Dear Friends,
Greetings from our new home in Birdsboro, Pa! We’ve been back in the States since the end of June and serving at High Point Baptist Chapel in Birdsboro since the beginning of September. We certainly miss our church family and ministry partners in South Africa, and at the same time, we are thankful for the new church family the Lord has led us to here at High Point.
We are sending this note to ask you to pray with us about our container (with all our belongings on it) that shipped from South Africa at the end of June and also ask you to consider partnering with us financially one more time if the Lord leads you to do so. We contracted with a company in South Africa back in June to ship our all our stuff back to the States. The contract was paid in full and was supposed to provide service from our house in SA to our house in PA. We were told it would take 6-8 weeks for the container to arrive. Well, it wound up taking 6 MONTHS. It finally arrived at the port in Philadelphia on December 17. And that’s where it’s been sitting for the past eight weeks due to a delay in getting the official documents needed to clear the container from the port. To make a very long story short, we just learned several weeks ago that the South African shipping company is declaring financial hardship and inability to pay the shipping costs to the container company, so the container company would not release the needed documents. They also failed to pay the customs broker here in the U.S. that was contracted to help our container clear customs. We’ve also learned that there are several other customers that have had a similar experience this past year with this shipping company. It appears they have been cheating customers and failing to fulfill their contractual obligations. In addition to the unpaid invoice to the container company, our container has been accumulating port fees over the past eight weeks while we have been trying to get to the bottom of this situation (these port fees include fees owed to the container company for extended use of the container and to the port for the extended storage time).
Due to the shipping company’s claim of financial hardship, we are now having to pay the container company, the customs broker, and the port fees that have been levied on our container. The total amount of the invoices for the container company and the customs broker is $9,236.82. We just received the final invoices for the port fees that have accumulated over the past eight weeks—those fees stand at 11,646.44. So, this scenario with the shipping company has created $20,883.26 in additional expenses on top of what we already paid the shipping company last June. The payments for all these additional costs have been temporarily paid on credit which is allowing us to hopefully get our container this week.
As you can imagine, this whole situation has created a significant financial challenge for us. High Point has graciously set up an account on our behalf for those who would like to help with this need. Daniel Roberts, who oversees the finances at High Point, will monitor the account and keep it open only until the need has been met (any questions can be directed to Daniel at droberts@hpbchapel.org). Here is the link if you would like to help:
Please pray with us that the Lord would meet this unexpected and substantial need. Thank you so much for carrying this burden and sharing in it with us. We so much appreciate your kindness and care.
PS: A BIG praise! The container arrived yesterday!
For the Sake of His Name,
Troy and Danielle