing to take.  He thought for a moment and then said, “$90,000.”   So we stepped out in faith and purchased the land.  We were then faced with the selling of our current building.  Without any advertising, we received several offers, but they were all too low for us to consider.  In a meeting with Pastor Higgins, I said that I thought we needed $300,000 dollars out of our current building to make this work.  Shortly after that, a Samoan church asked if they could meet with us to talk about purchasing our building.  As we all sat down, they pulled out a letter offering us exactly $300,000 for our building.  So we stepped out in faith again and sold our building (We currently have about 9 months before we must vacate the building).  We worked out a deal with the Samoans where they would pay us $90,000 down and then they would need outside financing for the rest.  We gave them until January 1, 2006.  At the end of December they were about $45,000 short and we thought the whole deal would collapse  (O ye of little faith).  Just a couple of days before the new year, the pastor called me and said they had $40,000 and the other $5,000 was in the mail.  The God of the Impossible did it again.  So we are halfway through 2006, we don’t have enough money, and we don’t have any wealthy people in our church. We are meeting in our old building which is no longer ours, and we have to be out of here by next May.  What is going to happen?  I have no idea. Yesterday, I picked up my gold spray-painted shovel and scooped up some dirt, posed for the picture and saw the unveiling of the rendering of the new building.  It hit me out in the hot sun, I have no idea what is going to happen; but I know the God of the impossible is always on time.