Last and foremost: Next move foreward

One thing about the way blogs work is that they come out in reverse chronological order. It's like starting at the end of a book and reading towards the front. In previous posts there's been a lot said about what is ending; this is about what is beginning.

The first thing that may strike you about this photo is the car right in the middle of the foreground. You may think it's a special model being marketed in Portugal due to the financial crisis. "You can't afford a whole car? Save 33% on your next automobile.  Let us sell you the front 2/3."  In actual fact, it was a victim of the panoramic photo process I used to get the church house with the neighboring property all in one shot.

 If you look carefully above the window to the left of the garage door at the edge of the picture, you will see a realtor's "For Sale" sign. (Click on photo to enlarge.) It's been there for three years or so. When the current owner bought the house 5 or 6 years ago, we didn't even know it had been for sale. It crossed our minds how useful it could have been to the church.

Then the house was for sale! "That's something to think and pray about," we said. But we didn't have much time to think or pray because the sign came down and a family moved in. "Ah, well, it would've been nice..."

Then, 6 months later, that family moved out and the "For Sale" sign went back up! That was about 2 years ago, and we sat up and took notice.  Another chance? But we did nothing more than toss the idea around, pray about it now and then, and say to ourselves: "€275,000 is a lot of money and our resources are very low." (It was about that time that the church was going through a crisis with a Brazilian family who came to help us in the ministry, until it became evident they were more interested in "being helped by us" than in being a help to us. Within a year, 50% of the  €20,000 reserve fund the church had managed to set up had been depleted.)

Other Problems
About 2 months ago it became evident that we had to take some kind of action to revamp our Sunday School program. We don't have many children, but their ages are wide ranging. We have little ones coming up...several 1 to 2 years old; 4 and 5; a little girl was born just two weeks ago; another family is expecting. Our building is nice, but there is NO WAY to have more than one Sunday School class for children at a time. There is one space and we tried everything...separate hours, different days...There's no space for a nursery. One night as we left a meeting dealing with the issue of Sunday School classes, I noticed that sign again on the house next door.  At that moment I sensed the same sort of challenge we have faced on several occasions since arriving on the island in 1976: "OK, Lord, I accept this house for Your work. You promised to provide our needs and this is a need." It was not so much my asking Him for the house; it was more like my accepting it from Him. When I mentioned this to the church, there was a unanimous response; with one heart the members have prayed, and they've started to give for this purpose. The Lord has encouraged us at every step.

The Property

Three floors, with space at street level for fellowship hall and a large classroom. Even if we cannot physically join the two properties, we will be able to make a direct opening from our current property into the other building. On the next floor up there are three bedrooms (perfect for classrooms/office space) and a large space for conferences/classes. On the upper level is an independent, one-bedroom house, perfect for accommodating visiting missionaries/pastors. There are spacious terraces on both the upper levels.

Summarizing: I found out the owner's name and that he is a Madeiran emigrant living in England for 50 years. His original thought in buying the house was to spend several months a year on the island, but he later saw this was not going to happen. I asked members of the church to pray about a price to offer for the building, and several of us "independently" came up with the same number: €200,000. When I mentioned this price to the owner, he accepted.

After his e-mail accepting that price, I didn't write back with a specific offer of payment terms, because we as yet had nothing to even work on. But one day we noticed that the "For Sale" sign was no longer hanging on the front of the house. The owner must have at least as much faith as we do that this is a done deal, because he took the sign down! He later wrote and said there was no pressure, and he was willing to wait, he only asked that we let him know at any time if we decided not to pursue the deal.

THE START

Sunday we took up the first special collection for the building fund, which totalled €6,330 (approx. $8500). This does not count other pledges, some of which will be delivered by the end of this month. Others are monthly pledges; some are in euros, others in pound sterling. Several people have expressed an interest in contributing and here are bank details for that:


Name of Account Holder: Igreja Baptista do Funchal

BES account number for transfers between BES accounts:
0007.0167.3266

Inter-bank transfers within Portugal,
NIB: 0007 0000 00701673266 23

International Bank Transfers:
IBAN: PT50 0007 0000 0070 1673 2662 3
SWIFT/BIC: BESCPTPL

For UK taxpayers: we are in contact with a charitable trust and we should have an answer by the end of this month about the possibility of giving through that trust, which could result in a 25% increase in the value of a gift.   

