Retaining Wall

The home office of the World Mission Prayer League sits on “Loring Hill,” just south of downtown Minneapolis. The elevation of the street that borders our property to the north is about 30 feet lower than Clifton Avenue, where our office is located. An old limestone retaining wall has held up the property on its north side; it may have stood there for 100 years. In the past few years, unfortunately, the retaining wall has begun to crumble.

The wall has been failing along the entire length of our neighbor’s property, and a portion of our property as well. After a long process of collaborating with our neighbors, architectural planning and searching for a design that would work for us all, we settled on a beautiful wall built from precast decorative blocks. Each block measures 5.5 feet in length, 2.5 feet in height, 3.5 feet in depth, and weighs about 4,500 pounds. The entire length of the newly installed wall is 83 feet, and its new height is 17.5 feet. In all, 125 of these giant blocks were used in the project, giving the wall a total weight of more than half a million pounds. Construction began in April and was completed in early August. The work was done by a very talented team of workers, on a steep slope with heavy equipment. Watching their effort caused us to pray regularly for their safety.

We never desire to have unexpected capital expenses like these, but there are a few happy consequences in this case. For example, the additional height of the wall gives us more usable space behind our office building. We are taking this opportunity to repave and reconfigure this area, which will allow for five additional parking spots and some additional green space. The new wall is also beautiful and built to last.

We did not anticipate this capital expense – but God knew it was coming. We have seen over the years that God sometimes provides before there is a need, while sometimes he provides in a marvelous way just at the last minute. In this particular case, God provided ahead of time through the generous Estate Fund gifts of faithful WMPL supporters. As I mentioned, the majority of the wall we have replaced belongs to our neighbors; even so, our own portion of the project amounted to approximately $90,000 – for the wall itself plus a few additional expenses such as the reconfiguration of our driveway. We are thankful for God’s provision for this unexpected capital expense on Clifton Avenue, just as we are thankful for his ongoing provision for our missionaries and ministries around the world.

In July donations to missionary support funds covered 43 percent of all support expenses; $43,436 was used from the General Fund to supplement missionary allowances, while $52,170 was used from the Estate Fund to supplement benefit expenses for the month.

Thank you for your ongoing support!