By Paul Gordon Collier, Editor
“Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.” – 1 Thessalonians 4:9-12
Before I update you on our Hope Estates Project, I thought I’d recap the project for those who might not have followed it (especially for some of our newer readers).
As our regular readers well know, we preach the message of self-sustainable flourishing. We believe self-sustainable flourishing is not possible without a community of self-stewarded people. To that end, we sought a property that can be used both to house an extended family (5-10 people) and serve the public. Having both public and private space was essential.
We believe that extended family that serves together stays together, so we seek to create space that enables an extended family to serve the public while also serving themselves.
We knew we wanted to serve a rural community, and we wanted that community to be in Pennsylvania, preferably in the Endless Mountain region (North-central PA). Beyond that, we had no idea what we would eventually choose. We knew it would be the building that would choose us, regardless of what town it was in.
It would turn out that Canton had what we felt was the best opportunity. When we made our bid, another buyer offered the seller more money than we were offering. We were given the chance to increase our bid, but I chose not to, believing that the price I offered was the most we could afford (knowing this was a project, not a completed, ready-to-use building).
At the time, we estimated the cost to transform a church to a castle (private and public space blending) would be about $100,000, so we knew we couldn’t afford to pay a high price, even if the church was worth the higher price (and it was, and still is).
Fortunately for us, the deal with the other buyer fell through, which enabled us to buy the property at the low price we did (which would prove to be crucial in light of the deep freeze disaster we had yet to face).
The price to convert the church to a castle might be twice as much now as we thought it would be, but it is still within our capacity (at least as long as our economic situation continues as it has, especially these past few months).
Our plans were first interrupted by two major illnesses, one involving my wife and one involving me (fortunately not at the same time). While I still have health issues, they are nowhere near as debilitating as they were last year. My wife has fully recovered from her illness.
Then an unexpected deep freeze hit Canton just two weeks from us having our heating system prepared for the winter (water lines bled, etc.). At first it seemed like minor damage had happened, but then it became apparent it wasn’t minor at all.
During this time, our mother has had health complications that made it apparent we need to soon assure she does not live alone anymore. She has a property she was hoping to convert to community space long before we began our Hope Exit project. We all decided to combine her property with our efforts (out of necessity). This means we will be serving an urban community in Harrisburg and a rural community in Canton.
This takes us up to the present. Here is the update for this past month:
Our Hope Estates project achieved a major milestone; we have completed the renovations in our Harrisburg estate that creates an apartment for brother Bill. This week, he will be using the apartment to travel to D.C. in search of clients to help fund our project.
When we were carrying a couch from the first floor to the third floor, through tight spaces and in high heat, I had an incident with my adrenal pots that rendered me unable to complete the task. The next day, my brother Bill returned with our friend Anthony to complete the task. Our Mother, Kymm, finished up the work on the apartment afterwards.
As our readers know, our castle in Canton suffered a major setback during an unexpected early sub-zero deep freeze (which I referred to earlier). We now know the consequence of that disaster, which is the complete destruction of our natural-gas-powered steam heating system.
We have received one estimate to install heating/cooling splitters, but that system would require numerous holes to be drilled into our 1-foot-thick stone walls. We do not favor the cosmetics of that choice. Not only would it require holes to be drilled into our walls, but it would also require 6 or more external heating/cooling units to be placed outside the castle.
For now, we are opting to use industrial-strength heaters to get us through the winter without any further damage. This temporary solution will cost us less than $2k, though we are prepared for high heating bills. By next winter, we hope to have decided on and installed the new system(s).
We have not yet decided on a final heating/cooling system, but we are prepared to pay up to $100K to install a heating/cooling system. We’re just not sure which system we will choose.
The first week of October we have something special planned for the Castle, a walk-through church service by our friend Joe, who is a traditional Anglican priest. We will have an update on how that went in our October monthly review.
We have decided our next major investment is going to be for our roof, which is a slate roof. We hope to preserve the roof, not replace it; this is not because of cost, but cosmetic preference. We hope to preserve the original external look of the castle as much as possible.
We believe the roof needs some repairs, a good cleaning, and new gutter systems. We also hope to fix our weathervane spire, which is slightly bent.
After the roof, our next step is to install at least one shower and a laundry hook-up. This will enable myself and my wife to begin living in the Castle one full week a month (to start).
One of the biggest challenges we have in the Canton project is finding quality people available to do the work. For instance, we want to have the old heating system removed but the person we were hoping to do it hasn’t been able to get to it yet.
We knew going in this would be an issue, and it certainly has been.
We had an issue with our property taxes on the Canton property. Apparently, one government agency did not have it on record that we were the new owners, so they sent our bill to the previous owner. Fortunately, the issue was discovered before the bill was due, so we were still able to pay it on time.
We were hoping to be living in the Castle, at least part-time, by this fall, but that seems unlikely right now (barring some unforeseen major windfall). We are hoping to get roof repair work done before the winter, but even that might prove to be difficult. Winter comes earlier in Canton than it does where I currently live, Bethlehem, which is about 3 hours southeast of Canton.
We still have hope we will find someone able to do the work before the winter.
My wife has attained her Notary Public license. She is pursuing a more advanced license that will enable her to close mortgages and similar transactions. She hopes to have an office in Bethlehem and Canton. Eventually, we hope to add Harrisburg to her locations. She chose to develop this skill both to bring in some extra cash and also to provide a free service for people in need.
We have been fortunate this past month economically, enabling us to pay down more debt and plan for our next major investment (the roof repair).
We ask our praying readers to pray for us, both for resources that could accelerate our castle transformation and for endurance in facing the hard physical work needed to bring this project to fruition.
As of right now, we estimate it will be two years minimum before the church becomes a castle, and five years before the Harrisburg property is converted to a castle. We hope and pray for miracles to accelerate that timeline, but are prepared to diligently work within that timeline, if this is the Lord’s will.
Our subscribers have helped fund our Hope Estates Project, as we have used these funds primarily for that purpose. Our salaries mostly rely on our marketing clients (which we hope to expand to help fund this project).
Next month, we hope to give you an update on our church service walkthrough along with anything important that happens in October. God willing, we will have more good news to share as well.
