This week's newsletter from Gene

You may have seen a new van sitting out front this past Sunday. We have a new 12 passenger van, a 2015 Mercedes Sprinter with lots of luggage space and extensive safety features. FEDEX owns approximately 60,000 of these vehicles, so they are some of the most reliable on the road. We have looked at the various vans in this class for the past several weeks and this model was head and shoulders above the other brands. The Lord made this one available at very little price difference from the others in the market.

As you are probably aware, we try very hard to avoid borrowing money. It’s been about 15 years since we had debt from a financial institution. That was for about 18 months to fund completion of the three story Education building. It was about a $1.5 million project. We completed the auditorium renovation by borrowing from ourselves, and those funds have all been repaid.

We paid cash for this van, as we have all the vehicles we have purchased since 1991. Part of what made this purchase possible was using funds from the Jeanne Schmidt estate. We are also using some of those funds to provide proper campus-wide signage, which we hope to have completed by the end of the summer.

As we have evaluated our vehicle usage, we have determined that there is a very limited number of times each year when we need three vehicles. We have decided it is more cost efficient to rent an extra vehicle for those times. We will sell our oldest van, a 1998 model, as soon as possible. We will wait to sell the other traditional 15 passenger van, a 2011 model, after it is used for a couple of summer camps. That will give us only two vehicles. Funds from these sales will go back into the Schmidt estate account for future use.

The two remaining vehicles should provide us the needed space for our ongoing events, and both are easily accessible by senior adults as well as the other age groups who will use them.