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Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Above are the graphs for the year so far. Whilst they tell some of the picture they don’t tell all of it. Below are some of the main points so far.

1)      We’ve paid off about £30,000 worth of debt in February. This was from monies that were due in last year but due to timings came in this year.

2)      We are due to pay off about another £12,000 of debt in June.

3)      We’ve managed to sort out a legal situation on the farm, which has taken over one year to resolve. It has meant many trips down to the farm for numerous meetings and has cost us about £6,000 in legal fees, but basically in 2013 we will be in dominion of our own land/property again.

4)      We are trying to sort out another legal situation in LG, again with a sitting tenant. They are claiming sitting tenancy rights (a right to live in the property for as long as they wish for a very much reduced rent) due to the time first moved into LG as missionaries. We have tried to sort it out for over three years in a peaceful and amicable way however all correspondence (from anyone) dealing with this matter have been completely ignored. We are now having to go down a legal route but this so far has cost £3,700 and counting.

5)      So far this year we have an income deficit of £6,783. A large part of this was spent on renewals in the LG flats, especially on one flat which hadn’t been touched for over 6yrs.

6)      We currently expect to have a cash flow surplus for our national finances of £28,000 in 2010 at the end of the year but this doesn’t take into account the following two points:

1a) Matthew Huish was due to go to Germany for STF and a new Youth Ministry Director was going to be needed to replace him. This post was advertised and interviews carried out. Two of the candidates were asked to take up the responsibility and work together: Patrick Hanna and Sung Jong Che.

We now have more than 500 2nd generation Unificationists between the ages of 12 and 25 and there was a strong case put to have both these two applicants working full time together on continuing to build a successful youth ministry. In one sense it’s an investment in our future and if we don’t invest in them who will? In addition things for Matthew have now changed and he is no longer going to Germany and instead will take up a new responsibility in the UK to develop an outreach department.

Basically these developments will mean an extra £12,000 of outgoings to HQ expenses (very good value when you consider it’s a 24/7 job) however this will effect our budgets. It was felt that the 2^nd generation are our future and we need to support them as much as possible when they put themselves forward in a public and professional manner.

2a) The façade at LG has now reached a point of no return. We were hoping to wait one more year before tackling it, but because of the very severe winter it has made the situation much worse, to the point that bits are falling off it and we almost had a serious incident a few weeks ago. Unfortunately it’s not only the façade, the chimneys are also in a very bad shape and in addition some underpinning needs to be done at the back. A ball park figure for this is going to be in the region of £150,000 but until we get scaffolding up and see first hand how things really are we don’t really know.

This is money we simply do not have. We are now looking at borrowing £100,000 from a bank over a loan period of seven years. We will do our very best to raise another £50,000 internally and from other sources. (see Simon’s letter) We could have borrowed more money over a longer period but it was felt we don’t want to be leaving debts and loans to future generations. At present we don’t know how much this will cost as we are still in negotiations with the bank but this will also have an effect on our end of year budgets.

If you have any questions about any of the above or anything else please feel free to contact me at energy1@btconnect.com

God Bless – Simon Rosselli

On behalf of the finance committee

From Simon Rosselli

Below are some of the Positives & Negatives for 2009. These are just a snap shot but should give you some idea in which direction we are heading. This is the first year in the last five that we have ended up in the black – however I would be the first to admit that this is partly due to people in the Finance Committee before the present one, who laid down certain investments which are now beginning to bear fruit and my gratitude and thanks go out to them.

Attached are reports from Cleeve House, Lancaster Gate, The Estate and Livingstone House. Please read these as I believe it will help you connect to each of these areas and the people that are looking after them & running them for the sake of the movement.

1. Income was 1.23% more than budgeted and costs were less than expected.
2. Centre Tithes, LG rentals income was more than expected
3. Costs of the Audit, UPF and Youth Department were more than planned. However this was slightly offset by costs of Education and Outreach, Other and Special costs and HQ financed property repairs were significantly less than budgeted. As far as the property repairs go this is positive on the balance sheet but long term we need to reinvest back into our properties – however at this point we are unable to.
4. Paid off £43,000 of external debt. This was done with money that is basically being put aside for the LG building fund. We have paid off some past debts to some regions and are now starting to pay other regions where money is owed. We have also been able to pay off monies we were sitting on in various funds owing to Korea, Contra Fund, Gift Aid to the regions etc.
5. Our actual cash flow shows a loss of £7,600 but if we put that against the £43,000 worth of debt paid off it represents a surplus for the year of £35,000. On top of this we were looking at another £25,000 coming in at the end of the year which due to timing hasn’t come in yet but should do fairly soon (this has already been earmarked to pay off other debts).
6. 2010 looks also positive and we are hoping the audit will be £10,000 less this year as the change with our accountants is now complete and things should run more smoothly now. We would hope to start on HQ this year by opening up the entrance to a more open style plan and with some investment also made to renovating the ballroom. Neither of these will be cheap (just to try to get planning to open up downstairs, as we are a listed building, could cost £3,500 and this doesn’t mean that we will get it) but we should try to make a start somewhere even if it’s not with the facade this year.

Please feel free to email me at energy1@btconnect.com about any of the above.

God Bless – Simon Rosselli on behalf of the finance committee.

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