Sipho and I had the privilege to speak to the students at Lungisa High School this past week. Lungisa High School is a public high school very close to our church. We now have an open door to come and spend time with the students during their lunch break each week. This is a great opportunity for us to be able to impact many young people with the truth of the Gospel.
On January 22nd, the construction began for New Life Baptist Church Kwadwesi. Other than lacking a few doors, electricity, and water, the building is ready for use. Well, we’re going to use it anyway:) We will be having our first service in the main auditorium this morning, April 19th at 10am. I want to thank everyone for their prayers and support during this building project. The money for building came in just in time, even when I underestimated the cost or had surprise expenses. I praise the Lord, there is a lighthouse in the Kwadwesi area of Port Elizabeth, South Africa to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Continue to pray as we seek to reach the lost and train young men for the ministry.
Over the past two weeks, $15, 600 came in to help with the building of New Life Baptist Church. This has enabled us to continue building without any major delays. We are grateful to those who gave, and want to thank the Lord for bringing the funds in so quickly. We are hoping and feel pretty certain, with these funds, we will be able to complete the first phase of the building. This first phase will give us space for our first auditorium, 4 Sunday school classes, two bathrooms, and also supply housing for my assistant. I’m feeling pretty overwhelmed by the sacrificial giving of God’s people with this project.
The quote for building materials for all the walls on the first floor of New Life Baptist Church comes out to 48,790 rand which is about $4,435. This will be the cost once we have the foundation completed, which will include a single garage-size basement.
For months, I have been mentioning this church, and our desire to start building as soon as possible. The day to start building has come and gone. The footers and most of the foundation wall is complete. The wait is over.
This will be the first church for me to pastor here in South Africa. Pray for me and Pastor Sipho Bonga as we work to start this church in the coming weeks. Originally, Pastor Sipho was going to start this church on his own, but for now he wants to come on as my helper to give his family a little time to adjust. As time goes on, and I’m able to be be involved in more church plants, we plan for Sipho’s role to change quite a bit.
The foundation, unfortunately, is costing more than we originally planned because of the layout of the land. We don’t have the final number for the first floor, but it looks like it will be closer to $15,000 to have everything roughed in. This is close to $7000 more than we had initially planned. More details to come.
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Our family moved over to Wells Estates Baptist Church about three weeks ago. Since we have been in South Africa, we have been based at Madiba Bay Baptist Church. We made the move to Wells because it’s about a 10 minute drive from where we hope to start the new church. This will enable us to work with Pastor Thami as we are also starting the church.
Our original plan when coming to South Africa involved spending the first two years learning the language with plans to start a church toward the end of those two years. Being a little eager, we hoped to start a church a little after our first year here. Well, we’re still hoping.
Although we don’t have a building yet, we had a promising lead this past week. Starting this week, we plan to go door to door in the new area to share the Gospel and collect as many contacts as we can for when we do start the church.
Pastor Sipho is still waiting to start construction for New Life Baptist Church. We are still waiting for the building plans to be approved. This process has taken a bit longer than we have hoped and planned, but we believe it won’t be much longer. We did get the go ahead to have the water and sewer hook-ups installed.
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Viewing for Larry Underwood will be Monday, November 3, from 5-8 at Ponders Funeral Home in Dalton, GA. (Off the by-pass)
The funeral will be Tuesday at 10am at McFarland Hill Baptist Church in Dalton, Ga.
Thank you all again for your prayers!
We received news from our team member, Stephen Underwood, that his father unexpectedly passed away in his sleep this past Saturday morning. Please be praying for Stephen and his family. His dad was only 55 years old and this was very unexpected. I believe the funeral will be Tuesday morning at McFarland Hills Baptist Church in Dalton, GA. As we get more information it will be passed along.
Stephen and Ashley are currently on deputation and are doing well raising support to get to South Africa. They had to cut a missions conference short they were a part of in Knoxville.
As of now, a place to rent hasn’t opened up for the new church plant. It seems that rentable space is very limited. We will continue to search, but it may come to the place where we need to buy property. I’m really hoping we can keep the cost down the first year by just renting a space, but I’m not sure how much longer we can wait. Many people have offered to sell their property, but no one is able to rent.
We are praying for clear direction from the Lord right now. To rent a house with enough land to build a small auditorium would be around $50 to $75 a month. To buy the same property would be between $5000 and $7000 I believe.
At Madiba Bay Baptist we are currently renovating the front parking lot of the church to build a soccer/fubito court. The church plans to use Friday night and Saturday soccer leagues for outreach and evangelistic purposes. With the lack of space in the community for these types of events, we believe it will be a great opportunity to be in contact with a lot more lost young people. It will also be a great venue for the young preachers to gain more experience in preaching and presenting the Gospel.
Please be in prayer for both the new church plant and the soccer leagues.
