His goodness continues.

For the past month or so, I have been communicating back and forth with a church that allowed the ministry to host our annual banquet at their facilities. I was under the impression that because the church supports the ministry, they were going to waive the rental fee and allow us to only pay the custodial fees. Because it is a large church and has beautiful facilities, it was such a blessing for us.

Unfortunately, because we went through several different church contacts, the paperwork didn't exactly go down the right path. After the event, I contacted the facilities supervisor, asking if we should expect an invoice or if we should just send a check. He looked into it and came back with this answer: "Usually it rents for $425.00 plus a custodial fee of $150.00. I talked with Pastor, and he said the amount due $425.00 needs to be paid. It is possible that I quoted you less and I will honor that. I have no record of giving you a price."

Wow, I was floored. Finances are so tight within the ministry that it was going to be hard to pay the $150, let alone $425. I then went through all of my previous e-mail communication with both the Pastor and the facilities supervisor (good thing I still had all those e-mails!) and found an e-mail where the custodial fees were mentioned but never was the room rental fee discussed. I forwarded the e-mails to him, apologized for any assumption on our part, but explained that if it was more than the custodial fees, we probably wouldn't have chosen that particular venue because our budget is always so tight. I then just asked him to let me know how to proceed.

His answer? "Now that you reminded me of this, you are correct. We talked of the custodial fees only. I do apologize for not writing this down. We could have spared this whole conversation. As a gesture of apology, I say the business is done and there are no fees whatsoever due. Please forgive me on all of this. I have since created a log book with these types of events. So, Merry Christmas Abby and I pray that you will consider us for further events. Only custodial fees will be charged, depending on the size of the project."

I'd say it's been a pretty great week.