Hey everyone. I hadn't mentioned anything about it on the forums yet, but currently the church I'm serving at was looking to begin renting out a building for a new school/church setting (for those of you familiar with what we're up to here).
The new location is seemingly perfect, and it puts us right next to a whole bunch of children, as it's located in the same facility as a children's cram school, and children have been our primary target for outreach.
At first obtaining the building seemed impossible, but we kept praying and believing that if God willed it, He could place us there. Then all the doors started opening up in completely miraculous ways.
We were going to move into the building this month and were all ready to go, but then something strange happened.
The building is multiple stories, and the cram school that also rents there found out that we were going to be renting one of the floors. When they realized that we were a church, they "humbly let the property manager know" that if we rented the building they would leave, because they don't want to share a building with a church of believers (even though it would only be used for services one day a week, and conducted in the soundproof room built there, so the noise would never bother them).
So the property manager informed my pastor about this and my pastor and his wife went to talk with the cram school owner to try to see if he could make any headway. However, the cram school owner actually went to all the teachers in his school, and they voted that they don't want a church to rent from the same building that they rent from.
The property manager said that he's in a bind, since the cram school rents a fair amount of space in the building, and the economy is bad here, so if they go, they'd be in a pickle, as the amount we'd be paying in rent wouldn't come close to what the cram school is paying currently.
To me this is just ridiculous. They have no actual right to flex their muscles in this fashion, since they're only renting, the same as we would be. But they have the upper hand on us, since they pay more money, so the property manager (understandably) has to side with them.
I guess I'm just asking for your prayers in this whole matter. All the impossibilities the Lord had just blown out of the way up until this point. We've been praying sincerely for God's will to be done in all of this, and if He doesn't want us there that He'd stop us. But if this is just the enemies of the Gospel puffing out their chests, we want to see Christ move through this situation and soften their hearts.
We're REALLY in need of prayer, because as far as people go here, once they make a decision it's like eternally set in stone by their reckoning, and we can't make a second appeal to them. Prayer can and will fix this, one way or the other.
If you could please pray for us, I couldn't even begin to tell you how grateful I'd be. -Grant