“The RoseBouquet”

For those friends who love to read about my adventures with my cat, Snowflake, I have just finished another photo story page on his (not a her any more), adventures.

Hmm… maybe Snowflake is not technically a “him” any more either?

Anyway, here is the link to go see the photos and related stories; Snowflake Spring 08

You might find it interesting that I’ve been trying out the video camera feature on my digital. I haven’t got a good hang of it yet, but am learning. So after a while, I may be able to show off what a speedy Snowflake this cat is.

I had taken some photos of my garden and was sort of intending to do one on my garden’s progress to-date too. However, I’m running out of time, so that will have to be - maybe next week.

The big event of this past weekend was the Walkathon, we - at Western Tract Mission - put on to raise funds to continue our mailing of the booklet with the exciting testimonies called, “There is Hope.” Last year we raised enough money to reach ten cities in our province. Now we plan to cover the two cities we had to leave over, Regina and Yorkton, and if more comes in, we will move next to mailing to all the small towns and rural areas of Saskatchewan.

It will be my job to prepare photo stories of this too, and just last night I popped a few photos on the main index page at our WTM website, but these things take a bit of time.

Although I enjoy walking more and more, and don’t think it a hardship to walk the 11 blocks to our WTM office, where I also have my business office upstairs, I have over the past few years as we’ve run this walkathon, ended up being part of the crew that is setting up the picnic/barbecue at the Kinsmen Park where the walkers are to end up. So I delivered my friends to the starting point, stayed to take pictures of them heading off down the Meewasin Trail along the lovely river, and then drove back to the Kinsmen to set up the food, and to get the sponsor sheets worked over so that the Director, Arnold, would know whom to give the donated prizes to. Almost every family or person who took part this year, got a prize.

The final total of how much was raised keeps rising for a few days or weeks afterwards, but it was over $4,000 the last time I saw the sheets. Hopefully tonight at the Board meeting, we will hear that it has increased to over $5,000!

(By the way, you can order “There is Hope” from our Western Tract Mission office for just .25 cents).

Last week I discovered some instructions for fixing up my Aloe-Vera-and-Handy-Herbs.com site with .css and includes. After pouring over that, I realized that this will work for all my sites. I spent time on Saturday night applying it to all my pages on my SBI site, - but whoa, when I uploaded those 11 or 12 pages, none of them had the left side navigational links! Oh-no! What had I done wrong?

It was just about midnight, so I had to let it be, and go to bed. Yesterday morning I was determined to stay home and solve that problem above all else. Lo-and-behold, when I went to check, the includes file for the nav bar was showing up just fine on most of the pages. There were one or two, where I had not changed all the codes correctly. I was able to fix those quickly enough, and build another page. Hallelujah!

So on the SBI system I have to allow a bit of time for changes to show up, but I’m enthused now and wish I had time to re-do all my other sites with this new trick. It really allows one to make global changes in a much simplified way and will not need the one-by-one approach. Isn’t modern technology wonderful? - Once we catch on.

Wish you could have a heart-to-heart talk with God?

Ruthe does. All the time, where ever she goes, she’s having a running conversation with the one she calls Lord, or my Best Friend. You’ve got to meet Ruthe! AND her Secret Roses!

In place of the article I didn’t have time to write let me give you a sort-of book review with a fantastic and very encouraging news of great things happening around the world in missions. I found this positively encouraging.

Following are statistics from the book “2020 Vision” by Bill and Amy Stearns. Even though this book was published a little over three years ago, the statistics are still very accurate. I would encourage you to use this information to share with others for the purpose of information and prayer and perhaps to be used of God to burden many as to their responsibility to the Gospel and compassionate care to the three billion unreached people of the world.

________________________________________________________________

*Statistics from 2020 Vision*
Compiled by Jenny Mark for /Action International Ministries/ Stearns, Bill & Amy, /2020 Vision: Amazing Stories of What God is Doing Around the World /(Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2005).

