December 2015

I apologize for not keeping in touch quite as much as I used to do.  I really do mean to keep up with this blog but my days stay incredibly hectic.  I haven't seen the bottom of my email box in months and my desk is piled high with . . . stuff.  I'm not even sure why some of this stuff is here except that I have been having repairs done in my office so right now I can't even get to the cabinet where some of these things go.  Maybe some day I will manage to get things as organized as I picture them in my head, but it won't be this week.  

Still, some exciting things have happened with the mission work.  A few weeks ago we recorded the 1 millionth visit to our websites.  Those visitors have come from 233 different nations or separate dependencies around the world representing over 13,600 cities.  So this mission outreach truly is international and global.  In fact, of the top 30 cities to send visitors to our websites only one of them is located in the USA.

Two weeks ago I received 25 applications in the mail to become an IBTM online teacher, all from one congregation of the Lord's church.  What an amazing response to an appeal for teachers!

This past Monday I conducted my first ever telephone interview for an article I wanted to write for our newsletter.  That was fun.  The newsletter is posted online now although the printed version probably won't be available for another week.  You can read it by clicking here.

And my exciting news of  yesterday?  I assigned our 20,000^th online student to a teacher! When you add in the postal students as well we have close to 22,000 people who have enrolled in our study. I am still amazed at how quickly we got to this number.  When I finally finished uploading all of the course materials and the first tracts and articles IBTM had available so that my husband, Jimmie, and I could start recruiting teachers it was well into January of 2011.  By the end of that month we had 10 teachers in place – and 7 students.  Now we have around 125 active teachers – and our students have grown just a bit.  It can certainly keep me busy.

I stay fairly busy on the home front as well.  I mentioned repairs in the office, but my office is in my home and repairs had to be done all over.  I guess older homes are like people - they can develop problems as they age.  My house was built in 1902 and I love its Victorian farmhouse charm, so I want to keep it in good condition.  I had quite a bit of work done inside the house before I moved in 2 years ago, so most of the repairs now were things that had to be taken care of underneath the house.  Really hard to get excited about that but it needed to be done.  Still, this summer I did get a bit of sprucing up done to the outside.


And my grandsons . . . they tend to keep me busy, too.  It is so much fun watching them grow and discover new things.  This past weekend I took the oldest two to see The Peanuts Movie because I've long been a Snoopy fan.   I loved hearing them laugh at all those endearing characters I have enjoyed for years.  It was nice to see a movie that was actually funny where the only violence was Lucy yanking that football away just as Charlie Brown was trying to kick it.  You know that scene had to be in there or it wouldn't be a Peanuts gang story.