El Forito is a 4,120 square meters piece of land, in an excellent location in Cancun, Mexico. It has about 1,000 m2 of construction divided in a theater, main room (where we hold our main service), small rooms and offices, even though the official density for the land is 1.5, meaning we can still build another 5,000 m2. The main room seats comfortably approximately 600 people, and the theater 230.

When we first arrived to El Forito, in February of 2005, we were asked $40,000 pesos a month of rent (approximately 3,800 US Dlls.) for using it Sundays from 7:30a.m. till 1:30p.m. and Tuesdays from 7:00p.m. till 9:30p.m.

The main room was carpeted, air conditioned, had a stage with curtains, a screen in the back of the stage, and all the light and sound equipment needed for any type of service or theater event. The same with the theater area.

Due to it's location (across from Puerto Cancun, arguably the most important development in the State) the price of the land can go as high as $350 US dlls. per m2. There is land on sale for as high as $450 in the same block. In March of the same year we asked the owner if he was interested in selling the place and what would be the price. His answers at the time were: Maybe and 2.7 million dollars.

On October 26 Cancun was hit by the strongest hurricane in recorded history and El Forito, along with most of the buildings of that type (corrugated aluminum sheet roofs), were damaged. The main room -home of our Church- lost 60% of the roof (which meant the 40% left had to be torn down as well), the carpet and curtains were ruined along with some of the equipment, the perimeter wall collapsed, and the entry doors (glass and aluminum) were totally destroyed.

As it turns out, the owner did not have insurance. The hurricane put him out of business for 2 reasons: 1) He does not have the money (or the will) to rebuild the place, and 2) His main source of business was the rental of video and audio equipment to hotels -for Groups and Conventions- a source of business that disappeared completely for at least the next 5 or 6 months in Cancun.

So he came to us and said: You have 2 choices. Either you rent the place full time for $92,000 pesos a month plus 10% tax (which means also paying light, phones, water, salaries for at least 3 employees, etc) or you buy it.

However, the asking price changed dramatically. In view of the fact that he has no interest in this line of business any longer, and after dealing with us for almost a year; being a witness of what we are trying to do here, he has decided he would like for this place to become the house of God (He had offers to turn the place into a warehouse for about the same rent but turned them down). His new asking price is $11,000,000 pesos (approximately 1,047,000 dollars).

After a few meetings with him, what we agreed to do is the following:

We signed a contract were we commit ourselves to buy the place in the course of 1 year. We will make a payment of $82,500 pesos a month (plus tax) for the full-time use of the premises (only 42,500 pesos more than before, when we were using it 2 half days a week). The whole amount of these payments will be taken against the purchase price at the end of the year.

The owner will pay for all the repairs on the property by allowing us to pay half the rent in cash and half with the invoices from the companies that will make the repairs. The estimated amount that will be required to repair everything and leave it the way it was before the hurricane is $300,000 pesos (approximately 28,572 US Dlls.) At a rate of $42,500 pesos a month, that would mean 7 months of half rents.

At the end of the year we need to come up with the difference of the price: $10,010,000 pesos (approximately 953,333 dollars).

We need to find individuals, churches and institution that are willing to contribute in two ways:

1) We need to fix the place as fast as possible, first and foremost because we cannot possibly grow the church in the theater area alone, and second, because to produce the monthly payments we need to rent out both the main room and the theater to the public. So they need to be operational as soon as possible.

For this part, we need people that are willing to make a donation towards the repairs. We took an offering in the church and we came up with approximately $89,000 pesos, approximately 8,476 US Dlls. (75% of our members have an average income of less than $1,000 dollars a month) There are certain things that can be repaired as we go, but some of them need urgent attention. For these urgent ones we are short approximately $7,000 dollars. So any help here would be very much appreciated.

Second, we need to come up with 953,000 thousand dollars during the next year. Our plan is to find 475 individuals, churches or institutions that are willing to commit to a donation of $2,000 dollars to be given during 2006. In our church, people are signing to commit $200 dollars a month for the first 10 months of 2006. There are thousands of Churches in the United States. What we are asking of them is to commit to this donation as a Church; that is $2,000 in one year from the whole church.

We believe this is God's plan and we are praying that His family will come to help us impact Cancun for his glory.