1. “Every day another 74,000 people across the globe come to faith in Christ. That’s 3,083 new fellow believers every hour of every day. Since you started reading this chapter you have about 100 new brothers and sisters in Christ.” (Page 16)

2. “An average of 3,500 new churches are opening every week worldwide.” (Page 16)

3. “God is using the electronic media: Today there are 1,050 national or international broadcasting agencies producing Christian programming on more than 4000 Christian radio or TV stations.” (Page 17)

4. “More than three billion people have viewed Christian films such as the /Jesus/ film-which has been show in 228 countries, with 197,298,327 viewers indicating a commitment to Christ!” (Page 17)

5. “In 1950, when China closed to foreign missionaries, there were one million believers in the country. Today conservative estimates say there are well over 80 million. An average of 28,000 become believers every day in the People’s Republic of China!” (Page 17)

6. “During the 1990s the number of born-again believers in the world doubled.” (Page 18)

7. “Every day across the continent of Africa another 20,000 are added to the body of Christ. Africa was 3% Christian in 1900 and is more than 50% Christian today.” (Page 18)

8. “You may feel that few in your fellowship are ardent about prayer, but globally the number of committed believers in full-time prayer ministries has now reached 25 million! Altogether, more than 200 million believers pray daily for world evangelization.” (Page 18)

9. “How are we Bible-believing followers of Christ organized? In:
* 3,450,000 local churches,

* representing 33,800 distinct denominations,

* with 4,000 foreign mission agencies fielding 419,500 foreign missionaries,

* with 23,000 Christian primary and secondary schools,

* 35,500 Christian medical centers and hospitals,

* with 300 church-related research centers-now Internet-linked for instant information-sharing-from which many of these statistics come!” (Pages 18, 19)

10. “In 1900 Korea had no Protestant church; the country was deemed ‘impossible to penetrate.’ But today Korea is 30% Christian, with 7,000 churches in Seoul alone. Several of these churches have more than one million members each.” (Page 19)

11. “The government of Papua New Guinea recently mandated Bible teaching in every school in the country.” (Page 19)

12. “In A.D. 100 there were 360 non-Christians per true believer. Today the ratio is less than seven to every believer as the initiative of the Holy Spirit continues to outstrip our most optimistic plans!” (Page 19)

13. “Throughout history the growth of the body of Christ has outdistance the increase of world population.” (Page 21)

14. “For every true believer in the early church there were 360 unbelievers. In A.D. 1000 the ratio was 220 unbelievers for every true believer in Christ. By the year 1900 it was 27 non-Christians per believer. By 1980 the ratio was reduced: 11 non-Christians to one. In the first years of the twenty-first century the global proportion is seven unbelievers for each true believer in Jesus Christ. /Statistics furnished by the Lausanne Statistical Task Force.” /(Page 21)

15. “Where in the world is the fastest percentage of growth of born-again believers in Christ? As of the latest figures available (2000) here are the facts:

* First is the Northern Mariana Island (6.64%),

* then Cameroon (6.07%),

* next Aruba (5.588%)

* Guinea (5.02%)

* and Togo (4.77%)

* The sixth fastest growing body of believers? French Guiana, at 4.77%.

* Then Nepal (4.69%),

* Jordan (4.64%),

* and Oman (4.43%)!

Are you surprised?” (Page 21)

16. “Visited your local Christian bookstore lately? Or browsed through one of the 12,000 major Christian libraries on the planet? You might have noticed that from the world’s 2,000 Christian-owned publishing companies, every year we enjoy 26,100 new Christian titles-while a total of three billion Christian books are printed annually!” (Page 21)

17. “Where the church has been planted it is growing like wildfire, spreading across geographic and ethnic lines around the globe. God has raised up Surinam missionaries to go to the Muslims of North Africa, Han Chinese believers to settle among unreached Tibetans, and thousands of Indian evangelist to bring the blessing of the Gospel to the 2,000 unreached ethnic groups within India. The Good News is breaking loose worldwide!” (Page 21)

18. “From the seventy nations listed in Genesis, chapter 10, there have developed through the millennia tens of thousands of nations or ethnic groups.” (Page 33)

19. “The DAWN Movement (Discipling a Whole Nation) reports that a network of thirty-two ministries in India with 2,616 house churches grew to 8,784 churches during 2002-a growth of 336% in 12 months! Another report in a similar situation records the starting of 30,000 house churches among various /dalit/ people groups in 2003 alone.” (Page 99)

20. “During the last five years close to 1,000 grassroots church-planters have been raised up in the north Indian state of Bihar, know in year past as the ‘graveyard of missions.’” (Page 99)

