As many of you know, the Lord presented an opportunity for us to purchase nearly 3 acres of land almost adjacent to our Bangla Hope campus. We have shared with you our efforts as we have labored with the sellers to abide by the terms of the original contract that we had established with them over a year and a half ago. Countless requests were made by the sons of the owners, who were not present at the original meeting when the agreement was signed, to raise the price of the property. Many different tactics were used in an attempt to accomplish this goal but to no avail. We informed them that we had been more than generous with the price and would stick to the original agreement.
Finally, a meeting was set up for June 3 to finalize the purchase. After the government surveyor measured the property, which took most of the day, he declared that only 2.6 acres were free to sell…the remaining .4 acre did not belong to the sellers. The identity of the actual owner of the .4 acre was unknown and it would take between 3-4 years to untangle the situation. Upon hearing that we stated that we would only purchase the 2.6 acres and no more. The sons declared that we must purchase all or none, to which we responded…” Then it is none, I guess”. At that point the sellers resorted to yelling…then tears…then, pleading. They begged us to purchase all of the property. At last, they gathered their things to leave and we informed them that if they were planning on selling the land to us, they MUST do so before June 30…that is the close of our fiscal year and we had re-budgeted everything in order to make this purchase. It seemed that we would not be purchasing the property after all.
After three weeks of silence we were suddenly notified that the sellers would return on June 28th with their own surveyor to re-measure the land and then, sell on the 29th. We informed them that we would only have the government surveyor measure the property and that we would not purchase on the 29th since that was Sabbath but could do so on the 30th. After the re-measurement was accomplished it confirmed that only 2.6 acres were available for sale. The land purchase was made truly at the eleventh hour of our fiscal year.
This is only a very brief description of all that took place; however, the bottom line is…the land now belongs to Bangla Hope! We praise the Lord for His guidance and love. Now, we pray that what is done on this property will truly be a blessing to heaven and to the people of Bangladesh. Thank you for your interest in and support of our mission!