A brief look at our timeline:
1. Completion of the first House (April 18, 2011)
2. Completion of Phase one of Construction-- including parking, guard house, drainage, water tank, fence and other small projects (April 30, 2011)
3. Staff Training (April 25-May 6)
4. Stakeholder Open House (May 8, 2011)
5. Community Open House (May 9, 2011)
6. Officially Open for New Participants (May 10, 2011)
7. Completion of landscaping (June 30, 2011)
Everyone in the office is very busy as we prepare to open our new facility. But there is excitement there also as we begin to see all of our hard work paying off. It's been pretty amazing to see the miraculous ways God has provided for this ministry in the past few months. Can I highlight a few of those ways? (If not... stop reading now, because I'm going to anyway!)
1. We began building our facility with about 3/4's of the money we needed to complete it. As the second month of our project began nearing an end, I started to get very worried that we would have to halt the construction completely. Then, seemingly out of no where, one person donated $25,000 to finish the house! The next week, to our great surprise, one church donated another $20,000!! Which meant, not only would we have enough to finish the house, we would be able to finish Phase One of construction before we opened! I cannot express how grateful I am to that person and that church for their amazing generosity.
2. A few weeks ago a Visitor shared a verse with us. The verse was Proverbs 24:3-4 and it reads "By wisdom a house is built and through understanding it is established, through knowledge it's rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures." Her encouragement was that as we continue to built our house, both literally and figuratively, to keep using the knowledge, wisdom and understanding of best practices. And as we do, God will fill our rooms, with those rare and beautiful treasures: Girls and young women who are survivors of terrible circumstances.
3. The other day we were in a meeting with the office staff, and the CR (bathroom) overflowed into the rest of the office. As I watched each of the staff members (even the one who is 8 months pregnant!) kick off their shoes, laughing, roll up their pants and grab tupperware, buckets, rugs, brooms and anything else they could find to move the water back into the CR (bathroom), I was so thankful for each one of them. We've truly been blessed with some incredible people to work along side in this ministry. I wish you could meet each of them!
These are just a couple of examples. I could fill pages with all the great things that are happening... Unfortunately, I have two weeks of training to prepare for, so I'd better get back to work!
To all those I haven't mentioned, please know that your efforts have not been overlooked. We appreciate all our partners so much, and couldn't be doing this ministry without you!
Crystal