21. “Operation Agape reports that 800 Muslims in northern India recently became Christians. More than 100 house churches were planted in various districts of Uttar Pradesh State in the first six months of 2004, every member a former Muslim. In West Bengal State, 15 Islamic priests and their families have been baptized as believers in Christ, and there is a growing church-planting movement among the region’s Muslims.” (Pages 99 & 100)

22. “The World Christian Encyclopedia list the top three most responsive unreached peoples in the world as the Khandeshi, the Awadhi (Baiswari, Bagheli), and the Magadhi Bihari (Maghori)-all in India.” (Page 100)

23. “With more that one billion in population-surpassing China in 2015 as the world’s most populous country-India has officially insisted since 1947 that Christians comprise just 2.5% of the population. Most India-watchers suggest it’s actually closer to 4%; some have suggested it’s as high as 10%. Even at 4%, that’s 40 million Christians in India!” (Page 100)

24. “With-as many as 2,329 people groups, or /jathi/, speaking more than 1,652 languages, ‘blessings the nations’ in India is complex.” (Page 100)

25. “Indigenous ministries with tens of thousands of workers are moving out across the cultural boundaries within India, yet few are going to the two-thirds of the population who are in the caste systems.” (Page 100)

26. “More than 1.2 million children and adolescents are illegally involved in prostitution in India.” (Page 100)

27. “Kali, Calcutta’s namesake, the goddess of death and destruction…is…only one of the 33 million gods worshiped in India.” (Page 100)

28. “55,000 people die daily in India and around the world without ever hearing the True Name.” (Page 102)

29. “God has overwhelmingly blessed His people worldwide. Compare the mid-2004 resources of the global body of Christ with the projected 2025 numbers (in 2004 value of U.S. dollars):

What do you think? Has God given His people the blessings and the resources to actively be a blessing to all the remaining unreached people groups of the earth?” (Pages 124, 125)

30. “Other blessings aren’t quite so obvious since they’re not necessarily quantified statistics. For example, the fact that we can travel to any point in the world within twenty-four hours is a phenomenon given to mankind in just the past couple of decades. More than 250 million Christians travel as tourists outside their own countries each year.” (Page 125)

31. “The new computerized capability for the world’s 300 Christian research institutes to communicate and compile data about God’s harvest field is itself a blessed resource. World Christians are communicating as never before in more than 5,000 global Great Commission networks” (Page 125)

32. “At the time of Christ the average life-span was twenty-eight years…Today’s life-span in many countries in the world is nearly three times that figure.” (Page 126)

33. “Latin American believers have been zealous in evangelism and in starting new churches, setting ’saturation church-planting’ goals in most of their countries. The goal set in their regional congress in 1998 is one half million /new /congregations by 2010!” (Page 151)

34. “Here’s a glimpse of what has happened in some Latin American countries as of 2001:” (Page 152)

New Churches 1992-2001
Brazil 20,000
Argentina 4,000
Uruguay 1,000
Chile 2,000
Peru 11,000
Colombia 3,000
Venezuela 9,000
Panama 2,000
Mexico 8,000
Dominican Republic 4,000
Costa Rica 500
El Salvador 5,000
Guatemala 12,000
Cuba 6,000

35. “Recent data from a secular research company indicates that over 42% of Guatemalans are now members of evangelical churches and another 30% consider themselves to be evangelical sympathizers.” (Page 152)

36. “Venezuelan believers met and prayed that their 4,900 evangelical churches would multiply to 12,000 in 10 years. They went to work, reached their goal four years ahead of time, and established a new goal of 25,000 churches by 2005!” (Page 152)

37. “Uruguay, where 30% of the population claimed to be atheist in 1996, has seen that number drop to 10% while 1,000 new churches were being planted from 1996 to 1999. In the process, they reached their six-year goal in those three years!” (Page 152)

38. “Cuba, after 30 years of communism, had less than 800 congregations, the same number as when the revolution started! Their goal of 5,000 new churches, mostly meeting in houses, was reached in 1998, two years ahead of their 2000 target. (Page 152)

