So, we're working on our Fringe Church logo (our friend Kim Eloe did it, and it's so cool - you're going to LOVE it! No peeking yet!), and then our business cards and ultimately website and all that fun stuff.
I secured the domain fringechurchCO.com a while back, but neither James or I liked having the CO (for Colorado) at the end. We both it agreed it would be confusing and not intuitive. Now that we're getting serious, we searched for what was available again. We found fringe-church.com, fringechurch.net, and a few others, but those were the front runners. We noticed that fringechurch.com was taken but wasn't being used. I called a domain registry company who instructed me on how I could find out who owned it. I learned it was a church called The Fringe in Mason, Michigan, and the pastor's name and email address was listed.
Really on a whim, I emailed him and explained that we were working on a church plant and would love to get the fringechurch.com domain from him if he wasn't planning to use it. (We learned that they were using the fringechurch.org domain but weren't point the .com domain to it as you might expect.) We imagined the email was a long shot as most places would ask you to pay significant money to buy a domain off of them.
We didn't hear back for several days, so I imagined it really wasn't going to happen and was thinking we'd just get the .net one. No sooner did that thought cross my mind, than I got in the car to go exercise on Thursday morning and saw an email from the pastor saying how excited he was to hear that someone else was using the word "Fringe" and that he would "love to release fringechurch.com" to us!!!! He even added "Hope God does a great kingdom work through you in the Denver area!" I get chills again just typing this, and of course I teared up when I saw the email. GOD IS SO AMAZING!!!!
THEN, as if that weren't enough, the nice pastor deleted the domain from his account, but it wasn't showing up for me to grab. I called the registry company again, and they said they keep it on a 5 day grace hold for him before it gets released to the public. They said it would be way easier if he just called in and gave them my customer number and asked to have it transferred to me. Sounds so easy, but it mean I had to ask the guy to make a phone call for me. Felt a little wrong after he'd been so nice, but I decided to be bold.
I emailed him a note and of course thanked him and then told him what the company had said. I told him that I was already grateful and that there was no pressure whatsoever but that if he were willing to make the phone call, I'd be grateful. This time, he wrote back within an hour, had called, and instructed me with what I needed to do on my end to accept the domain in my account, and again wished us well.
So. It is official. We own fringechurch.com!!! Don't go there yet, though. Still have to actually build the website. Details.
House Hunt Update: For those of you who read my last post here about how our house in Highlands Ranch sold without listing it, you may be wondering how our house hunt is going. We have 60 days to be out of this house from when we signed. Today, that number is 53 days. We found one house that was outside of our target area (too far west), but the house was amazing. We went ahead and put in an offer on it, but so did someone else. It stretched our budget, so we weren't too sad to hear that we didn't get it. (It was beautiful, but we just weren't 100% sure.) We went and looked again today, and again - the only place we liked was on the west side. Again, the house would be perfect for our family, but it's just not where we were hoping to be. We know God has the answer - he's just not clearly telling us. We're continuing to look and pray, but at this point the right house may just not be on the market yet. We may need to wait a couple of weeks and see what else comes on the market. NOT easy to do, but we will trust! Welcome your prayers for wisdom in the decision.
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