Our landlord finally called me from wherever he was and got an earful from me. I am not a difficult guy to work with, nor am I unfair, but I had clearly had enough. Water has been seeping into St. Patrick’s since at least April 24th from a leaking dishwasher in the Mexican restaurant next door, and he (the landlord) has been out of the country the entire time.
His cryptic notes and calls to voicemail have been less than helpful He told us to take care of it, and quite honestly I wish we could have. It would have prevented a week plus of water seeping into our facility, a lot of stress, and a lot of unnecessary cancellations. It also would have prevented us from looking like complete fools for being in a relationship that allows this kind of thing to happen.
But Brad and I talked this morning, just before my call to the health department. I stated to him in real time that I cannot, nor will I hire a contractor for someone business other than my own, and this, along with a LONG list of other complaints that he knows about, have damaged us, and that he needed to terminate our lease. So with water still running into our facility, he told me that the interior of the premises was MY responsibility.
Had he known that I have been down there every day but one vacuuming up dirty water out of our church coming from a problem in an adjacent property that I reported to him well over a week ago, he might have not said that. I am a pretty good guy, and I don’t want to see anything ruined or people hurt, but I also know when I am being taken advantage of. I let him know that too. The conversation was heated with most of the heat coming from my phone. But in the end, he agreed to terminate the lease and has agreed to call me to do so on Wednesday when he returns to the States. In turn, I told Brad that one’s word is very important to me. And I agreed to meet him Monday to terminate the lease as well as to cancel my call to the health department (we tried to get them out on Sunday, but they and the sheriff’s department recordings said to call back Monday) And, I even went down to the restoration company on his behalf and told them what he wanted them to do. Get this……they will not do anything till they hear from him authorizing their work. They did come out and estimate it though. There is water (moisture) in the walls almost three feet up…..about the height of a dishwasher. And our water I shut off days ago. But even today, being the bad tenant I am, I vacuumed up 17 buckets of water and will do so tomorrow too.
So our personal property would not be damaged any further, we moved most of it out of the facility tonight and into my garage. We held services at my house yesterday, and will do so until the lease is indeed terminated and we find another location. Please pray that Brad keeps his word from this morning. I have gone above and beyond mine.
But tomorrow morning and probably tomorrow evening, I will return and vacuum up more water. We really did love it there, but when a landlord cannot even keep the basic agreements up, it just is too much. We need to be someplace else and that is abundantly clear. Please keep praying that Brad will keep his promise and that the Lord will provide us with the place we need with a landlord we can trust and count on.
Our Exodus is in progress, but reluctantly. We just pray He will lead us to the places we need to go and be to continue His Work!
Keep praying!
Goodnight my friends and God Bless!
Tommy+