Day 45: On the up

So I've made the gym phone call - I know what to do and though I can't quit until the end of November... I know I can do it then and I think I'm going for it! I'm also feeling so much more positive about GoldDigger at the moment... setting up a charity, bringing in Trustees, trying to make some money and become employed with the really complicated employment law and make things sustainable has been a bigger challenge than I ever expected... but we've come so far and we can't do anything else but keep trekking on until we get there. It feels like we're at that point in Lord of the Rings where they're walking through the swamp. Knackered and kind of in disbelief that they'll ever arrive but equally - there's no turning back. As a Trust we know where we're going now and scary as it is - we're still going there! Basically, to tell the potted history, we set up GoldDigger, passionately threw ourselves into what we believed was a crucially important idea and hoped that the risk we were taking in giving up our salaries we would soon replaced by GoldDigger being our jobs - paid and all. We act employed, we're committed to professionalism, we all work flipping hard and live and breathe GoldDigger but we're still not paid- other than in bits and scraps of booking payments. In order to be a charity to raise vital funds we needed to set up our girls course and buy PA to be able to perform in schools etc we had to ask a select few people to become Trustees of our charity. If we were ever to be paid then those trustees could not be us. So essentially we had to hand over the ownership and authority to other people. This has been such a huge personal challenge - and I know I'm still having to battle with what that means - I know its right but I know its tough. Its not only hard for us - the three of us are an explosion of ideas, business plans, passion, strategy, perfectionism, redirection, creativity and driven pro-activists! We work at a pace that leaves our poor trustees sometimes wondering whats going on and the risk they have undertaken is much greater than ours. They are personally liable for the whole trust - we fail and they are held responsible. We don't intend to but we're difficult to reign in sometimes. The employment law is so complicated and the trustees are taking on the most ridiculous amount of responsibility to let us be in that position but its something that takes such a long time. But I really believe God is taking us into the next phase - we've has a great week of opportunities coming up, getting lots of good bookings, developing our new songs, finishing off crafting some of our substantial material and getting our feet in the door of some new schools and access to new pots of funding... all things we've prayed into. It was the most amazing feeling today as we had our first scheduled prayer time (12-1 on a Friday- and 1st Friday of the month is going to be be open for anyone to come in and pray with us!) in our office! I can't believe a) my house isn't our workplace anymore- not that I minded but I had to juggle usage b) how tidy my house already looks now I've started moving work stuff out c) that we are real enough to actually have an office and d) we've got there! I love it. I need to take pictures. We have been donated 2 temporary desks and there is a funny shaped desk in there already. One half is going to be for storage and the other half for working. It looks cute and its desperately lacking - It reminds me of when Joel and I first got the keys to our rental flat just before we got married. I moved in but we couldn't afford any furniture but we went to homebase and bought a wooden storage box. We found a place for it and put towels in. I slept on the floor as we had no bed but we had a box - its now the children's dressing up box and I love remembering the time that box was all we had. So a couple of days ago, in our office, we sat working on just chairs, today we have been working on chairs, sat at a borrowed table with a delivery of Krispy Kreme doughnuts - courtesy of a nice visit form Beth's mum and dad... Who knows what next week will bring! We've just put in a funding application for a small grant just to get us a few desks, a printer, some notice boards for our 'things to do' lists and some shelves to divide off our messy storage area and to organise our stationery and resources - the shelves have actually been a dream for 4 years now! Please God let us get that grant! (closing date was today... so hopefully we'll hear soon!)