Transitional Woes

Last day in China before flying back to the States for six weeks. I know that I’ve written next to nothing in the past couple weeks, so I’ll try to fill in the blanks since our last post. We chose a building for the church – on the third floor of a commercial plaza. Seems like a fantastic location – seems very unlikely that our noise or our traffic will bother anyone. The size is a big step for us – our new auditorium will be more than double the size of what we’re leaving behind.

The price tag was equally grandiose. It seems like a good deal for a commercial property, though – we only paid for the first five months rent – we’ll owe more around the new year. And when we’ve paid the money for a year, they’ll give us a year for free – which makes the price really unbeatable for this kind of a house. Reason seems to be the remoteness of the property within the plaza – really out of sight – not a chance for a window shopper.

So this week we’ve had walls built, drywall hung, doors installed, and tile laid. And about a dozen arguments for every step in the plan. It is very common to hire someone and have them want to argue with you about the price after they’ve done about half the work – what are you supposed to do then? I think at least two times we just had to fire someone for wanting to double the pay like that and go find someone else to finish it.

The plan is to start a business as soon as we get back which will be housed in this building. Then the church will pay rent to the business (since this building is well-nigh unattainable for a church our size) to use the space. Not that that would be very likely to protect us in any way if we get caught – but if we can start the right kind of business, it should give us a very good excuse to have a bunch of college students coming into a large meeting every week. Plus hook us up with a couple visas. I hope you’ll pray with us about these processes. It’s very complicated, more than a little risky, and pretty expensive.