eAction

I want to thank all of you for not beating me on the head with wet noodles for forgetting to send out an issue last week, and also yesterday.

My business start up is still eating up a lot of time, and the tension of trying to keep up with previous commitments, as well as spend time getting computers set up for the courses I plan to offer is wearing some days.

Just like a baby learning to walk, we have to allow time to get stable feet under us. We have patience with a toddler - guess we need to show that kind of grace to one another too, don’t we?

Are you out of the January Blues yet? I have come out of mine. The secret? I went back to the Lord Jesus, and said, “I’ve drifted away from You with all my busyness. I want to get back to trusting You for everything.” This week a number of good things have come.

On Sunday I got a lovely white cat given to me (meant to be a mouser), who is becoming quite the loving and entertaining companion. I’ve got two mice in my traps! Yesterday I was invited out to lunch and got a good support check and a bit of extra, and learned that more has come in for my missionary support from a new source - I’ll get that money today, and a check that seemed to be lost on it’s way to me arrived in the mail this morning!

It’s like suddenly the sun has come up on my life.

A lesson I’m learning from my cat, Snowflake, is to be more direct and bold when asking my superior for love and food. I think I’ve been too shy to ask sometimes.

So how is your business doing this January? Got the winter blues, or is this your most productive time because the winter weather eliminates other distracting things you could be doing?

I hope the latter is true for you. But if you know me at all, you know that I urge self-discipline and dogged perserance. So if you need someone to put a kindly arm around you today and remind you of that again, here I am to do that.

((((A hug for you))))! And I’m whispering in your ear, “Hang in there! Work hard now, and it will be easier to give yourself some time off when the lovely weather comes, and your loved ones beg for some of your time. It will be worth it in the end.”

I know - because I need this kind of talk from a friend myself these days. Setting up my Azaleas Virtual Assistants business is taking longer than I’d thought it would, and I am having to hang in there, and keep at it - for the sake of my long-term goals. Hey, when this gets off the ground, I’ll be getting a steady income, and I’ll be teaching others what I know. They will rejoice in their new skills and will be grateful to me.

I’m still setting up old computers in my office and haven’t had time for good publicity yet. So I’m running at least a month behind, but good things have happened too, and my brother made a suggestion last week, that gives me fresh home. More another time.

While my American friends are pausing to count their blessings and consider the goodness God has brought into their lives, I’m in a pensive, weighing some pros and cons mood too today.

There are times when I wonder if the people on the mailing list for this (Ezine Edition) of the eAction are really getting to see each issue and whether they are reading them. Would anyone but my number 1 fan notice if I cancelled this effort?

(I confess that I have most of the ezines I’ve subscribed to filtered automatically into a folder, and I haven’t had time to look in there for a long time - I bet others are doing that too).

Then I recall, on the other hand, that I started this so I would have a block of time ready and the habit in place for helping my growing downlines when it would be time to coax and guide them along. It happens that I expect to burst my downlines wide open in another month or two, so this is the wrong time to quit. I need to hang in here for the sake of a future situation.

Do you ever run into this too? You must! You can think of several reasons to quit something, but then you remember WHY you are doing it, and you know deep down in your conscience that you would lose rather than gain by quitting. So let’s hang in there!

I’ve had so many good things happen for me this past week or two, that I’m almost babbling. Let me just tell you one exciting thing that happened just this very hour!

I just saw a car skid on the freshly fallen snow, right to the spot where my car stood until late Monday afternoon!

My house is second from a busy intersection, (yes, in a residential area). People often come whipping around the corner because our street jogs half a block north before it continues east. I had my car parked in front of my house but have thought from time to time that it would be safer for the winter if I could park in the back yard. Only my gate was sagging from one hinge and really needed to be replaced. As did most of the back fence to make my yard more secure.

It wasn’t happening, and I wasn’t sure what to do about it. Then last week, my good neighbours, Joe and Penny, invited me to come along to Home Depot to buy the hardware parts for my back gate, and a new 9′ gate post. (the old one had been weak and then was mowed down by a big truck delivering a garden shed). On Monday I came back from lunch to find Joe and Arnold, the 79 year old Director at our mission, working on my gate. By the end of the afternoon they had it done. Including the hardware for a new padlock.

I raked up the debris and then went to get my car. I drove it around the corner and into the alley and through my gate. I locked the gate, and was delighted. One goal accomplished!

So now when I saw that car skid to the spot where I used to park on the street I just knew that the Lord in His great mercy had prompted Joe to push get my gate replaced on Monday!

When you run your business with God involved in every aspect, I am SURE He does things like that for you all the time too.

