The Six Plus-Size Grant Writers : Book Two: Where Broken Places Meet Determined Faith. The Six-Plus Size Grant Writers Series, #2

The story continues from Book One:The Plus Size-Six Grant Writers: They Acquired the Land. After years of prayer, proposal writing, folding-table meetings, and impossible faith, the Build-Vision Group finally accomplished what nobody in Mercy Grove, Alabama believed they could do. They acquired the land. Twenty overgrown acres filled with weeds, broken fencing, mud, and possibilities. For six plus-size friends-Bishop Build, Bennett Build, Boone Build, Victoria Vision, Valerie Vision, and Veronica Vision-the property represented far more than real estate.
They envisioned greenhouses overflowing with produce and medicinal herbs, walking trails for exhausted families, entrepreneur kiosks for struggling businesses, playgrounds for children, gathering spaces for the community, and a bakery where warm bread and cinnamon rolls could somehow help restore an entire town. In Book One, they acquired the land. In this next unforgettable installment, they discover something terrifying:Owning the land was the easy part.
Now comes permits. Drainage studies. Infrastructure planning. Environmental reviews. Utility coordination. Engineering costs. Commercial kitchen regulations. Parking requirements. And budget estimates large enough to make six grown adults sit silently in church basement folding chairs questioning every life decision they ever made. The Build-Vision Group suddenly finds themselves drowning beneath paperwork and construction expenses while trying desperately to understand how gravel parking lots somehow cost more than luxury vacations.
Their little church basement becomes a chaotic nonprofit headquarters covered in contractor estimates, coffee stains, bakery sketches, utility diagrams, extension cords, and handwritten prayers. Valerie Vision nearly loses her salvation trying to understand bakery permit requirements. Boone Build becomes personally offended by drainage calculations. Bennett starts speaking in budget numbers so often everybody worries he may eventually become an accountant against his will.
Victoria tries to keep the group emotionally stable while secretly wondering if the entire project is financially impossible. Veronica fights to protect the greenhouse vision while prices rise faster than Alabama summer temperatures. And Bishop quietly reminds everybody that faith sounded much easier before invoices started arriving in the mail. The grant-writing process itself becomes a comedy of exhaustion.
Trying desperately to sound "professional, " the six friends accidentally fill proposals with phrases so complicated nobody in the room understands them. At one point, Boone proudly writes an executive summary that sounds less like a community project and more like a confused refrigerator running for political office. Eventually the Build-Vision Group realizes something important:People connect more deeply with honesty than fancy nonprofit vocabulary.
So they stop trying to sound impressive and begin telling the truth instead:their town is struggling, families need opportunity, children need safe places, local businesses need support, and abandoned land does not have to stay abandoned forever. But while the six friends are honestly trying to build something meaningful, dangerous conversations are taking place elsewhere. Inside expensive conference rooms, crooked developer Donald Develop and three polished councilmen quietly begin plotting against the nonprofit.