This episode is interesting as it will explain how the death of the whole organization was prevented JUST IN TIME, with only 24 hours to go\u2026
\nYou have read how we run again in terrible financial situations due to the hot summers of the early nineties. During same period a contract was signed with the city council to buy our land and building, as that would be finally cheaper instead of continuing to lease. So the terms and date of payment were agreed upon. But this time, no bank would help! You may remember that in the very early days God had spoken to Leen to see the bankmanager and this man helped out. And that situation was a great miracle. How easy you fall back on old blessings, but this time no answer from God to see any bankmanager\u2026 So what now? In those days we already had a loan from the trade-unions. They had been of great help. But now the crisis of this summer had eaten every reserve and that loan\u2026 but the contract was signed and the day got near that we had to come up with the money to pay the City Council for our land and building\u2026 Well, what do you do, when you are in trouble? Pray\u2026! Well, what have we prayed! All stayed silent… no word of God\u2026 no donations arrived\u2026 the crises deepened\u2026 Finally when Leen and the staff of the office were all ready to accept every change and to implement any change, that soft voice happened again: \u201cgo and meet the chairman and the treasurer of the trade-unions\u201d. Well, that maybe the last move you would want to make, as this is a sign of weakness and losing sight. But in this case Leen was quicker to listen to this voice, as pay day was getting near and if we would fail to pay, the consequences were clear.
\nSo Leen made that appointment to see the chairman and treasurer a few days before payday. Leen explained the story. Those men had accepted CA as a great new trade-union in their midst and believed in the CA-goals. They promised to do their utmost to help. Those men literally have moved every mountain. Finally on the day the money had to be paid the word came that a fund of a college trade-union would lend the money, of course with some conditions.
\nThose conditions were: cutting all dead wood and every activity that was not bringing in profit. That was a wise condition. And so it happened. JUST in time the money came and was be paid to the city-council. And the painful operation started to cut all what was not fruitful\u2026 So, we had the largest christian artists management from Europe doing all the famous names, musicals, projects; well they lost money year after year. So this department was shut and the personnel fired\u2026 Our magazine was going to subscriptions and to members. The subscription part was losing money, so was closed and persons fired. The magazine continued only as issue for members, so it carried its own costs\u2026 Continentals had a whole bus-division with 3 of our own buses. That cost a fortune. Buses were sold, the bus division was closed and people were fired. The Continentals would be carried by rented busses in the future, as that was so much cheaper\u2026
\nWhat did we learn from this episode? For sure the lesson that the way with God is eachtime different and new. And we learnt that we really have to stay alert about what you do, as a past blessing can so easily become a burden and get in God\u2019s way. And we learnt that if God loves you, now and then He prunes. That hurts, but after that you are better off. And this episode is a great story of the real solidarity we experienced from our collegues and friends in the trade-unions. And we learnt that if you are not careful you are caught in patterns\u2026 we were not ready to change CA, but we should have done it in 1990. We were caught in the pattern of bigger is better, but it should have been the opposite. Gideon too, reached his target with a few good men, instead a big army\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This episode is interesting as it will explain how the death of the whole organization was prevented JUST IN TIME, with only 24 hours to go\u2026 You have read how we run again in terrible financial situations due to the hot summers of the early nineties. During same period a contract was signed with the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/la-riviere.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/la-riviere.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/la-riviere.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/la-riviere.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/la-riviere.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/la-riviere.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/la-riviere.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/la-riviere.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/la-riviere.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}