How's My Attitude?

So last night our Ladies' group watched a couple videos by Sister Shara McKee (an AWESOMELY ANOINTED speaker!) The topic of the video was "protecting your break through". The video really made me stop and think about how I treat my relationship with God. Do I nurture and protect it like I would my relationship with my husband, or do I treat my relationship with God like a dress I put on and wear when it is comfortable and loan to my friends or throw in the back of the closet and only pull it out when it is convenient to wear? In my relationship with my husband, we set boundaries to protect that relationship. We don't allow outsiders to interfere in our relationship, but often times we allow outside influences to interfere in our walk with God.


Now I'm sure you are wondering "what does this have to do with an attitude??" Stay with me a little bit longer, it will all make sense I promise! 

Many times we get the attitude that we can do what ever we want and no one is going to tell us what we can and can't do... ESPECIALLY when it comes to a religious authority telling us what we should and shouldn't do. It is almost an arrogance. "I'm going to wear what I want, go where I want, say what I want, and do what I want and there's nothing anyone can say or do about it"... Surely there's someone else out there that's had that attitude and isn't afraid to admit it... If no one else will... I will! I've had that attitude. I liked to call it being "Strong Willed"... in reality... I was stubborn and hard headed (and to be perfectly honest I still am at times...) I've met people that have the attitude that "rules don't apply to me"... That one I struggled with a bit as a kid but not so much as an adult. Sister McKee made a great point about attitude in the video that really made me stop and evaluate my attitude. She said we should have an "attitude of gratitude". 

Now the Bible says in Ephesians 4:22-23
 "You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self,created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness."

So the Bible is telling us, we are taught that when we learned the truth in Jesus, we are to put off our old selves and attitudes and put on a new self to be like God. So what kind of attitude are we portraying about our relationship with God? What kind of attitude about life in general are we portraying? Are we showing that we have put away the old things and put on God's likeness? If our attitude is an attitude of stubbornness then we are not showing any kind of change in our lives to those around us... including our children. 

So today... I am re-evaluating my attitude and I hope you all will feel to do the same. I'm going to add a link below to Sister McKee's video. Please take the time to watch both parts of the video and be blessed!!

Wow... It Has Been A While

So I started this blog over 4 years ago to hopefully be a blessing to others with similar "ministries". Sadly life happened and I haven't done anything with this blog in over 4 years. Well I guess there's no time like the present to pick up where I started and move forward. To catch everyone up on what's been going on the last 4 years, my life has changed... a lot! I have graduated from college (FINALLY) and now work as a Mobility Specialist. What's a Mobility Specialist? I provide IT support for iPads for the pilots of a large shipping company... a purple and orange one :). I am still the webmaster for Rosemark Pentecostal Church in addition to being the Church Secretary, on the Praise Team, and in the choir. My Photography business has slowed down quite a bit and I have picked up a new hobby... I now crochet.... A LOT.

I never really thought about my crochet addiction hobby as a ministry until a couple days ago when our Ladies' group was studying Tabitha (Dorcas). You see Tabitha was a seamstress. She made clothing for the poor and was known for her giving heart. She was a true disciple of God. When she died, the impact her life had on those around her became more than apparent. Her life made so much of an impact that the mourners went out and found Peter and brought him to her. Peter went to her, prayed for her and told her to "get up". And she did! (Even in death she obeyed the minister!) Tabitha's story can be found in Acts 9:36-42.

As we read the story of Tabitha, I realized that helping others, even if by nothing more than making an article of clothing as a gift, makes a huge impact. Even if that impact isn't immediately apparent, the impact is there and can be lasting. Of course my husband and daughter don't it that way, they just see the amount of yarn strewn about my house :). None the less, I was encouraged to know that sometimes a ministry can be something as small as making clothes for others, or just being helpful to someone with a need. Tabitha's story also got me thinking and wondering about how people would react to my death. Did I make a big enough impact in life that my death is mourned by people other than my relatives? It may sound narcissistic but in reality my hope is that I make a big enough impact for God that my ministry lives on even after my death (which isn't going to be for a long time I hope!). Tabitha made me stop and examine my life and my ministry and really think about what kinds of changes I need to make so that I am impacting those around me for the good.

You ARE a Key!

