Need more space!!!

As you saw in my last blog where I showed pictures of when we first started this church plant and recently you can see that we have grown in size a lot. Our biggest problem isn't so much in space for our church service but in space for classes. The following two pictures are the only two classrooms we have. I know they don't appear to be full in these pictures but there are times when between the two rooms there are over 30 kids. To top off the numbers of kids coming we have ages 2 to 6 in the one group where Joelle, our daughter is teaching, and from 7 to 13 in the other class.

This picture doesn't show the younger ones on the side of the room from where I took the picture.

This class at times has had up to 20 students

For quite some time now we as a church have been praying that the Lord would provide more space. The mission has encouraged us to purchase a building. We would like to but prices are very high. Colleen and I went to look at a place a few weeks ago and the asking price for the place was $420,000 US. It is an adequate place but very highly priced. Merle, one of the other missionaries we work with in the church plant has also been looking. She has found some empty lots starting at $120,000. We have asked the owner of the place where we are right now if she would be willing to sell and she says, no. If we could own it we could at least build on a second floor. Needless to say we are still meeting in the same building with the same two rooms for classes.

Please pray with us that God will provide us the finances we need to purchase our very own building or a more adequate building to rent so we have more space.