We have been working on our new Christian Education building for over 10 years. It has taken this long because we do all of our building on a cash basis. We had a “Special Offering” the first weekend in June each year and would build until it was gone and then take another one the next June. A number of issues complicated the fund raising. The first one was that we had a vision of starting daughter churches as a major strategy of reaching more people with the gospel. Our goal was to start a daughter church every two years beginning in the year 2000. When we started a church the pastor of the new church was usually a staff person who was leading a significant ministry in JBC, and the loss of their leadership took some major adjusting. The goal was to have at least 50 people from JBC leave a be the nucleus of the new church. These 50 were almost always committed, involved, leaders in JBC who enjoyed a challenge and wanted to make a difference in the world by being part of a new church. We would also take $50,000 from our “Special Offering” for the new building and give it to the new daughter church to help them while their own giving was low. Another “cost” to the Momma church, JBC was that a high percentage of those who left were younger people with the passion and energy, so we prematurely aged as a church family. Looking back on the last 15 years and seeing the existence of 9 daughter churches that are healthy and growing and reaching people I wouldn’t have done it any other way. A couple of days ago we had the final inspection on the HVAC system, yesterday we had the electrical final, and the cover final, today the elevator inspection passed and also the plumbing. In two weeks we will have the fire alarm and final inspection and we will be done, and we will begin using the building to teach classes on how to have a great marriage, how to raise super kids, how to manage your money, theology, world religions, and other great classes. This building has truly been a marathon, endurance, event. Thank You Lord for blessing us. It feels good to cross the finish line on this race.