39. “…Nearly all Latin American countries’ evangelical churches are working together to send new Latin missionaries to places like West Africa, the Middle East, and Indonesia! North American pastor Leith Anderson envies that kind of progress: ‘South America has 50,000 new churches per year, while 60 churches per week are closing in the United States!’” (Page 153)

40. “Latin American Christianity is changing the face of the church: ‘Christianity will still be the world’s largest religion for the foreseeable future, but its center is shifting from Western Europe and North America to Africa, Latin America and Asia,’ says Philip Jenkins in The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2002), 2.” (Page 153)

Have you ever thrown a party, and hardly anyone came? These days lots of people are setting up websites, and when they think it is ready they wait for the visitors to come. Some friends straggle over to have a look, but if you had envisioned hundreds and thousands to come - it can be quite a disappointment.

I threw my first party after I lived alone in the city after high school graduation. As I recall only two friends came and they were not there at the same time. It discouraged me for a long time from trying such hospitality again. Gradually, with time, I learned that you have to develop relationships with people, and be content with small meetings and visits until you build up your circle of friends.

In the last ten years on the internet I’ve been learning similar lessons about getting visitors to come to my website. I worked so hard on my first free website in 1999. It was a chance to tell the world who I was and what I could do for them, and I even priced my services very reasonably so they would know I was not trying to be too big for my britches. Somehow I thought all the world could see my site from every corner of the globe.

Turned out they could not until they would learn about it on some other more popular site which they had already found. I was forced to read up on marketing and promotion and try a number of methods. Fortunately, I learned that even a po’ little church mouse like me could use all kinds of f ree marketing methods. Naturally, I jumped on a number of bandwagons. Some were more bother and bounce than they were worth.

Experience is a good teacher, and over the last number of years, certain methods have proven more effective than others. Those with the most success have shared their insights.

When you really want visitors to come to read your website, and to respond to your special offers, here are the best ways to invite them;

1. Build your website around carefully chosen keywords that are commonly searched in the search engines, and use those keywords often enough on your web pages, and list them in the meta tags, so that the search engines will offer up your site to seekers.

2. When your site is polished and appears as a nice, cohesive unit to human readers, with good internal linking and you have linked to good outside resources, it is time to get some quality in-bound links from other respectable sites with some authority in your field. You may have to provide a reciprocal link, but one of the best ways to get these is to submit your site to directories and other peers’ sites.

3. To build long term relationships with your visitors, which will bring them back repeatedly, you need to incorporate things like an ezine, or blog, or inter-active form. Set these up and prepare to give some time to this aspect.

4. Now it is time to go submit the URL to your site to the main search engines. When they see your use of keywords, and those inbound links, it convinces them that you are worthy of notice and indexing. The purpose-driven visitors will start drifting in.

5. But you can do some more to get your invitations out;
a). Put the link to your site in your email signature so it is added automatically.
b). Print some business cards to hand out as you meet people.
c). If you can afford it, pay for some pay-for-click ads at Googles AdWords.
d). Write articles on the main topics of your site, and list them on the better article directories, your bio box linking to your site.
e). Get a profile and login at various forums that relate to the topic of your site, with your URL in your signature, make helpful posts and become a polite and respected member.

If you continue with this kind of campaign for at least three to four months, you should start to get enough visitors to your site, and some of them contacting you for advice, and to pay for your products or services, to keep you fairly busy.

There will always be things to delay us and maybe frustrate us too, but if we have steps like this laid out so we can see the big picture, we can keep coming back to it, working on it, until we get results. By the time we get the results we want, we’ll also discover that we need to keep up with most of the steps to keep those visitors and results coming.

Way back after I graduated from high school I had a great yen to learn to sew and design my own clothes. So once I had a job I ordered a correspondence course in dress design and bought myself my first sewing machine. Between my shifts as a telephone operator I taught myself to sew. (Mom had announced long ago, that she didn’t know how to teach a lefty like me).

However, this is a skill that has become almost dormant the last few years. Except for sudden spurts of determination to make or mend something, it hasn’t happened much since I’ve focused on my online business ventures. Last year Dad gave me mom’s sewing machine and serger before he died. I set them up on the desk in my bedroom right under the window.

