©®™Uguba™ndubuisi™blog |: Thank you for standing with us.

Thursday, 19 December 2019

Thank you for standing with us.

Dear friends,

Thanks to your help, we have made great headway on a mountain of debt, but it continues to stubbornly stand in the way of hundreds of Charis students. They need housing and until the debt is completely gone, I will be unable to build it. Together we are walking through a huge financial challenge.

Now, I know most of you have not been with Jamie and me for the past fifty-one years, so I want to give you some perspective. Whenever I face a financial giant like this, I look back to encourage myself in what the Lord has already done. It's like David remembering the lion and the bear before facing Goliath. So, before we face this financial giant, let's look back together at the miracles that have brought us to this new day of opportunity.

January 3, 2020, marks the completion of our twentieth year of television broadcasts. That's 5,200 television programs we've aired on what has grown to include 435 individual stations and 11 major networks. Our media buyer estimates the Gospel Truth program has the potential reach of over 3.2 billion people all over the world.

These programs are being heard in Spanish, Urdu, Armenian, and Russian, with the Russian broadcasts airing across eleven time zones to millions of other Russian-speaking people all around the world. We've received testimonies of two Imams who have been born again through the broadcasts, and are now teaching our materials in their mosques. How awesome is that! Praise the Lord!

Some of you may not remember or have never heard that the Lord spoke to me supernaturally at 2:50 in the morning on July 26, 1999, and told me that I would just be starting my ministry the day my first broadcast aired on TV on Monday, January 3, 2000. I had already been in ministry for thirty-one years at that time, but the Lord told me that if I had died before my first television broadcast, I would have missed what the Lord called me to do. Everything up to that point was preparation.

That has certainly proven true. Our ministry's impact more than doubled from January of 2000 to January of 2002. Then I had the second most impactful encounter with the Lord of my life on January 31, 2002. The Lord clearly spoke to me through Psalms 78:41 that I was limiting Him by my small thinking. This rocked my world.

I started taking the limits off God, and the results have been nothing short of miraculous.

We had 28 employees back in 2002 and one international office. We now have 16 offices worldwide with 650 employees. We were in a little 14,000-square-foot building, and now we have 616,000 square feet of buildings located on 493 acres of some of the most beautiful property in the world.

Our phone center handled 20,000 calls during the entire year of 2001 right before my revelation about not limiting God. Now we handle over 40,000 calls per month or nearly 500,000 calls per year. 2019 produced over 770,000 total contacts to our ministry and that's not including those who came to our website. We also averaged nearly three quarters of a million visits to our website each month.

We have given away millions of free CDs, DVDs, books, USBs, and pamphlets, plus most of the materials on our website are free. Only eternity will reveal the full extent of the millions of lives that have been touched. It's beyond our ability to count.

We have had over 8,000 Charis students graduate in the last 25 years, and we have over 7,000 students enrolled in Charis now. That's 15,000 world changers and counting.

All of these things are not my accomplishments; they're OUR accomplishments. This is the Lord's doing, and it's marvelous in our eyes (Ps. 118:23). Jamie and I are acutely aware that none of this could have happened without you, our partners.

Back in 2002, we had less than 2,000 partners. We now have over 46,000 partners who have enabled us to build 220,000 square feet of buildings debt-free in just the last seven years, and we have acquired another 60,000-square-foot building debt-free to house our AWM headquarters in. We also completed a 336,000-square-foot parking garage in 2019 with 1,022 spaces. We've already packed that out at two of our events.

Our main Charis campus in Woodland Park can now accommodate 4,000 students, and we can accommodate tens of thousands more students worldwide. We have the facilities for students to come learn, but we are in critical need of student housing!

A realtor told us that forty of his clients were unable to secure housing so they could come to Charis because of the housing shortage in Woodland Park. Housing is also expensive compared to where many of our potential students come from. They just gave up the search and went back home. That's sad. The Lord drew them to Charis, but lack of affordable housing kept them from coming. Who knows how this might affect them?

I'm determined to start building affordable housing as soon as possible to solve this problem. The Lord has already downloaded plans to me for student housing. We will be able to provide housing, utilities, and tuition for less than our students are now paying for just their housing alone. That's like Charis being tuition-free.

But I have to pay off the remaining debt before I build any student housing. I am determined to never have any debt again. I communicated this to our partners and friends in hopes of getting this done by the end of 2019. I even shared this with our TV audience, and although I appreciate the nearly 5,000 friends who responded to our 1K Club promotion, the response hasn't met the need yet.

I learned long ago that I have to be shooting at something or I'll hit nothing. The Lord can do exceedingly, abundantly above all I ask or think, but I have to have some power or faith working in me for Him to work with (Eph. 3:20). So, here's where my faith is at right now.

Our current payments on the remaining debt are $245,355 per month. That includes over 7.2 million dollars' worth of interest. If we bumped those payments up to $300,000 per month, we would save almost $1.7 million in interest. If we pay $350,000 per month we would save nearly $4.9 million in interest. But look at this--if we pay $750,000 per month, we will save $5.9 million in interest!

I want to take this last option or even more, but I can't do this by myself. This really is OUR ministry as much as it is mine. I need your help to get this done.

If the debt is removed, that savings of nearly $6 million in interest would build housing for 130 students. Think of how this would change their lives and others who they would reach.

I know the Lord has raised up Charis and anointed us to train up faithful men and women who in turn will reach others (2 Tim. 2:2). We see changed lives every day. I wish you could hear all the testimonies I hear. Our senior vice president just returned from Charis graduations in Uganda, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, and he was so blessed to hear the testimonies of changed lives. You would be too.

Many of you have given sacrificially, and we really do appreciate everything you've done, but we have to have increase to get this done quickly. The Lord told me I had a bank that would finance

all I needed and then went on to tell me my friends and partners are my bank.

So, I'm coming to you, my friends, to get this done.

A mere $0.50 per day (only $15 per month) from each of you would knock this out in two years (just 24 months!).This would allow us to make this $750,000 per month payment and get this debt paid off by December 2021 or sooner. That would save $6 million or more in interest. That would be awesome!

Alternatively, our 1K Club, where people can give a one-time gift of $1,000 or a monthly pledge of $100 for ten months, is still in effect. This is a wonderful way to help.

Thank you for standing with us, and I say in the name of Jesus that the remaining debt is paid off and God's plans for Charis are moving forward quickly.

You are a blessing.

P.S. If you feel that the Lord is leading you to help us meet these goals, please call our Helpline at 719-635-1111, or click one of the buttons below. We truly appreciate all your support. We love you!