When you test something, you try to be thorough, don’t you? It can be rather embarrassing to decry something as stupid and useless, only to have someone else come along and prove that it does work well. Often the key is merely persistence and the humility to ask questions of those who understand how it works.

Many books are never written because the author gave up on the first draft.

Gardens become wild jungles when the gardener doesn’t keep hacking those weeds with a hoe.

Often a piece of fabric gets pinned to the pattern pieces, and even cut out, but not sewn together into clothing.

There must be a zillion online businesses signed up for enthusiastically that vanish for lack of diligent fingers on the keyboard!

But you and I are not going to be one of them, are we?

We’ll keep plugging away convinced we will succeed eventually!

I’m one day late, I know.

Here’s something that may never have happened to you, but it’s not something you need to dread. A dear pen pal friend (age 83) and her brother, who has retired from the farm and moved in with her, so they can look after each other, showed up in Saskatoon on Wednesday evening. They booked into a motel and Louise called me to invite me to have breakfast with them the next morning, that is, yesterday morning. I agreed, thinking this would be great. We could visit over breakfast - I could fit that into my day easily enough.

We had a lovely breakfast but then I learned that they had another plan. They wanted to come see my little home. Fine. I’d be happy to show it to them. they came bearing gifts. They had ordered in pizza the night before, and got an extra one, so they gave me that pizza to heat up and enjoy later. Louise had a lovely sweater and a jacket that used to be her sister Margaret’s that she wondered if they would fit me. Perfectly! And - she had a a card for me with an envelope inside and that had a wad of $100 bills in it!

That’s not all. Louise and John wanted to kidnap me from my work and take me shopping for the day. They asked for a mall that had a Bay and Sears store in them. That’s the Mid-town Plaza just 9-10 blocks from me.

Louise took a lot of time examining some lovely designer suits, but I didn’t have the heart to blow $300 on a suit (I needed the money for other things I considered more important), so I had to be careful not to admire anything too much - else she might buy it for me!

Delightful dilemma, eh?

When they got tired enough to stop and bring me back later in the afternoon, I sat down to make a list of priorities and then took off to do some quick banking and get a good haul of groceries. I expect to spend more online yet today, and I think I’ll go shopping tomorrow in another store where those nice suits might be a small fraction of the original cost.

Oh my, but I’m blessed with wonderful friends! I told Louise that I want to be like her when I grow up.

P.S. I had a very productive evening at my work, and as you can see, I’m a day late with the eAction, but that’s not the end of the world either, is it? Wouldn’t you like to be kidnapped to be blessed like that?

Some friends seem to marvel at my self-discipline as if it is just too hard for them. I confess it is a struggle to stick to my plans and schedules sometimes, but for the most part I see the benefits and know that it is well worth the effort to keep myself in line. Eventually, the inertia of good habitual patterns sweeps one along, making it easier, and much more pleasurable. It gives special great joy when I see that I am getting things done over a period of time.

Don’t you feel great too when you see you have accomplished a goal? It is fantastic when you know that you were your own whip-cracker!

I’ve got several friends who’ve been waiting patiently for me to get some info together for them, so they can start to promote their sites in earnest. My first article in this series got onto the eAction blog last November, (Setting Up Filing for Promo Work) It is on how to set up your filing system for this kind of promotional campaign. One that will stream-line your work.

I trust this will be especially helpful to you. Something practical today.

Have you got your new work agenda all laid out to carry out your new goals for this fall? You do have some goals for the rest of this year, don’t you? Hopefully also an idea of what you want to accomplish the rest of your life too.

If you have not got such goals and agenda, try to set some down this long weekend that is coming up. It is a whole lot easier to get enthused about your plans, and to enjoy your work agenda if you know what you want to attain.

Please toss out any wishy-washy negative talk like, “Well, I’d just like to get out of debt!” or, “As long as I have good health, I won’t ask any more.” It’s not that getting out of debt, or getting well if you’ve been ill is bad. If you’ve really had an extreme crisis, then that might be a big step forward for you. But listen, you’re much more likely to reach your goal if you put them more positively and in manageable bites like;

1. This weekend I will figure out the minimum I need each week/month to cover my costs
2. By the end of next week I’ll have researched and decided on a method to raise that regularly.
3. By the end of September I will have a good pattern of work going, and that base amount coming in.

or, in regards to health;
1. I’ll pray with positive faith every day, asking God for healing, starting today.
2. I’ll research and see what my options are for practical steps - by mid-month
3. By the end of September I expect to feel at least 50% better!

See? You could plan for success! Do it!