All through the winter I kept thinking, I need a new flannelette night gown; I’ve got that drawer full of flannelette my sister Elsie gave me when I was cleaning up her stuff - so all I need is time! One night, just before I went to bed I pulled out two pieces of fabric and laid them where they would be in the way, hoping that would inspire me to ‘fit in’ a quick sewing session. It didn’t. I found a cotton one and made do with that. I put away the fabric.

Now in spring it occurred to me that I really needed a light-weight knit night gown for the summer. I tried again; putting fabric where I could see it often and be reminded to get aroun’ to it!

Hurrah! Last week it was raining so I couldn’t dash out to work on the yard after supper. I decided that I’d work at cutting out and sewing as far as I could get in half an hour. Besides that, I’d found in the fabrics two outfits my sister Elsie had cut out, but never got to sewing up. I put these all on a pile on my desk, and I managed in one half hour session to get the knit night gown cut out and sewed up.

Saturday afternoon, after I was exhausted enough to sit down, I took to my recliner the gown that needed hemming around the arms’ eyes, and the green skirt Elsie had made which just needed hemming, and I also mended a skirt I’d made years ago, which just needed some repairs at the waist-band. Voila! Three items ready to wear!

Yesterday after supper I managed to get the pants sewn together, and hemmed the top to match Elsie’s skirt that I finished on Saturday. The pants still need finishing, and the other top needs to be sewn together, but I’m enjoying the thrill of some sewing progress!

Don’t you just love the thrill of finishing a project? You can bet I will now get the other items finished soon too.

Last week, my dear friend Tess reminded me that not everyone can follow when I talk about installing operating systems on a laptop or computer. I should be sticking with my goal to finish my aloe-vera-and-handy-herbs.com site since that will bring an income. Touche! I do need to be reminded sometimes that not every reader gets much out of my techie talk. Even if you didn’t understand all that, I hope you got the clear impression that it was a sweet victory for me to accomplish my goal.

I do have a regular work pace, and it would be boring to you if I repeated each week the hours I’ve spent on maintaining my sites, or those of my clients; or all the things I’m learning as I work on that new SBI site. I’m still doing all that too, but I have, in the last few weeks, given up about three mornings a week to go to my Azaleas Virtual Assistants office, and get those computers lined up so that I can earnestly recruit the students for my business. I’m hoping I can run a free workshop one Saturday - maybe in July - and use it to show people what they would learn if they sign up for the four month course.

Each week, I try to pick out one highlight for me, out of my varied work to share with you. It gives those friends who want to know what I’m up to, a sense of what is keeping me busy. I do realize that some weeks it will whiz past you like a bullet not meant for you. Don’t let it bother you. Just skim over it regularly, for the times when there will be something that does catch your fancy.

Hey, ideally, I’d love to brag here each week on how many copies of my book have sold, and how well my sites are doing, but then to translate one of my Gr’ma’s proverbs, “Self-glory stinks,” so that might not be very interesting either on a regular basis.

Guess you can be grateful that I’m a multi-faceted person and can give you variety, eh?

(Incidentally, I get to do some interesting things for clients sometimes, but I hesitate to share those items as they aren’t really mine to talk about).

I haven’t done this in quite a while, but I have friends who need and would love to have visitors to their sites, so let me give you a few to go check out. If you like them and want to encourage them, use the contact form to say “Hi!” to them.

April Boyer - a freelance writer, brings Inspiration Seeds for YOUR Writing, Christian Writer’s Encouragement, Helps, and Services. Newly renovated!

Children-of-the-Heart.net - Betty Baker Bradley, a poet and artist, makes baby blankets to give away to anyone who can be dissuaded from having an abortion as she stands before the infamous Tiller Abortuary in Kansas.

Generosity is Alive and Well - We want to draw more attention to the skill and art of being a wise and generous giver. This site profiles and draws attention to worthy causes, missions and ministries that deserve generosity.

HeavenlyDaze.biz - information on things “heavenly” (if you feel ‘Dazed’) pointing to God’s Word, the Bible for the ultimate answers.

Just Good Cooking - Offering “old” cookbooks as e-books; some are over 100 years old, and difficult to get any other way.

Last Thursday I ran out of cat food, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to drive to the shopping mall just for that, so I went on the internet to look for homemade cat food recipes. Found some too.

