Support Raising – James & Carolanne https://ptc.jamesandcarolanne.com Serving God as a web programmer with Digital Strategies. Sun, 11 May 25 20:11:51 +0000 en-US The Recent Prayer Letter https://ptc.jamesandcarolanne.com/2017/12/12/the-recent-prayer-letter Tue, 12 Dec 17 14:53:40 +0000 https://ptc.jamesandcarolanne.com/?p=2679 Hi there! Most of you should now have received the end of year prayer letter that we recently sent out by mail.** Thank you for taking the time to take a look through it. We hope you like the family picture prayer card that was included. Getting kids to sit still and not make faces for a brief second to get a good picture is surprisingly hard! ? ** If you didn't happen to receive the letter, we would love to send it to you but we probably don't have proper address information. Let us know where to send it using our private contact form and we'll get you one as soon as we can. Thank you for upholding our ministry in prayer. (and for some of you financially as well) We really appreciate having you standing with us in the ministry. In the letter, I mentioned that we currently have a special donor who has pledged to match up to $100,000 of donations given to us or other staff members in the ministry. If you have not yet given toward this, I would like to encourage you again to consider taking advantage of this gift. During this time, any gift you give will have a matching gift given to The Life Project. That is TREMENDOUSLY helpful to us and to the ministry. We have been asked to put a special emphasis on trying to raise an additional $250 in MONTHLY donations. This means people who join our team and commit to give $50/$100/$200 or some other amount every month. If you let us know of your commitment, we can count the whole annual amount toward the matching. So, for example, if you decide to give or increase your gift $50 per month and let us know, we can count $600 toward the matching! Please do not feel pressured by any of this. If you are already giving or have been holding us up in prayer, we really do appreciate it. THANK YOU for sticking with us.

A Changed Life...

I did not want this entire letter to be about fundraising, so I went searching for a cool story of someone who's life is being changed by Jesus. I found John* who wrote in on one of our sites just a few days ago from Nigeria asking "If God is all knowing, did he knows those who will go to hell?, if he knows, then why did he created them?" He was connected with one of our more experienced mentors who replied that "God created each one of us and gave us free will, to either accept Him or reject Him. He is always waiting for each one of us to make that decision." The mentor also invited John to make a personal decision for himself to follow Jesus. Just a couple messages later, John writes "Thank you so much. I just invited Jesus into my life. I love the conclusion part of the prayer which says "make me the person you want me to be Lord"" Thank you for praying for people like John*, for this ministry and for us. Your gifts and your prayers allow us to continue serving here with The Life Project. * names changed for privacy If you would like to give a gift today online, you can do so on the secure giving form on The Life Project's website. I have included the link below. Give online to our ministry Give or help in some other way  ]]> New Hardware https://ptc.jamesandcarolanne.com/2017/07/20/new-hardware Thu, 20 Jul 17 16:57:17 +0000 https://ptc.jamesandcarolanne.com/?p=2601 Doner Dinner We (The Life Project) recently held a special dinner for as many donors and friends as we could gather. It's purpose was to help encourage and inform everyone about our ministry activities and future direction. We also hoped to raise some additional funds for staff and the ongoing ministry expenses. We had great food, and many from this team who attended expressed to me how much they appreciated the chance to see a bit more clearly what we do and the real impact we have. In my opinion, it was a great success. Thank you so much to those of you who were able to make it. Please let me know if you have any questions or would like to follow up in any way from that event. I also have a more personal request that I would like to share with you. My laptop is beginning to show it's age and will need to be replaced. Since 99.9% of my work involves my laptop, usually running very heavy loads, I will be needing to get a new one. The machine will be bought for me by Power to Change but I would like to raise some funds to help cover the cost of the purchase. I would be honored and very grateful if you would consider donating funds to help with this purchase. You can give on The Life Project's secure giving form at: https://thelifeproject.com/give/?designation=980280 You can also give by cheque mailed to:
Power to Change Ministries Attn: Partner Care 20385 64 Avenue, Langley, BC V2Y 1N5