OK so I was listening to a new app on my phone (Holy Ghost Radio) and I do not know who the speaker was, but he said something in his sermon that really grabbed my attention (not that I wasn't paying attention in the first place :-). The speaker said "You may think you don't matter and that the role you play in your church doesn't matter. You may think that if you weren't there, no one would notice... but you are WRONG! You ARE a key!" It really was like God smacking me in the back of the head!

Here lately I have felt more and more like what I do doesn't matter to anyone but me. If I were to fall off the face of the earth, no one would notice. I have also been feeling used, like some people only talk to me because they need me to do something for them. It takes a toll on you mentally and physically. When this minister made this statement it hit me like a ton of bricks. He went on to say that whether we realize it or not, all of the little things we do, whether it be cutting the grass, cleaning toilets or washing the windows, are vital to reaching the lost! We are called to be the "body of Christ". When we think about a body, we first think about the arms, the legs, the head... the "big" parts of the body... but what about all those little parts that keep everything going? Every part of our body is important... even the tiniest little parts are important! Don't believe me? Break your pinkie toe and see how much harder it is to walk when that toe isn't in place! Each one of us is a key to making sure the Body of Christ not only functions... but grows.

Stephen Curtis Chapman has a new song out that expresses quite well, this point. I'll post the lyrics below. Basically the song says regardless of who you are or what you do, God made YOU to do it, so do it to His glory. So don't get discouraged, rebuke that spirit that is fighting you and telling you that you don't matter, and PRAISE GOD IN YOUR MINISTRY! Whatever you do to further the Kingdom of God is your ministry! Do it with pride and love in your heart knowing that you are doing a work for God!



Steven Curtis Chapman - Do Everything Lyrics

You’re picking up toys on the living room floor for the 15th time today
Matching up socks and sweeping up lost Cheerios that got away
You put a baby on your hip and color on your lips and head out the door
And while I may not know you I bet I know you
Wonder sometimes does it matter at all
We’ll let me remind you it all matters just as long as you

Do everything you do to the glory of the One who made you
Cause He made you to do
Every little thing that you do to bring a smile to His face
And tell the story of grace
With every move that you make
And every little thing you do

OOoh ooooh oooooh

Maybe you’re that guy with the suit and tie
Maybe your shirt says your name
You may be hooking up mergers, cooking up burgers
But at the end of the day
Little stuff big stuff in between stuff
God sees it all the same
And while I may not know you I bet I know you
Wonder sometimes does it matter at all
We’ll let me remind you it all matters just as long as you do

Everything you do to the glory of the One who made you
Cause He made you
To do every little thing that you do to bring a smile to His face
And tell the story of grace with every move that you make
And every little thing that you do

Well maybe you’re sitting in math class
Maybe anekatips on a mission in the Congo
Maybe you’re working at the office
Singing along with the radio
Maybe you’re dining at a five star
Or feeding orphans in Myanmar
Anywhere and everywhere you are
Whatever you do it all matters
So do what you do and don’t ever forget to do

Everything you do to the glory of the One who made you
Cause He made you to do
Every little thing that you do to bring a smile to His face
And tell the story of grace as you do
Everything you do to the glory of the One who made you
Cause He made you to do
Every little thing that you do to bring a smile to His face
And tell the story of grace with every move that you make
And every little thing that you do

Ooh oooooh
Every little thing you do

I'm Such a Slacker!

Wow, it is already August and I haven't posted ANYTHING this summer! I know I am SUCH A SLACKER! To fill you in on what's been going on... No, I haven't fallen off of the face of the earth and I haven't forgotten about you... I completed my Associate's Degree in Web Design (with a 3.89 GPA). I am now mid-way through my first class towards my Bachelor's in Communication/ Technology.

With my last post I promised to tell you about the amazing project I completed for Mother's Day... This year we decided that the main focus for Mother's Day needed to be on our church's First Lady. After all... if our Pastor is like a Spiritual Father to most of the congregation, that makes her our Spiritual Mother doesn't it? So rather than just include a bunch of pictures in a slideshow and the usual feel good poems in the bulletin, we did something a little different. I gathered short quotes, messages and statements from as many members of the church as I could, and we included them as an insert in the bulletin. Sister Manley was able to sit and read these short little messages. Some made her laugh while some made her cry; others just made her feel appreciated and loved. This project was really quite simple, yet meant so much to a wonderful lady. One of the elders wrote a poem that left most of us in tears.