One lady vet said that cat are carnivores - meaning they are meant to eat raw meat. Her recipe called for two little chicken legs ground up raw, bones and all, add a few vitamins and make a slurry, which you freeze in small containers so you only have a small amount in the fridge for a few days at a time. I happened to have most of that stuff on hand, and a Vita Mixer as well as a Champion Juicer/grinder, so I decided to try it.

When I had the batch just about done, I put a fork full down in Snowflake’s food dish to see whether he would even eat it. He gobbled it up! Since then I’ve offered him one heaping fork-full whenever I come into the kitchen for my three meals a day, but oh the side effects!

I was told that the neutering surgery would make him a tamer, quieter cat. The reverse has happened. I’ve been pondering if his behaviour is as a result of the surgery or of this new diet. Today he is not getting any more of the raw chicken - no matter how much he whines and begs for it. When I’m finished this issue of the RoseBouquet I’m going out to buy him some regular cat food again.

What Snowflake been like? He’s been racing from one end of the house to the other and leaping up on his high window look-outs like his tail is on fire. Now that tail is constantly twitching in what I thought was a cute tickity-boo manner, but he can’t stand a hug for more than two seconds, and he’s off and running again, meowing like a two-year-old throwing a tantrum because it can’t have what it wants NOW. He’s been up on my desk (which I had trained him not to do), and the kitchen table, and on my bed, waking me up, leaping into the sink in the bathroom, drinking from the toilet, and just one crazy act after another.

I’m beginning to wonder if I can stand my roommate any more. So today I’m hardening my heart, and resolved to ignore all whining until I can go get regular cat food. This new diet just gives way too much energy for one cat.

Back about March or April I had an older laptop given to me. A CTX Ez-Book 800 Series. The giver explained that he had only taken it along on two trips, so it has had little wear and tear. However, he has bigger ones, so he was willing to give this one up. Turns out the CTX EzBooks are no longer made. Obsolete. The CPU is too old for most of the newer, better operating systems. It had only 32 MB of RAM memory, which meant that of the 11 or 13 Linux distributions I was trying to install, some of them came to a halt because of lack of memory, and some switched to bare text mode. Hmm…. well, I wasn’t about to give up just yet. I could just re-install Windows 98, but not until I was convinced there was NO linux system that would work.

So over various weekends I’ve spent some hours trying this and that. (Like Heinz’ varieties, there are over 300 flavours of Linux). I had read about Debian some years ago, but sort of avoided it, because it looked like I’d have to learn some command line to run it. I had downloaded one or two of them though, and that was one system that seemed to be comfortable installing on this laptop. Only something went wrong the first few times. Gradually, by checking online, I was able to understand what I had done wrong in each case, and the way around that.

Saturday afternoon and evening I tried another time. This time it worked, except that it complained of only 300-400 MB of space left over. That wouldn’t do, as I need space for all the emails and files I save. So on Sunday I researched and learned how to delete some. I tried to take out the games, and lo, the whole Gnome desktop system got washed away at the same time. (sigh). But in researching Debian sites some more I saw that I needed to do a very bare, basic installation, and then install the KDE system, the one I like much better because it has my favourite programs, with a few simple apt-get commands.

Since a full installation can take 3-6 or more hours I made that my main project yesterday. I got the right web pages up in various Firefox tabs on my desktop computer, and also downloaded the pdf manual, then I gave the internet cable to the laptop and got it set up to do the install. Meantime, I could do some work on this computer too, just not online. Hallelujah, at 3:14 pm it was done and I could see that I have a working system up and running!

This laptop will now be my own private computer at my Azaleas Virtual Assistants (AVA) office, and I will be able to use a USB stick to carry my files back and forth between home and the AVA office. The laptop Debian needs a bit of tweaking so it looks more like my setup here in Suse 10.3, and I need to copy some working files over, but I am positively thrilled at this success.

I’ve learned to know and appreciate Debian better. The commands are not that hard to learn - at least not for downloading and installing, and it works, even on oldie computers. Guess what I’m going to go put on the office computers that are too old for Suse?

Incidentally, I had some great feedback last week on the article about a book review website. I’m sure there is room for all of you to run with the idea. I’ll see if I can toss out more ideas from time to time. Right now I’m mulling over an idea for a site, or even a workshop on how to install new operating systems on your computer. What if I invited them to bring their own…?