In the summer of 2015 God said, "Liberty must go forth." I knew our time was running out at the townhomes and God had promised back in 2008 that we were going to have a farm and we were going to have a cave. Caves are common around Kansas City. They aren't "down" caves or natural spelunking caves, they are horizontal limestone mines where they tunnel in to use the gravel, leaving columns every 30 feet or so - and then use them later for dry storage, office space, boat and RV storage or other things. The biggest one is the Hunt Midwest Subtropolis on the South side of Liberty. The mine is over 50 million square feet of which they have developed about 6 million so far. There are lots like it in Kansas City. Enough for the entire Metro to hide underground several times over. The Subtropolis has over 2700 people that work there everyday.
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We went to look at this property that was for sale. It was outside of Liberty, but still in Clay County (Liberty is the County seat). He wanted $349,000 for it, but agreed to owner finance it as a Lease for Purchase with a five year balloon if we'd put some money down. We had NO MONEY. I put one video on YouTube and $50,000 came. We put $30K down and used the rest for tractor and materials and other stuff we needed. The property was 67.2 wooded acres with 20 acres of cave under it.
Our cave was never developed out like the Subtropolis. It's pretty raw, but there was a tactical shooting range for police certification for awhile. Then a paintball range and haunted house. We do have some finished spaces including offices and bathrooms, changing rooms for the haunted house and a large room that was where they waited inside to go into the haunted house (2011-2013). Of the 20 acres (1,000,000 sqft) in the cave, about 7 acres (350,000 sqft) had fluorescent lights (now mostly rusted out) and is dry. The other 13 acres in the back has water from an inch to about three feet deep. In a pinch we think we could probably house 1,000 people in there and have about 350 million gallons of fresh water stored up.
 Catch pond that we pump out. |
 Main truck entrance. 12 ft ceilings. |
 Haunted house waiting room. Could have church with 350+/- people. |
 Bathrooms, kitchen, meeting rooms, storage. |
We wanted to build a village of tiny homes, store stuff in the cave, plus work the farm. It wasn't meant to be a homeless shelter, just a place for a Christian community. But we would have to rezone it for multi-family residential. Word got out, spun wildly out of control and a hundred angry neighbors with pitchforks and torches showed up (with TV cameras) at our zoning hearing to protest the "cult" moving in. Though we were in the county, the Mayor of Excelsior Springs publicly posted that he was going to do everything possible to run us out of town. (FYI - He's not mayor anymore and we're still here.) We fought and fought in court and county and finally gave up. We've used the farm for storage and raising animals and often having "church" around a bonfire out front or just inside. But there's more we could do as resources become available to enlarge the septic system and do more. We're zoned for "retreat center" and "church."
Can you imagine a place where you could go anytime, day or night, and find Christians sitting around a bonfire praying, singing and sharing? Maybe dozens of bonfires all over the property. There's nothing like sitting around a bonfire, singing to Jesus with a puppy on your lap, a smore in your hand and a little goat wanting a bite. We've done baptisms down in our creek!
When we couldn't make it residential, God flipped to His back up plan and a little mobile home park a mile away started donating, or selling us really cheap, some of the homes they wanted cleaned up.
Go to next page - 2016 The Church of Liberty gets Mobile Homes