Most of all, we ask for and appreciate your prayers. Because we see the Lord's hand in this matter, in more ways than can be explained here, I am confident the Lord will provide as He always has. He will do it in His way so that He gets the glory. I have never engaged in a fund-raising appeal, and I do not intend to do so now. We will not send letters pleading with churches to help us meet our goal. I only seek to inform others of what God is doing and ask them to pray for us that we might always be aware of that ourselves. And if God lays on the hearts of others to join in, then He will get all the honor and glory. So above all, pray.

Done

As I said in the previous post, last week was quite a week, and as I said earlier on May 29, the Consular Agency was scheduled to close on June 7.  That day came and went; on that day the US consular services in Funchal also went.

The Consul-General came on Tuesday afternoon, and from then until he left on Friday afternoon, it was almost non-stop activity... in the office (attending to all the details of closing down) and out of the office (meetings with various authorities explaining the change).

Even before the CG came, there was a lot to do: some materials could just be tossed in the trash; others could not. We had nothing in our office classified beyond Senstive But Unclassified and PII (Personally Identifiable Information), so there was never any "danger" of a leak at the level of Wikileaks or the current revelations making the news. PII and SBU had to be shipped back in a diplomatic pouch for secure shredding. (Our old WWII vintage shredder burned out a year or so ago when the first sets of files were destroyed.) But there were boxes of floppy disks and CDs with backup files on them. These had to be destroyed. There's a certain therapeutic value to being able to take a hammer and crush CDs.

Not so therapeutic was destroying stationery "for official use only". That box of manila envelopes was one type that had to be torn up. The reams of paper serving as my "work table" were another type.  And there were many other types with many other thousands of sheets of paper that had to be ripped up and rendered unusable.

After removing the hard drive and RAM from the last computer, my last "official" act was to guarantee there would never be another official act of the American Consular Agency of Funchal: destruction of the seals. The rubber stamp was easily cut up with a knife; the press with the raised/embossed seal required something a bit more forceful. We had to grind down the two plates until there was no impression left. Very definitively, the end.

The Consulate in Funchal was the first consulate opened by the new country called the United States of America, back in 1792 (the protection of their supply of Madeira Wine was a matter of national interest to the Founding Fathers--the Declaration of Independence was toasted with Madeira)...and in the intervening 221 years the office was closed and reopened a couple of times in the early 1900s. I don't foresee a comeback this time.

WHAT WAS NOT DESTROYED

Some items were not deemed important enough to return, or sensitive enough to be destoyed. Trash...a lot of things qualified as trash, but among the items were two that hark back to a time when it was OK to use the word "God" and be a public official, and to use the Word of God in official acts. There was a time when oaths had to be taken on a Bible.

Left: English Bible    Right: Portuguese Bible

 The flyleaf of each one reads:

        (English Bible)                                                     (Portuguese Bible)
AMERICAN CONSULATE                AMERICAN CONSULAR AGENCY
           APR  7  1923                                            AUG  20   1953

    FUNCHAL, MADEIRA                             FUNCHAL, MADEIRA


The English Bible is in especially fragile condition, but it's still all there. Jesus said that heaven and earth would pass away, but His Word would never pass away. Consulates come and go; nations rise and fall; empires flourish and fade; Bibles may become tattered, but the Word of God remains forever, as strong and true today as it was from the beginning.  My hope is built on nothing less....

What a week!

The last week was memorable for various reasons. Not least was the baptism of Ismael on Sunday, June 2. His baptism was memorable in itself because it came after years of wrestling with an issue and its consequences on a pesonal level: he came to the conclusion that he should be baptized by immersion. What made the issue more complicated for him is the fact his father has been a Presbyterian pastor on the mainland for over 20 years.

When Ismael was born, their church baptized by immersion and didn't baptize infants, so that was not the issue. He accepted Jesus as Savior when he was about 10 and was "baptized" then,  but in the meantime, the church had adopted Presbyterian affiliation and the practice of sprinkling ... and infant baptism, issues he wrestled with all during his teen-age years. Marrying a Baptist girl, Vânia, only brought the issue all the more to his mind and heart. He has participated in our services, playing the guitar and giving music lessons, but he wanted to be a member; he felt this was essential for being able to fully serve the Lord in the local body.

The negative reaction of his parents is understandable. In his testimony before the church, Ismael emphasized his respect and admiration for his father as a pastor and servant of the Lord, but his desire to obey what he knew the Lord was calling him to do was stronger. Faith: doing what God asks us to do, no matter what.