What, exactly, is the purpose of this part of our web site?
Good question. After all, we already have a “conventional” web site, plus two email mailing lists (one for most people, with pictures, and one for people with very slow and/or expensive Internet connections), plus a paper mailing list. So far, this blog is an experiment, but it seems to me to be another way to communicate with our friends, partners, and family, and a way to potentially make new friends. It is a little less structured, a little more informal, and it can be a lot more verbose. Our regular prayer letters seem to be a major production to get out, taking hours to fit 1-3 months of news into just two pages, with careful proofreading and such. The photo emails are less time-consuming to produce, but we try to control their size and frequency. This blog, however, is not on a schedule. It is also less intrusive than email. You can read it or not, and skip and skim what topics interest you. If you get an RSS feed, it has the immediacy of email. If not, it is more like a web site you can visit from time to time.
Although I’ll try to not say anything here that isn’t appropriate for a wide audience, I’ll try to post things that are encouraging, informative, and helpful. I’ll also share some challenges we face so that you can agree with us in prayer about overcoming them. Although I have disabled direct posting of comments on this web site to avoid comment spam, you can let me know any comments you have via our web contact page (which is one of those little links in the sidebar).
What does this picture have to do with this post? Not much, but God sure does paint beautiful sunsets, doesn’t He?