Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
I pray you are all well, Exciting things are happening out here that we would covet your prayers for. Our Elders recently put a questionnaire out to the congregation to see what their feeling might be with regard to moving forward. You see the facility we have been renting has been truly limiting, to us with regard to our growth and simply not having facilities to do many of the programs we would like to build up. The facility we now use can only be used on Sunday morning, so you can imagine how difficult it is to grow a church with the use of no other facilities. We have asked the congregation to consider perhaps an interim step, of renting an additional facility where we might have some offices and a large room to do Youth, Children's and weekday ministries, OR the consideration of perhaps taking a bigger step and looking for a property that we would purchase and be our own. After considering all the responses of the congregation the Elders found that the Church at large felt that we should move toward a place of our own rather than renting an additional space. The Elders agreed and so we are now moving toward finding such a place where we can truly grow and thrive. There is little if any land to be found here in Lower Hutt that we might build on and what little there is extremely expensive. So we are looking for older building that we can transform into a Church building. At the moment we are looking at two properties that are for sale, one is an old theater, which is for sale but Peter Jackson's folk are using it at this time to film some things, this would be available in six months, and would cost us $400,000 in US dollars. Another building which is just about next to this old theater in an old Grocery store, which is almost as big as the theater and we have already been able to take a look in this one and it would seem that this could be the place for us and so we are looking into the ability to purchase this property. This one would cost us in the area of $250,000. Neither of these amounts includes what it will cost to remodel and both would need extensive remodelling for it to work. As well you all might be thinking that $250 G's is not a whole lot of money,, that a normal house in the US costs at least that much; and that is true if your are an American. But here this is a huge deal and an amazing step of faith for our little congregation. All this to say Please pray that God is leading us. Again there is such a great need for our church and for us to grow. In an area where 270,000 people live there are no other "Christians Churches, except for a non instrumental Church I just found out about in the city. Again only 2% of the population here attend any sort of Christian Church so there is much work to be done. So if you have any good counsel for us out here we would love and appreciate any advise. If you think you can help in any way we would be much in appreciation to anything you might do. Praise God and God Bless you all for you are certainly making a difference in the world, even in far away New Zealand.
Yours in Christ,
Lou
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Greetings from New Zealand and the Epuni Church of Christ in Lower Hutt. 2005 is as you all know racing forward and I pray you are all well and fully blessed by our awesome God and Saviour Jesus Christ. Let me begin by saying a million thanks to all of you for your care and support of this ministry so very far away from home. Please know that your prayers and help make an amazing difference and I am fully certain that God smiles on all of you who have been so faithful. So thanks again!
In New Zealand January and February are the very middle of the summer time here and the spirit of vacation is on everyone. This is especially so in January where we close Sunday school and give everyone a break. Now, the kids are back in school and our church is back in full swing. From the beginning of this year I have been preaching a series of messages on "Encouragement." In a nut shell I have been encouraging our congregation to stick to the Word, to live by the leading of God's indwelling Spirit, to allow the Lord to be Lord of our lives, and to fully accept the saving grace and forgiveness of Christ Jesus. With regard to our average church population we have been hovering between 70 and 80 on most weeks, even though many people are away on odd weeks. We seem to have hit a bit of a plateau here and we are seeking ways that we might grow. Nevertheless, our small groups seem to be growing, our Men's group has about 10 on a good night, the ladies group has about 20, our seniors group has about 8, my young adults group is about 12 and our youth group is about 20.
Last year we began to do a "mail-drop," program in the area around our Church and we put out 1500 brochures. We had one person come from that effort and that person didn't stay very long. We still intend not to give up on this program and we are planning to do another two runs in the same general area and expand it a bit each time; we are praying for better results. For Christmas we prepared a play of the story of Christ's birth with a choir and band leading carols, and we made all the scenery so it looked really great. We rented the town theatre, that seats about 350, and we put out flyers and put several ads in the local news paper. We had about 30 visitors, but they were mostly members of other churches. Perhaps our biggest blessing and at the same time a limitation has been the building we are renting on Sunday mornings from the Seventh Day Adventist's. It has been a blessing in that we have a place to meet on Sundays and the actual sanctuary is nice and can seat about 250. There is also a small hall with a kitchen that is attached and we have our morning tea time there and the Children's Sunday school meets there. There are really no other class rooms that we are allowed to use, the adult group meets in the church and the youth meet in a little attic room. More than this, we are not able to utilize this building during the week. As well, we are limited to what we are allowed to do on Sunday; and sadly there have been many who tend to think that we are the Seventh Day folks because we meet there. So these are some of the hurdles we are facing with regard to growth.
I have encouraged the Elders to consider this situation and of course we would all love to have our own place to meet, however property in Lower Hutt has sky-rocketed and of course we just don't have the finances yet to do anything substantial. We began a building fund last year and so far we have about $5000. US. Again it should be understood that folk out here don't make that much money, yet property costs are almost the same as back home. We are considering a small step forward where we might rent a space to have a central office and have a room big enough where all of our mid-week groups could meet and have a place to have a youth service. So, we are hoping a praying that a door might open that would be right for us.
Another limitation for us has been that I am the only person that is recognised as staff. I must say this has caused me much frustration because for one, on a daily basis I don't have anyone to actually work with; secondly, even though I have great Elders and Deacons there time is very limited, so this makes anything we do happen at a snails pace. It also means that I am attempting to oversee and lead in most cases all the areas of ministry. We really need a Youth minister and a Children's minister and some office help, but we just can't afford any of these yet.
Now, I hope you don't think I'm complaining, really that is not my intention. Rather, I wanted you all to know exactly where we stand. Frankly, we continue to feel very excited about our future and God has been blessing us in many ways, but we are ever learning to be patient. I pray you all too would be patient with all of us here and realize that perhaps the biggest obstacle continues to be secularism. New Zealand continues to be very post-modern and the fight to help people see that they truly need the Lord in their lives is an amazing challenge and is ever present. I truly need your prayers because there are times when I really have to wonder what in the world I'm doing all the way out here, so far from family and friends. At the very same time I feel amazingly blessed by the great need for the work we are doing here and how God is using me to help. So please know that each of you play an important part in this special ministry, for you all are an amazing encouragement to me and to our whole church here.
Finally, I want you all to know also that your e-mail messages mean such a great deal to me and hearing from you, if only few words, keeps me in touch with home and keeps me encouraged. Now sometimes people ask if there is anything special they might do for our church here, and so if you are inclined and the Lord puts it on your heart to do something extra, there are two things you might focus on, one is a copier we don't have a copier and you all know how indispensable a copier is to a church, so if any of you would like to make a special donation to copier that would be wonderful. The other, is the building fund. I must say besides the copier at the moment most of the tools we need to do ministry we have, praise God; we even have a church van that was donated to us last year. We need a building! If any of you would consider making a special donation to our building fund that would mean the world to us. Thanks so much again for all you are doing and please continue to pray for our work here in Lower Hutt.
Our Elders, Arthur Binner, Angus Finlayson and Brian Stevens, send their greetings and thanks as does the whole of our church. May God Bless all you do!
Yours in Christ, Lou Pulicicchio
