No Ishmael's please

Not this land!

As the end of 2011 approached myself and Tinho had a trip planned to the U.K. in November. Tinho had started praying into the New District as early as 2009 and even though land seemed to escape us, we had plenty to be getting on with in the church, the school, and now even more excitingly for me, outreach to the riverbank people. Yet we felt once again impressed that we would be going to the U.K. having bought ‘the land’.  We even got to the stage of considering buying land 10X20m just to start, knowing that we had to start at some stage.

Then one night the week before we left for the U.K. Tinho woke up early in the night with a burden to pray for ‘the land’. God spoke to him clearly and told him he was praying for the wrong land and he was to pray for the land he had first liked when he had entered the New District. Tinho decided to pray, the lady who owned the land said she wasn’t selling and she also didn’t live in Maues anymore. In the morning Tinho sent someone to inquire of the lady…lo and behold, wasn’t she in Maues and said she was willing to sell the land for R$8,000, Tinho said he would give her seven. I had gotten a phone call in the morning telling me to pray and then a phone call saying that yes the lady was willing to sell the land but Tinho had offered her seven. I couldn’t believe it, I remember telling him that God had been so good and the price was so good how could he even imagine not to accept and barter! He smiled and said it was his business nature coming out! By the end of the day the lady accepted R$7,000.00 (approx £2,400.00). Her son who was looking after the deal, said he would measure the land which they thought was about 40X60m we were ecstatic with delight. When her son came back after measuring the land he said that the measurement was wrong, that the land was actually about 100mX80m. We were completely blown away. This was a massive piece of land, at a just price for the area but WOW, what was God up to, this was enormous. We knew God had a plan, we felt we were being big in our vision but after the closure we realized that His plans are even greater than ours and that quite possible we had only been given a glimpse……the whole picture would have been too scary!