In this blog posting I wanted to clarify with pictures the situation that we are facing with the base of YWAM, Goiania's property. The man who sold the property to the founding leader (Carlinhos) over ten years ago is named "Dilson". Since the beginning of the negotiations there have been some problems, on both sides.
Soon after Dilson sold the base to us, he regreted it and has since been doing everything in his power to try to get it back, even though more than half of it has already been paid.
For years all the base was able to pay was the interrest on the land, which Dilson had set at 3% a month (some years back this interrest was reajusted by a judge to .03%, which is more reasonable), but there was also a lack of priority on the part of the base to pay this debt...
Since my husband Mario came into leadership in 2007 we have made it the utmost priority to pay the base, every month we have made sacrifices to be able to save as much money as possible in order to finally take care of this debt; which is not ours personally, but we feel God put us in leadership of this base, "For Such A Time As This" .
The land all around us this belongs to Dilson, he owns most of the land around these parts. Amazingly his father is a pastor, but he wants nothing to do with Jesus Christ! Which makes him a very hard man to even talk to, much less negotiate with!
The day after Mario and I arrived from South Africa, Dilson showed up to talk to Mario. Dilson is going to make lots in all his land to sell and apparently when he pulled all the records out he had found an error in the limits of our land that I think he himself didn't know about before... and that is where the problem we are in now began....
Let me try to explain:
This picture shows all of our land (the 21.5 acres) from the road to where I have drawn the red line. That red line is about where our fence has always been, and as you can see from the 5 blue squares, that is about where several couples from the base have built their homes over the past 5-8 years. The classroom and other buildings are also half-way on this stretch.
Dilson brought this paper (which I scaned here for you) to show that we have invaded part of his land! (the part that makes the long triangle). Mario spent all week after the people who could tell him if Dilson's claim was true (the base even had to spend over $500 dollars to pay a professional to measure the land), after all that we realized Dilson is right!
So now we are in a big dilema, because Dilson found a way in which he could take back some of our land, he is saying that we either give him back half of the land (about 12 hectars) or he is going to buldoze over all our houses (those were his words). So we either come up with all the money before the end of the year to pay in full to a judge who can give us the papers for the land even without Dilson's consent. The other option is to give him the land he wants back, unless by some miracle we can negotiate with him a smaller portion, because at this point he doesn't want any money, just the land.
This part in red is the land that is still Dilson's. You can see where we are at the bottom center. The square on the bottom left is our land (the one he wants back).
This picture shows all of our land (the 21.5 acres) from the road to where I have drawn the red line. That red line is about where our fence has always been, and as you can see from the 5 blue squares, that is about where several couples from the base have built their homes over the past 5-8 years. The classroom and other buildings are also half-way on this stretch.
Dilson brought this paper (which I scaned here for you) to show that we have invaded part of his land! (the part that makes the long triangle). Mario spent all week after the people who could tell him if Dilson's claim was true (the base even had to spend over $500 dollars to pay a professional to measure the land), after all that we realized Dilson is right!
So now we are in a big dilema, because Dilson found a way in which he could take back some of our land, he is saying that we either give him back half of the land (about 12 hectars) or he is going to buldoze over all our houses (those were his words). So we either come up with all the money before the end of the year to pay in full to a judge who can give us the papers for the land even without Dilson's consent. The other option is to give him the land he wants back, unless by some miracle we can negotiate with him a smaller portion, because at this point he doesn't want any money, just the land.
This part in red is the land that is still Dilson's. You can see where we are at the bottom center. The square on the bottom left is our land (the one he wants back).
I hope by all these pictures and drawings what we are dealing with is more clear.
What we are facing as leaders is not easy, especially since everything that happened in the past did not involve us, but our greatest desire is to see this debt gone, to the glory of the Lord!
You may look at this and wonder why we don't just give back the land, but in these years we have dreamed many things for this land, in it we have our cattle, which is for us to get milk and meat for the base, we also use it for crops to maintain us, and we have a dream to build a day care center for the local community, and extend a second phase for our rehabilitation center here. If Dilson gets the land, in a few years we will have no more room to grow or have any of these privaleges, because we will be surrounded by people on all sides!
Please pray for us!
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