MINISTRY UPDATE - SPRING 2007

Greetings to you in the mighty name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!  We are so blessed to be able to bring to you this Spring ministry update for Precious Testimonies.  Exciting things continue to happen in this ministry and we are so thankful to God for it.  We realize that without the favor of our heavenly Father and the work of the Holy Spirit involved in this outreach, it would not be touching people’s lives the way it is doing, nor would people be sending us the awesome testimonies we are privileged to be able to publish for Jesus, and that exalt Him.   It is truly amazing and humbling to receive testimonies of the caliber people have sent to us.  Thank you, Lord, and thank every one of you who have submitted testimonies these last several months!

The Precious Testimonies website has been given incredible favor from God for many months now when it comes to good Search Engine placement.  If you go to Google.com and put the word “testimonies”  in the search box  ... you’ll discover that the PT website comes up as the very first entry on page one.  It has been that way now for months and months.

If you Google in these two words,  “christian testimonies” … you will find not only one entry on page one, but usually two!   We realize not everyone reading this can appreciate our excitement about this … but when you have a website on the Internet whose primary purpose is to plant and water seeds of truth in the unsaved … the unsaved FIRST needs to find it.  Making it easy for them to find it is one of the biggest challenges we face as “Cyber Missionaries.”

If you Google in  “born again testimonies” or “precious christian messages” or “christian testimonies by topics” … again, excellent placement.  There are other keywords as well that when Googled, you can find the ministry website easily.

Along with excellent placement on all the popular Search Engines, (not just Google, though Google is estimated to get about 80% of all people on the Internet using the search function) we are consistently picking up more viewers as the months go by.  From January through March, we had over 10,000 monthly first-time viewers!  We had over 14,000 viewers each month during these three months.  Our greatest hope is that 99% of those first time viewers are unsaved!

For the entire year of 2006, we had 93,125 minimum first time visitors come to the site, and a total of 127,011 minimum viewers clicked onto the site.   Over 433,000 pages were viewed, and well over 1,000,000 hits were logged, (though hits are really not that good of a measurement anymore when it comes to evaluating traffic on one’s website).  These are conservative numbers for 2006 because Stats for our website were not available on several different occasions throughout the year. 

A number of people have committed and/or recommitted their life to the Lord by notifying us directly.  Testifiers report to us that many of these new converts contact them directly, so we don’t always get to hear of all the souls the Lord is touching.  God knows, and that is what truly matters.

A number of the emails we receive are from Christians who are going through severe trials, and are either angry, or on the edge of being angry with God (for allowing such painful things to happen to them).  That doesn’t surprise us, because we feel like that is a part of what our ministry is all about as well … letting Christians know that trials and tribulations are promised to those who are serious about walking obediently with Jesus, and to learn how to make it through those trials.  So many ministries in America, it seems, places so much focus on “God wants to bless you, so give your heart to Jesus!” and that’s all people either hear, or maybe want to hear, we suppose.  (Yet it’s not the “normal Christian experience” at all, is it?  Jesus promised his audience that they would suffer painful trials and persecutions in this life, because they have an enemy who hates them, but once in heaven, then blessings eternal would be theirs).

A few more highlights of what God has been doing in the ministry since our last Ministry Update:

A brother in the Lord from India asked if he can use testimonies off our website to start an Indian website.  We were overjoyed to tell him, “Of course!”

Another brother currently residing in Norway asked recently if he could use testimonies off our website to publish a book of testimonies first in the Norwegian language, and then in the Chinese language, as God provides funds.  We told him, “Help yourself!”  We have always believed the testimonies God gives us to publish belong to Him, because He is the one who ultimately wrote them in the lives of people, and why in the world would we ever want to hinder God from duplicating spiritual seed? 

In like manner, a number of beginning Christian testimony websites have asked if they can use testimonies from our site, so they can get started with something for viewers to read on their sites, until Christians start sending  them fresh testimonies, and as long as we’re persuaded that we are dealing with truly born again believers that are trying to win lost souls to Christ as we’ve been called, we always grant our blessing.  We believe the more testimony websites, the better!

This email recently came in from a female who is believing for her brother to be saved in prison:  “I was searching the web for something to send my brother in prison. He is a gangster and has done some horrific things; the devil has a hold on him; he has my brother living in the fog. So I'm sending him testimonies of people in similar situations from your site.”

Again, we thank each of you for all you are doing in helping this ministry outreach with your prayerful and/or financial support to help others come to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, and also in helping those draw closer to Him who are already in God's Kingdom.  In closing … here are two special promises and encouragement from God's word and a prayer for all of us in 2007: