Del Sol Northeast prayer update

Here's the latest update on the Northeast campus:

- Last week I mentioned that we won’t be able to meet at Dr. Nixon Elementary School, and so I’m looking into other possible meeting locations. I’ve been doing my research so that I can present Pastor Walter with some options when he gets back next week from a family vacation he’s on. I’ve looked at a small church building that’s available, I’m pursuing North Star Elementary School, and I found some shopping center space that just opened up a couple of months ago when a pizza place closed down. I’ve also looked in the YMCA, but it probably wouldn’t work for our purposes.

- Last week I also mentioned that I’ve been believing and claiming Ephesians 3:20 which says that God will do something far better than what we could even imagine would be best, and I believe that He is answering that. If all else fails, we could definitely meet at that old church building (though it’s not the ideal location or facility, we could make do), North Star ES is a much nicer, newer facility than Dr. Nixon ES and it’s on a main road, not a residential road, and the shopping center space I’m looking into is right at the intersection of two main roads in the Northeast, behind a Walgreen’s drug store and across the street from an Albertson’s grocery store – so it has the advantage of being identified by the landmarks it’s nearby.

- I’m open to whatever God leads us to do, and we definitely want to be wise managers of the money God has given us access to, but after much prayer, thought, and discussion I would really like to meet in the shopping center space, it that’s at all possible. The downside to meeting there is that the rent would be significantly higher than what it would be to meet in a school, but I think it would be a better option because:

• We would have access to it 24/7 so we could do midweek stuff and maybe even open it up to the community throughout the week, whereas we would be paying a large sum of money to meet at a school for a limited time on just one day a week.
  
  
• It’s close to those landmarks I mentioned above, unlike schools which are usually in neighborhoods away from main roads.
  
  
• We would control over it as far as the arrangement of the facility and rooms.
  
  
• Though the rent would be higher, we would save money on some expenses that are unavoidable in a portable setting, such as having to buy portable staging, purchasing of a trailer, insurance on the trailer and its contents, monthly rent on a storage space for the trailer, fuel for the truck used to pull the trailer, etc.
  
  
• We wouldn’t have to spend 3-4 hours each Sunday just setting everything up and tearing it down like we would have to do if we met in a school. The wear and tear we’d save on the volunteers alone is worth it, in my opinion.
  

I’d like to be able to secure a location soon, because we need to start ordering equipment and setting down some other details pretty soon, so please ask God to give us wisdom and direction about this matter.

- Because we don’t have a location secured yet, we’ve had to make some minor changes to our schedule, but we still plan on launching in to weekly worship celebration services in January. We dropped our preview gathering in October, but should still be able to have one on November 15^th, one on December 13^th, and then one more on January 10^th, launching into weekly services on Sunday, January 24^th instead of on January 10^th.

Here's how you can pray this week:

1. Please continue to ask God to show us where He wants us to meet, to open the doors we should go through, and close the doors we need to stay out of. Ask Him to give us favor where we need favor and most of all, please ask Him to give us wisdom to discern what the next step is.

2. Please ask God to show us His pace – meaning that we want to move along at the speed He wants us to go at, not going so fast that we get ahead of what He’s doing and not moving so slow that we lag behind and miss out on God-given opportunities.

3. Please pray for me as I continue to try to wrap my mind around everything that needs to be done and as I try to meet more people in the Northeast community. Also, please pray for our NE campus staff we brainstorm together, work on the details of graphic design, mail-outs, advertising, servant evangelism outreaches, preaching calendars, and all the other things we need to prepare for.

Thanks for your prayers - I truly believe they make a big difference.