As of today, I am happy to report that permitting and bidding has gone well, even though we had some slight delays by unexpectedly having to get State of Georgia Fire Marshall approval.
Great News!
As you saw in the last construction blog entry, we’re very happy to have Ian and Terra Duncan here in Ellijay. Ian is working hard already as our building superintendent. He has been meeting on site with various contractors, lining everything up for a smooth construction process. Most, if not all of our contractors have been picked after they went through the bid process, and they are all eager and ready to go.
One Big Hangup
We still don’t have a site contractor.
The site work is the thing that has to be started FIRST, before anything else can progress up there. The site contractor moves the dirt. They install the utilities underground, and grade for the parking lot, water runoff, and the building itself.
It turns out we have had FIVE CONTRACTORS literally turn our job down! They have all expressed that they are already too busy, they don’t want to mess with the rock up there, or they just aren’t responding at all.
Our project is completely paralyzed until the site work can be done.
Rodney James from Master’s Plan tells me this is extremely uncommon. He says he normally gets to pick from multiple good bids on a project like this one. He has never seen anything like it.
So, church, it is time to pray! Would you please join me in praying for God to work this out for us? I absolutely believe that God has a plan for all of this, and that HIS PLAN is always better than MY PLAN.
Is it a coincidence that just this past Sunday we studied the passage in Mark where Jesus talks about PRAYING and MOVING MOUNTAINS? Nope. Church, let’s pray and let’s watch God move!
UPDATE From Rodney James ONE DAY LATER:
Praise The Lord for answered prayer!!! We received a site proposal today that is very close to our budgeted number and he is available to start in January!!!! Exactly what we prayed for!! We are working through all the details of the proposal to ensure everything is included but first pass looks good!!!! Thank you and your team for praying. I’ll keep you updated as we work through it.