A little trip to the council offices

For the bookshop I needed to get what they call a permission to function. I guess it's like a license to operate a shop or a public space where people will enter into.

It was something that I was very unaware of when we started the Bookshop so I was a little nervous diving into this process as there are usually fines and delays for a payment that hasn't been made.

There were a number of things that were involved in this process:

1. Our organisation didn't have everything up to date - I needed to get a special letter from tax office (took 2 weeks to obtain)
2. The council didn't have our records up to date (to one 1 week to rectify)
3. I had to go and pay at the fire station for fire services
4. There existed other payments for services provided on other properties in our organisations name that I had to make before I could make my payment (meaning a cost of $1400 instead of the $60 I had in my pocket)
5. I wrote a cheque and went to get it certified (necessary for council) and they said I filled it in wrong (I put 10/100 for the cents sometimes done here instead of .10) GO back and get another cheque.
6. I then went to the council where the lady had to enter in details for each 14cm long receipt. 
7. I then went back to the office where I sat down and said, "We're done". 

All of this took us from early December till now to complete and I can't believe it is done. 

Guess how many payments were necessary by looking at how it measures up to me!

ESI begins

As many of you know we have been waiting for Equiping Servants (ESI) to begin and it finally has. Tomás and Nancy arrived last September from Bolivia and have spent some learning Ecuadorian culture and developing relationships with pastors and leaders in churches. We started the first ESI group  on Tuesday 7th February with 12 guys and it looks like the Thursday group will be 13 or 14 that will continue for the following three years.

I am really excited about this, please pray that this will be a group of men who will want to grow leaders for Christ. It's a pretty rigorous course, with homework each week including journal type work and readings. Punctuality is required...more than 10 minutes late counts as a no-show. Three no-shows over the semester puts you out of the course. The course includes a book set each semester.

It's been great to see so many people coming to use the library resources already to complete their work and also to talk through what they are learning with Tomás (pictured standing). There are Facebook messages flying around about ESI homework and that's also generating interest from others who might be future ESI potentials.

After what seems like a long lead time of getting a space ready that will be a multi-purpse training centre for people to grow in their understanding and maturity in their walk with the Lord, it is great to see it functioning in such a tangible way!