For this project, I used Microsoft Publisher. I simply selected a new document and chose Booklet as the document type. I created effects by making little snapshots in photoshop of curly brushes and edging that I liked. Saved the snapshots and pictures and inserted them into the bulletin pages, then used the "Order" option to send the inserted images to the background. The hardest part of this project was getting everyone to turn in their messages in a timely manner. There is always going to be that one straggler who doesn't turn their information in on time, and gets offended when their information doesn't get included. I had someone turn in their quote at 10:00pm Friday night, when the information was requested to be turned in by the previous Wednesday. Regardless... try not to get frustrated because after all... these projects aren't about us. Below is a screenprint of what some of the pages looked like.



Oh and for added touches... download some free fonts so you can have a variety of fonts on the page(s). http://typenow.net/ is a great resource for free fonts. If all else fails just do a Google search for Free Fonts and you will have hours of web surfing pleasure. If you don't know how to install the fonts on your computer, all you have to do is save the fonts to the C:\WINDOWS\fonts folder on your PC (I can't help you if you have a MAC, I don't know how to install anything on Macs). Be warned... once you start searching through fonts... you will look up and hours will have gone by without you even realizing it!

I promise I won't wait 3 months to post again! Not sure what the next topic will be but I can promise it will be sooner rather than later :)

What A Crazy Month!!!

Wow I totally did NOT mean to let over 20 days pass before I made another post!! It has been a CRAZY month! I finished the class I was in and then my computer crashed! (Thank God it decided to crash AFTER I finished my class!) I'm now in my final class for my Associate's Degree and this one is a doozy! I'm taking JavaScript and it is all new to me!

So in the last post we talked about how to get started in DreamWeaver. Hopefully by now you have had plenty of time to play around with DreamWeaver. Once I get a chance to stop and catch my breath, I will fill you guys in on the awesome project I did for Mother's Day!!

Let's Get Started in Dreamweaver

OK so we discussed in my last post about which programs you can/ should use to build your site. Now let's get started building the site! Before you start building your site, you will need to go to a hosting provider, such as GoDaddy or any of the others, and start off by purchasing your domain name (your web address). I used GoDaddy for all of my websites. (Handy Tip: Do a Google search for GoDaddy coupon codes before you make your purchase, sometimes you will find a code to get your domain name(s) at a very cheap price!) I highly suggest trying to get several domains, for instance our main church domain name is rosemarkpentecostalchurch.com, that was the first domain I purchased. Since then, I purchased RosemarkUPC.com, Rosemark.info and a few others. By purchasing multiple domains, and having them all re-direct your visitors to your main site, you will increase your traffic. A lot of people will also purchase a common misspelled version of their site to help direct people to their real site.

Now that you have purchased your domain name(s), you will need to decide which hosting plan you want. GoDaddy offers a wide variety of plans on both Linux and Windows servers (I will be discussing the Windows server as that is the one I know how to use). The plans vary in price range and storage space and most include email addresses. The plan you choose is up to you and should be based on your needs. The good thing is that if you see you need more or less space you can always go in and change your plan to meet your needs.

When you purchase your plan you will need to setup a "ftp" account (it is free with your hosting plan). FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. You will have to setup a user name and a password (write them both down and keep them). Once you have purchased your domain(s) and hosting plan, and you've setup your FTP, you are ready to open up Dreamweaver.

I've got some screen prints to help you get started. Keep in mind, I am using Dreamweaver CS3, there may be some differences depending on which version you are using.

This is the screen you will see when you initially open Dreamweaver (you can ignore the file list on the lower right for the time being, these are the files to my church website). From this screen you can open your existing web files (if you have any) or in this case we are going to start a new site. To do this, we will select "SITE" from the top menu bar and select NEW SITE...

Now that we are starting a new site, a setup wizard will help us along the process. In the first step of the wizard, you will need to name your site, and enter the URL or address for your site. For this example I am naming my site "test" so the URL would be http://www.test.com.

 Now we have to decide whether or not we will be using server technology... I have to be honest... I don't exactly know the differences, I just know that my web designer friends told me to select YES and one of the ASP choices. When I find out the difference I'll update this post and let you know. For now, let's go with the advice of YES and any of the ASP choices (I use the VP Script on both of my websites and it works...)

