Support – James & Carolanne

Global Daily Dec. 2022

Mon, 14 Nov 22 15:53:41 +0000

Dear Friends,

Another year is drawing to a close and I'd like to take these few words to share some more personal thoughts and prayer requests. Our family has been slowly adjusting to our new life since moving up to Quesnel at the end of August. We love it here so far, especially the slower pace and quieter neighborhood. Winter hit early though and we have been scrambling to find good cold-weather gear for each of us. Carolanne does an amazing job finding good deals on gently used supplies.

Pray that God would help us make good connections in our neighborhood and church. Pray also for the kids as they are having some difficulty stepping out and making friends. And continue to pray for our fundraising efforts.

To learn more about our family and this ministry visit our website at: jamesandcarolanne.com

The Recent Prayer Letter

Tue, 12 Dec 17 14:53:40 +0000

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

Global Daily September

Tue, 11 Feb 14 08:53:14 +0000

Thank you so much for keeping us in your prayers these past few months. Life around TruthMedia has been pretty crazy lately due to some fairly significant reorganizing of how we function as a team. We are continuing to build our mentoring ministry and have formed some pretty amazing partnerships with people who have a similar passion to our own. The partnership with JesusDaily on facebook is one of those and provides a tremendous opportunity for us to reach out to hurting people with the technology of today. Some other interested groups would be the Billy Graham association, Jesus.net and You Version (the Bible app). Please pray for us as we continue to develop these partnerships and seek how we might best use them to reach people for Christ. Please pray also for our team. Many of us have been struggling with personal issues of various sorts and it does effect the team as a whole. Pray that Satan would have no power in our lives and that the Lord would continue to use us in mighty ways for His own glory and purpose. Thank you again for remembering us in these things. Thank you also for your generous financial support as we have continued in this ministry. We really appreciate that people stand with us financially in this ministry. Read more of our updates on our blog at: /

Global Daily for June

Tue, 26 Jun 12 15:40:25 +0000

Question: Let us know about your activities, ministries, home assignment activities etc. for this summer. Answer: The nature of our ministry doesn't really change much with regard to the various seasons of the year. We do see somewhat smaller numbers at times during the summer, as people are often taking vacations and generally getting offline. We also often bring in a few summer interns to help them gain experience in web based ministry. During this time, our big project is the launch and refinement of TheLife.com and the related 35DayChallenge.ca. These sites are geared for churches and individual believers who are wanting to grow in their faith and take the next steps in their spiritual journey. We are also participating in a major outreach during the Calgary Stampede this year. Please pray for us in the following areas:

For the ministry currently taking place on TheLife.com. Many Christians are using TheLife.com to take a stand for what they believe and publicly declare that they are following Jesus with all that they are and have. Please pray for them in this, that God would use each one mightily for His glory.
For those who are taking the 35 day challenge. Built on the technology powering TheLife.com, the 35 Day Challenge is a five week long faith adventure where the participants are taught to share their faith with three other people in their lives. Please pray for the 600+ people currently taking this challenge.
For additional financial support. Carolanne and I are still lacking quite a bit of support. So far TruthMedia has been covering most of the shortfall however the ministry itself is also quite low on funds. Please pray that God would provide the support we need.

Global Daily for CHC

Fri, 04 Nov 11 15:22:39 +0000

Every month, I'm asked to write an entry for the Global Daily for Central Heights Church. This is my entry from October (published November). We are asked to respond to specific questions, and the one for this month was "Tell us about a Scripture book or passage that is especially meaningful to you." I (James) think my favourite parts of the Bible are those highlighted in red text. I love reading and learning about what Jesus said to His disciples and to us. I love learning about His character and personality, His humour, compassion and love. Lately I've been reading through the Old Testament and it continues to amaze me with how many things in the OT are simply reflections of the more complete picture given in the NT. It reminds me of Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 13:12 when he said that "now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully". And I know that the best is yet to come. As for our prayer requests, we have a few: - For our financial support. We still have a long way to go. Praise the Lord for those who have recently joined our team. - For more volunteers. We need more people to help respond to the many questions and prayer requests we receive from the websites. Visit www.truthmedia.com/mentor for information on how you could help. - For the daily new believers that we try to help grow in their new faith. - For the protection and guidance of all the staff and volunteers. Many are struggling themselves with various life situations. Sometimes it seems as though working with this ministry results in a large target being placed on your back for Satan to shoot flaming arrows at. Pray that God would give each of us courage and strength for the work, and that He would provide generously for each of our needs. Thank you so much for standing behind us in this. All the best, James and Carolanne Warkentin

