Dear Praying Friends,
Thank you for all the prayer and encouragement over the last few months as we have sought the Lord about the opportunity to get into this building.
Here is an update on our ministry from the last few months and on the building.
We are under contract to purchase the new building, pending the issuance of a conditional use permit by the city!
We are grateful for the invitation from Pastor Marshall Stevens and Calvary Baptist Church to attend their Church Planting Conference the first week in December. There, Pastor Stevens graciously introduced the needs of our home remodel and the building purchase, and the money was raised to replace the roof on our home! The preaching and fellowship was a tremendous encouragement, and our boys were very grateful for the children’s Christmas offering that was given to all the ministry kids who were present.
In December and January, we had the opportunity to present the Gospel to several who came to meet with us at the park, even in thirty and forty-degree, very wet weather. Pray for one man, clearly a demoniac, who showed up one Sunday to protest every Scripture I preached for awhile. I invited him to sit and hear what the Bible said, but he declined. The next week, he was back, seemingly without the demons, and was willing to listen to me tell him about the Lord. While he did not receive the Lord that day, he has been there waiting nearly every Sunday when we start services, and walks circles around us, listening to the preaching. Please pray with us that he will soon receive Christ!
Pray also for a man named Jack, who received Christ on Sunday night, January 4th. A lifelong Jehovah Witness, he had many questions, and was hesitant to turn his back on his family and religion, but came to understand that his eternity was more important. It was a precious thing when “it all clicked” and he called upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ alone to save him, renouncing his old religion.
Now, for an update on the building. We have been praying about turning an old bar near the park that we have been meeting in – into a Baptist church building. It is in a great location with lots of traffic. Around the first of December, we learned who the owner was, and that he was willing to sell it to us for $110,000 and carry a contract if we could come up with $60,000 down.
The owner had other interested buyers, and I told the owner that we had no money, and that he should sell it if the Lord would give him a buyer. He contacted me two weeks later, and gave me the keys to the building, and told me that he’d give me time to find the down payment. While we couldn’t meet in the building, we could hold prayer meetings there, which we do every Sunday, and our church people sacrificially gave as much money as we could toward the building (and continue to do so).
We attended the Church Planters’ Conference at Heartland Baptist Bible College in hopes of being able to present the need for the down payment. As there were many needs to present, we were unable to present ours, yet God put us in contact with others there, and we were able to raise $50,000 toward the down payment. In going back to the owner, he lowered the down payment, and we signed a contract, pending being able to get fire insurance (a hassle in California) and a conditional use permit.
For the last two weeks we have begun cleaning up the corner – mowing the lawn that has not been mowed for a few years - and doing a lot of trimming. The neighbors are noticing and several have stopped and are grateful that “another bar is not going in there.” The “for sale” sign is down, and the alcohol signs are out of the windows. Hopefully
soon, a sign inviting people to Grace and Truth Baptist Church will replace them.
Please pray with us as we attend the city council meeting next Tuesday, February 10th, that God will give us grace with those present. This is our final hurdle before closing sometime in February.
Then the real fun will begin, as we will have a short amount of time to do some repairs to the building before we have some inspections. Please pray that the Lord will provide the necessary resources to get those repairs completed, and on time.
Thank you for your prayer and encouragement.
In Christ’s Care,
Jared & Krysta Watkins
Enoch, Ezra, Ezekiel, & EdWord
Some have asked how they can give towards our ministry. The easiest way to do that is online through the giving page on our church website. It can be found at giving.gatbc.org. You can specify through the drop-down on that page whether you want to give towards the building or towards our family needs. Thank you for your generosity!