Be sure to include a note or memo indicating that it is for me, or with my staff number 980280 attached. For the more technically minded, I'll be getting a new MacBook Pro. I made the switch to a Mac back in 2013 and have really enjoyed the power and stability it has offered. My current MacBook has been a great tool for application development and I am looking forward to the newer/faster model. Most of the development tools that we use in building the websites and applications are built to run best on a Mac so it has been a very good fit for my development needs. Unfortunately, lately it has begun to have some hardware issues such as freezing and rebooting at random and inconvenient times. Thank you so much for considering this. Please do not feel pressured in any way. We really do appreciate having you on our team, and are so grateful for what you all give in funds and prayer already. Thank you for your time, James W.]]> Help Us Share The Need! https://ptc.jamesandcarolanne.com/2012/12/03/help-us-share-the-need Mon, 03 Dec 12 12:46:02 +0000 https://ptc.jamesandcarolanne.com/?p=1790 https://www.facebook.com/notes/james-and-carolannes-ministry/introducing-james-and-carolannes-ministry/458666157501783 Of course, you're welcome to say something else. I know I'm not a particularly gifted writer so if you would like to share it in a more personal way, please feel free.  Your "endorsement" of us would be super helpful in spreading the word about what we do.]]> Raising $1000 per Month by June https://ptc.jamesandcarolanne.com/2011/01/26/raising-1000-per-month-by-june Wed, 26 Jan 11 15:15:57 +0000 https://ptc.jamesandcarolanne.com/?p=1131 Like Helping James & Carolanne Raise $1000Many of you may have heard about our recent push to raise $1000 by June, but for those of you who haven't, I thought I'd post an update on what this is all about. We have been asked by Power to Change to raise an additional $1000 in monthly support by June 2011. This is not because we're suddenly going to be paid more, but rather due to cut-backs in P2C's covering of our existing support deficit. Basically, right now we have raised approximately 40% of what we need on a monthly basis to cover the amount we are currently paid along with the various other administrative expenses associated with working at Power to Change. In light of the fact that I've been working full time with the websites, the organisation has generously been covering the remaining amount that I haven't raised. As we are a faith based, donor supported organisation, this basically means that someone else has had to raise the money for me. As of last summer, I was told that the amount P2C was covering would be reduced incrementally over the next year by a total of $1000 by June 2011. One initiative I have started in an effort to get this money raised is to create a facebook page to tell people about our mission and need. You can find it here: http://jamesandcarolanne.com/1k/ My hope is that it will raise an awareness of our situation in a much wider audience than I normally am able to connect with. Ways you can help: 1. Simply 'Like' the page. One simple step you can take to help us with this is to simply 'Like' the page.  To do this, simply visit the page and click the 'Like' button you see near the top.  This will indicate to people who read your updates that you approve of what we're doing and are trying to help.  It will also help to raise an awareness of our ministry.  I'd like to see how long it takes us to get 100 Likes. 2. Share the page. When you visit the page, on the left hand side below our picture at the very bottom of the column you should see a link which reads "Share".  Click that, add a short description or recommendation, and hit "Share".  This will post a link to the page on your Wall. 3. Donate or consider increasing your donation. I want to say right off the start that I know many of you already give generously and faithfully to our ministry and we REALLY appreciate it.  You are the reason we are able to remain in this ministry at all.  Thank you. I hesitate to ask this but I must... if you have been receiving our updates and are not already supporting us would you consider joining our team?  If you have previously given occasional gifts but have not committed to something more regular, would you prayerfully give it some thought?  And if you already support us regularly but think you might be able to bump your giving up a little, would you be willing to help?  We appreciate every little bit of help.  $10 a month is 1% less that we have to worry about. Again, I want to stress that we really do appreciate the generosity that many of you have already shown to us.  You have been so faithful and kind to us, and Carolanne and I have both really appreciated it.  Thank you. 4. Pray Most importantly we need your prayers.  This whole situation is a huge stress for us as neither Carolanne nor I are very good at asking for people's help, especially not financially.  Please pray that the Lord would give us strength, that He would guide us to the right people to talk to and that people would be open to helping us in this way. Ministry Stories Now, in order that you don't begin to think that all I we do is try and raise money, not doing any real ministry, I'd like to share with you a few stories from the field which reminded me why I do what I do. This was sent to me from our director:
"I’d like to know more about Jesus , and whats the different between Jesus in Islam and Jesus in Christianity ( in Quran and Bible)? would you please help me?"
