Update on Church Progress

One of our dear friends from Maryland (actually, with as many times as he has been down here, I should say one of our dear family members!) has asked for an update on the church's situation and where we stand with our building progress. So...here goes...

Things really have been (and still are) moving really slowly. This will be a fact of life for us over the next couple of years. Although we have made great strides in our recovery efforts, there is a great deal that still needs to be done. Please pray for our patience as we move forward. We are all children of our age, to some degree, and want to have everything finished NOW; like everyone else in our fast-paced, immediate gratification society, we struggle with waiting on the Lord and being patient.

As far as the church goes, we have engaged a contractor and an architect who are developing the final plans for the first phase of our construction. We will hopefully have plans that we can make available on our website within the next few months (don't hold me to the time period, though, as things seem always to take longer than we expect them to!).

We have received the final approval from the Corps of Engineers to develop the new property north of I-10 (if you remember, the property contained "jurisdictional" wetlands, which required approval from the Corps before development). This means that we will be closing on the property shortly and breaking ground once the plans are finished from the architect and contractor.

We have also just received a contract for the purchase of our downtown property. This should allow us to build a phase 1 that will allow us to get out of the school gym and have our own facility once again (!).

We are thankful for the Lord's provision and ask you to join us in praying for His continued provision, guidance, and blessing as we move forward.

Thank you for your concern for us and for the work here on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.