As many of you already know, on June 2, 2008 our family was involved in a car accident on our way home to the village after a day of running errands in the city. As we were driving down the highway, a small Russian car turned left in front of us. Although the judge ruled we were not at fault, the other driver was never called to court. We were left with the choice of either paying for the repairs of our car ourselves, or paying for a lawyer and possibly the repairs too if we did not win the court case against the other driver. The lawyer told us that this kind of case could take months, maybe even a year. We were not able to afford either the repairs or a lawyer. We sold the car as it was and have not been able to replace it.
We greatly appreciate all who have already given to help us meet this need. Please continue to pray for us regarding a vehicle. We strongly desire to begin holding Bible studies in other villages around Elita but, we can not do so without transportation.
Dear David and Dee,
ReplyDeleteYou have done a wonderful job of setting up a site. I have seen other missionaries get this far and then nothing else happens. Without comments it is easy to get discouraged. To have a successful website (or blog site or whatever you want to call it) you need to do 2 main things.
1. Advertize it.
It should be included in your letterhead on all correspondence. So far I have only seen it once, buried at the end of your November 2009 prayer letter and then not even mentioned in the next letter. I get copies of the prayer letters once a month from my church from all the missionaries that we support (over 100) and then my family reads a few each day and prays for their needs. Since you are near the end of the alphabet, we are usually praying for you about 2 months after you send a prayer letter. I probably haven't received your most recent letter, but today we are praying for you.
2. Update it.
You need to update a website regularly and keep it interesting. You need to attach (or link) every prayer letter (past and present) to your website. Understand that during the first year it will be very discouraging because you will get very little feedback if any. It takes time for people to learn about your website and then more time to get in the habit of visiting it. Suggest in your prayer letter that people enter your website into their "Favorites" button so they can click to you easily. Now if you don't update the site regularly, they will get tired of going there and not finding anything new.
I hope this has been helpful. If you want to contact me, my e-mail is:
mo_integrity@yahoo.com
Praying for you from Lebanon, Missouri,
Bro. Jim Hall