Just this morning I got a very important call from one of the elders in the church in Villavicencio. The lot next door to the church and school was offered to us for a very reasonable sum of $42,000. We had tried to buy it once before and even raised some money. Then the owners jacked to price up to an impossible amount and so the deal fell through. It has sat there since then with no buyers and so the other day they approached us again. We still have some money in the bank from that last attempt and that could be used as a down payment. But we do not have the funds on hand to complete the sale. This may be our only opportunity to buy the lot because at this price it would almost definitely sell fairly quickly and once in someone else’s hands and after it has been built up, it would be impossible for us to purchase.
As the school has grown, we have added more and more class rooms. We reached a point where we filled up our lot and now have only a very small interior court yard for recess play. The classrooms are packed. We have a split school session with some grades in the morning and others in the afternoon. The school is extremely cramped and we have no more options. To buy the lot next door would allow us to construct some more classrooms so that we could end our current split sessions and at the same time have a good sized interior court yard for recess play.
We are praying hard that the lot is truly available this time and that God will provide the means by which we can buy it. Keep this in your prayers as we have been praying about that lot for many years now. But this presents an additional conundrum. This offer comes just after we had received an offer to sell a lot next door to our camp which would allow us to expand that as well. Obviously we could not do both at once unless the Lord provided in a spectacular manner. Of the two lots, the most important at the moment would be the school, though both would significantly boost our ministry capacity in its own area. Keep these possibilities in your prayers and join us in asking that God present the best opportunity now and preserve the other for the proper time in accordance with His will.
Please pray about partnering with us in these important ministries. If doors open to purchase this school we would need to move quickly. Let us know if you are interested in helping and we’ll keep you up to date with information about these projects.