If you were looking for Jesus, where would you go? Probably the same place you go for all the areas in your life you want information on: the internet. It’s becoming more common for people to go online to ask their questions long before they ever go to an individual. I’ve recently been watching how my 13 year old daughter engages with the Ask app. If she has any questions (even homework), she takes a mobile device, goes to the “Ask app” and asks her questions. Her questions are about life, math, and any kind of trivia. We are seeing people come online from all around the world. They ask us simply and directly about how they can know Jesus. Here are two emails we got this week. One from a closed country and another from Canada. Qatar: I’d like to know more about Jesus , and whats the different between Jesus in Islam and Jesus in Christianity ( in Quran and Bible)? would you please help me? Thanks. Canada: I would like to find Jesus.
In Chat:
"what must I do?" [to be saved]
Just recently, a man in our chat room was asking about salvation. He asked “what must I do?” Warren, one of our staff told him that it’s more about who you know then about what you do. He asked “what do you mean?” So Warren explained to how we are separated from God spiritually by our sin but that God told us how we could fix that. He then told him how in John 1:12, scripture tells us that in order to know God and become His child spiritually we need to believe and receive Him as our Lord, committing our lives to Him. The man replied “I knew there was more to it than just believe.” Over the course of the next 15 minutes another name was added to the book of life. Warren gave him a link to our free online Bible Study for new Christians – Knowing Jesus Personally - and he said he could hardly wait to start. What an incredible blessing that we are able to connect with people in their time of need and share the message of Jesus. Recently we began plans to create our own app that churches can use to connect with people. This app would give people the ability to ask their questions directly from their mobile device which would mean that the connection between mentor and mentee to take place even faster. Please pray as we begin moving in this new direction to make it even simpler!
Thank you again for all your prayers for us and the generosity that you have shown. Wishing you all the best, James and Carolanne Warkentin]]> Support Raising Challenge https://ptc.jamesandcarolanne.com/2007/02/19/support-raising-challenge Mon, 19 Feb 07 10:10:36 +0000 https://ptc.jamesandcarolanne.com/?p=156 previously discussed on this post, we are only at about 30% of where we need to be in terms of support raised. We would like to challenge each of you to try and connect us with at least one other person in your own sphere of influence who might be willing to support us or even just hear more about what we do. If each person on our support team could introduce us to one other person or couple who would be willing to talk to us about support that would be a HUGE blessing and help to us. We have been thinking about fun ways that we could do this and have come up with the following list:
  1. Invite them to go for dinner with you and us at our treat, to talk to us about what we do and our support needs. If you are local, we would be happy to take both you and your friends for a dinner at Red Robin or some similar restaurant, with the purpose of talking to them about support. Obviously you would want to make sure they know that the dinner is about supporting us, and not just surprise them when they get there. :)
  2. Host a dessert or dinner with us and them. If you would prefer to do something at your own home, hosting a dessert or a dinner with us and them might be a fun and informal way to invite them to hear about our ministry.
  3. Call and find out if they would like to talk to us directly. If you have someone who you think would be interested in hearing from us, call them up and find out. If they're interested, let us know and we'll be happy to set up a meeting with them.
  4. Write them a letter If you are the letter writing type, try writing a letter to your friend, asking if they would be willing to talk to us. Let us know if you want a form letter that you could take and modify.
  5. Other ideas? You're more than welcome to come up with your own ideas on how you might introduce us to someone else. We would be happy to hear them.
We really do appreciate all the help that you can give us in this area. Please feel free to let us know if there is any other way that you would like to help us in this process. ]]> Support Graph Adjustment https://ptc.jamesandcarolanne.com/2007/02/19/support-graph-adjustment Mon, 19 Feb 07 09:49:02 +0000 https://ptc.jamesandcarolanne.com/?p=155 Support Raising category on this site. Click here to read about other ways that you can help us to get our support raised.]]>