Running into a title issue

I bought a vehicle from a long time family friend who runs a business in selling vehicles and parts. I bought the vehicle and sold him my old vehicle for parts, then bought my old powertrain to put in the new vehicle. I made payments which were completed at the beginning of January, not an official bank payment plan, I paid him personally. The payments were documented, I have a copy of them

I’m ready to start work on this vehicle and have the powertrains swapped, but he informed me he’s having trouble locating the title

I did a check through CarFax which verified that the vehicle does have a clean title. It is not stolen

He tends to have a lot of things in motion and things aren’t moving as I’d like them to. Do I have any options where I can take this over and handle the paperwork? Can he write me a statement saying I own the vehicle, a police officer verifies it isn’t stolen, etc?

Thank you in advance