Now we are going to tell Dreamweaver how we want to edit our websites. I ALWAYS edit locally and send to the remote server later. This allows me to make changes, save the changes on my computer, go back later and make more changes and THEN tell the computer to post the changes on the web. There are times when you may not want your changes to take effect until a certain date, but you don't want to wait around and risk forgetting the information...

Now we have to setup the ftp information so Dreamweaver can log into our site and post our changes when we tell it to. the ftp address is your URL without the http:// portion. Your login information is the information you setup when you purchased the Hosting Plan.

Now that we've got all that done, go ahead and test your connection, BUT, keep in mind that it takes up to 24 hours for the account information and the ftp information to fully update so you may not get a successful test. Once you complete the setup wizard, you should see the screen below:

Notice the file name at the bottom right... Should be whatever you named your site... From here we can start a new HTML or ASP web page.

I will talk about starting the coding for sites in the next post. For now, play around in Dreamweaver and get to know your software. 

More On Websites and Design

Sorry it's been a while since I posted, was sick last week and I'm just now getting caught up on everything!

So last we spoke we were discussing the Navigation on your websites. Hopefully you have mapped out your website on paper and you have a pretty good idea of what you want the site to look like. This week I really think I should discuss with you the various programs that you would benefit from.

Adobe Photoshop is my favorite program for editing photos. You can also use Photoshop to create and publish websites... Below are some pro's and con's for Photoshop, we'll start off with the good...

Photoshop Pro's:

• Photoshop has SOOO many tools that will allow you to do pretty much ANYTHING with a photo.
• Photoshop allows users to convert photos into various types of extensions (jpg, gif, bmp, png, etc.)
• You can create animated graphics
• There are literally THOUSANDS of brushes available for FREE download to help you achieve different looks
• There are THOUSANDS of actions available for FREE download to help change pictures and achieve certain effects with the click of a button.
• There are thousands of free tutorials to help you achieve certain effects.

Photoshop Con's:

• Photoshop is quite complex and can be difficult to maneuver in if you are not familiar with it
• Photoshop is quite expensive
• Photoshop takes up a large amount of space and you must clear out your temporary files frequently to prevent your computer from slowing down
• The built in tutorials are not always helpful to beginners.

So others most likely have more Pros and Cons for Photoshop but these are the main ones that I personally see. Me personally... I am a HUGE fan of Photoshop... but I have also taken classes and read books to learn new techniques. If you are new to Photoshop I highly recommend at least reading a book. Watching YouTube videos is also a very easy way to learn how to do things in Photoshop.

Now that we've discussed my favorite photo-editing software, let's move on to some options for your website (Photoshop WILL make web pages, but I don't use it for that). There are several WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) programs that allow you to see what you are designing as you design it. Publisher, Front Page, (Photoshop) and I am sure there are several others. My personal favorite is Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver is another Adobe program (no I'm not their spokesperson... but maybe I should be :). Dreamweaver and Photoshop are actually available for purchase together as part of a web premium suite along with Flash (we will get into Flash in a different post), Illustrator (another photo editing software that I have never used but have heard great reviews on), Firework (never used that one) and a couple other programs. It is pretty pricey but may be worth it if you need the programs, just keep in mind that all of the programs together take up a LOT of space on your computer.

OK Now on to Dreamweaver :) Dreamweaver is a web program that allows you to see the coding view of your page (it looks like Notepad II with color coding) along with the design mode (WYSIWYG). This split view is a lifesaver when you are first starting out. If you don't know how to write HTML code, you can build your page totally in the design view. The downside to this is that sometimes Dreamweaver THINKS it knows what you want and will change your coding and sometimes that coding doesn't come across well in the web browser, so I highly recommend learning SOME coding at the very least so you can fix the coding errors. The other benefit to Dreamweaver is that you have the option of previewing your page in an internet browser.

***Let me stop right there and add this comment... I highly recommend downloading the latest version of Internet Explorer and AT LEAST Mozilla FireFox. If you CAN download Safari and Google Chrome that is even better!! The reason for this is that there are times when your website may look perfectly fine in Internet Explorer, but won't load in one of the other browsers. There are times when certain areas of your web page will not function in Internet Explorer but function perfectly in one of the other browsers. For this reason you should test in as many browsers as you can, and on as many different platforms as you can (Windows, Linux or Mac). ***


OK just to recap, for editing your photos I recommend Adobe Photoshop and for building your web page I recommend Adobe Dreamweaver. I will go into more detail about getting started in Dreamweaver in another post.