“When you see the DOG go to GOD in prayer for the Hoffman Family – missionaries to Cyberspace.”
Greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!
The Latest News: I was called back to work in mid-November by Greyhound. Work was non-stop through the Thanksgiving weekend, and things have slowed down for while – expected to pick up again as Christmas approaches.
Bible Correspondence Courses: I want to share a letter we received from one of our Bible Students incarcerated in Pennsylvania: I know that without Jesus, we are nothing and can do nothing. And if Jesus would not have sacrificed His life and shed His innocent blood, our sins would not be forgiven, as we would be under law, not grace. That was a great thing God did for us, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, and whoever shall believe on him shall not perish but have everlasting life, Amen! This study has been a big inspiration to me, Thank You! and God Bless!
We want to thank Katherine Feguer, John & Lydia Henrici, JL and Florence Smith for helping on the Bible Correspondence courses over the last several months.
Church Website Ministry:
- Checked the 6000+ links in the Baptist Ministries Database (http://www.baptist-ministries.org). This database is probably the single most accurate database of every ministry link that claims to be “Independent Baptist” or appears in an Independent Baptist list somewhere. There are a number of ministries (churches, missionaries etc) that have simply let their domains expire for one reason or another.
- I have been contacted by three churches that want to re-establish their web presence and have asked to get their (rescued) domains back in one way or another. I worked with these ministries to get them back online.
- I updated our power point presentation (needed to – as it was dated) and thought I would share the results.
- There are 2 Billion “reachable” people on the Internet
- 536.6 Million of these people speak English as their first language
- There is more than 400% growth in internet usage since 2000
- We have sent out over 41,600 Bible Correspondence Course
- We have seen 133 salvation decisions via the courses.
- We have 284 active students.
- Upgraded the website of Old Paths Baptist Church (http://www.old-pathsbc.com) to the Website Baker templates. Pastor Carpenter was using Joomla, and wanted to get into something simpler. He also wanted to be able to update his website automatically with content from his Twitter account. Website Baker has a module that allows you to bring in an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed.
- I spent the last day and a half working on our newsgroup software (crashed for the second time in two weeks). I have a workable solution up now. I am almost to the point where nntp (network news transfer protocol) is so outdated that I will stop supporting it. But… we are fixed and back up. This allows our message bases to be updated using a newsreader. The new software will also allowed me to set up a gateway to one of our web portals using a newsreader.
- I received an email from evangelist Russell Kidman. He was referred to us by Missionary Bob Strachan (Scotland) to see if we could host two additional websites for his evangelistic web presence (http://www.evangelistrussellkidman.com) so he could diversify his websites. We set up his all three of his websites on the Website Baker Templates (http://www.operationlibertyministry.org and ). He created a banner which I was able to integrate into the templates He is also wanted to put up a separate website for their college. I continued working with Dr. Russell Kidman on setting up his Bible College website. This website is also set up on the Website Baker templates (http://www.correspondencebiblecollege4u.org) online today. Dr Kidman told me that he was impressed with the ease of being able to implement his ideas so easily (even though the one shortcoming was the inability to easily modify the headers that are hard coded in the templates). He felt the ease of use more than compensated for the shortcomings. We are looking at setting up Moodle to put the courses online for the college.
- In talking with Dr Kidman, I discovered that their home church (Vision Baptist Church in Rochester Hills Michigan) had no website, but had an expired domain. I rescued their domain (http://www.visionbaptistchurchmi.com). I have the church set up on the WB templates also, and will finish the installation tomorrow. We will also be looking at moving another website of theirs to the templates.
- I worked with Brother Lewis Smith of Calvary Baptist Church in Sterling Kansas. This is a rescued domain, that they took back almost a year ago (http://www.calvarybaptistofsterling.com). Pastors have changed and brother Lewis wants to update the web page (which had been neglected for a while). I walked him through the templates and he will be updating the website as time permits.
- I received a call from a gentleman that set up a new website for Mount Sinai Baptist Church in Pickens, South Carolina. I had rescued their website (http://www.mtsinaibaptistchurchpickens.com) several years ago. The domain he has now is not appearing in Google, a previous website pointing to the rescued website is number one, and the rescued website is number two. I gave the user (Mike) a demo on the templates and told him I would set up the templates on the rescued website (in progress as I am typing this) so he could try it out. He liked what he saw, we will walk through a full tutorial when he has time.
- I spent most of an afternoon working on the computer of one of our church members. She said her computer was real slow and causing unexpected responses when she tried to do things like reading email. I had some unused memory chips, and upgraded her computer’s RAM from 256 MB to 512 MB. Spybot also found 28 entries (19 marked Trojan) that were contributing to slowing down her computer and causing the unexpected responses. She also had a monthly subscription to WebRoot, which I replaced with the free Comodo Internet Security products (links to these and many other products are on our website here at http://www.cyber-missions.com. You should have a good anti-virus, firewall and malware/spyware software package running on your computer. We have links to good, free, software packages under the “Recommended Products” links section.
Tract Ministry: We are “giving out” 800 Bible Tracts per month, We have “given out” over 43,000 Bible Tracts online (recently received an email notification of a salvation via “The New Birth” tract). One of Dr. Jim Lyons tracts (we mail out with the correspondence courses) was returned from a prisoner in Washington state indicating a salvation decision.
Social Networking: Please continue praying for our Facebook outreach. My evangelism account is almost at 1700 friends.
Support: We are currently at 67% of support for our ministry expenses. 100% of money donated to us goes to support the ministry – no money goes to us at this time.
Prayer Needs: The Lord’s will regarding secular work and health benefits. Help in raising support for the ministry.
Specific Financial Needs: We still have several needs
- Projector for the ministry presentation $500-$700
- Vonage phone service for a year – we can get two months of phone service free if we purchase a year at a cost of $320 (includes taxes and fees). If you are going to sign up for Vonage – give us your email address – if we “invite” you we can get a free month. Vonage allows us to call FREE to 60 countries and discounted to others – invaluable for our ministry!
- It’s that time of the year for annual server support. $576, $469, $269 for servers in 2011.
Please consider a donation. FamilyNet is a 501 (C)(3) charity. Donations are tax deductible in the US – You can donate via PayPal (Donate button is on http://www.cyber-missions.com) or mail a check:
FamilyNet International
P.O. Box 451951
Garland, TX 75045
214-257-0229
Special thanks to Harvester Baptist Church in Ellicott City Maryland, Lavon Drive Baptist Church in Garland Texas, Cornerstone Baptist Church in Roanoke Virginia and Marion Baptist Church in Marion Texas, Johnny (the Baptist) Campbell, Jim and Carol Cahill, and Dr. Nancy Shields of Tool Kit Ministries for ongoing regular support.
We thank you and pray the Lord will bless you in Jesus – may you all have a blessed CHRISTmas holiday and a prosperous New Year in Jesus!,
http://www.baptist-ministries.org – Independent Baptist Web Portal
The following physical address is associated with this mailing list:
Bob and Maureen Hoffman
P.O. Box 451951
Garland, Texas 75045