Global Daily

Tue, 20 Sep 11 15:54:36 +0000

What are the major hurdles, from your perspective, that will need God's divine enabling and overcoming in order for you to reach your ministry objectives? What are these objectives? Our position within the Power to Change ministry is actually a fairly unique one. What I mean is that as missionaries on the Internet, we are not working in a traditional missionary type of environment. We are not somewhere far off overseas serving the Lord in a foreign country or spending months and years learning new languages. We are not able to send back pictures of ourselves posing with the leaders of the local church we planted or show slideshows of our children playing with local natives or eating weird foreign foods. In reality, we may actually shop at the same supermarket you do and stop at the same local restaurants you enjoy. If we posed for pictures with our local church leaders, you might recognise them as your own pastors, and even though Chilliwack may seem distant to some, it's actually not that far. Our children may even (one day) attend the same schools that yours do. These are probably the cause of some of our biggest personal hurdles. We feel that generally, it is very difficult for people to really come to an understanding of how we are "missionaries" and why we need financial support. After all, we're in North America, the land of freedom and french fries. Why doesn't James just "go get a job"? The difficulty is, how do we explain to potential supporters and prayer partners that we help to reach people around the world with the message of God's love for them. How do we communicate that some of our sites are able to reach people in lands that traditional missionaries have a really hard time getting to? How do we share all the stories of teens and youth pouring their hearts out to us with things they might never share even with their own families. How do we help people visualise what the numbers look like? Just this last August, we were able to share the gospel with around 44,000 people and we saw 1008 people tell us that they had accepted Christ. That's 32 people every day of the month! So how can you pray for us? Please pray for all of us at TruthMedia that we would have the opportunity and ability to share the impact of this ministry effectively with those who need to hear it. Many of the staff who serve with us (as well as the ministry itself) are quite low on funding or support. Pray that God would lay the need on the right people's hearts. Pray also for the new believers as we try to help them grow in their faith. Pray for the 700+ email mentors who generously volunteer their time to serve on the front lines helping us in this work. And finally, please pray for Carolanne and I, that God would continue to guide us in the decisions we make regarding the ministry and that He would provide for our needs. Thank you very much, James & Carolanne Warkentin

August 2011 Newsletter

Tue, 02 Aug 11 11:26:23 +0000

Dear Family and Friends, Thank you all very much for your ongoing prayer and support of us over these past few months. It's hard to believe we're already a good way through summer. (probably because we've had so little sunshine) :) I wanted to say an especially big thank you to all of you who have responded recently to our fund raising requests by joining our team, increasing your giving and giving additional special gifts. Thank you VERY much. It is SO meaningful to us to know that people are standing behind us in this. Thank you also to those of you who have remained faithful in your giving and prayer for us for so many years. You have all been a HUGE blessing and we feel so honoured to have you standing with us. You may be wondering what has been going on with my health recently. As many of you know I struggled with some health problems over the last few years and have had to undergo repeat surgeries attempting to correct things. I'm happy to say that I'm "cautiously optimistic" about it all. It seems that the most recent surgery has been successful and things are starting to go back to normal. I'm very thankful that the Lord has allowed things to finally heal properly. It's been a long journey and I feel that I've learned a lot about God's grace and will during this time, but I'm also glad that it seems to be over. Thank you very much for your ongoing prayers for us in this. On the ministry side of things, the past few months have been super busy with preparation for our annual conference. Our film team has been hard at work putting together over 1000 video clips of the staff across Canada, along with creating two documentaries. This in addition to their regular video work for the site. One of the documentaries is actually now available on the Power to Change site. The story is only 19 minutes long but it will change the way you see the people around you. We showed it at our staff conference this past week and had incredible feedback.
http://powertochange.com/experience/spiritual-growth/as-they-pass-by/ This video is a great tool that you could use with a small group. We have created discussion questions to engage your group in a conversation about how it is that we know the Gospel, but it so hard to share our faith. We've also had some really cool connections happening in some of our online communities. This excerpt was sent to our team from our director and I thought you would also find it encouraging. - - - excerpt - - - Jess, who has attended one of our online small groups for quite some time, had been causing a fair bit of trouble. She had a fair bit of attitude and had been disrupting her group regularly. More than one leader had considered asking this person to no longer be part of the group. One of our moderators reached out to this visitor and built into her life, sharing the love of Christ even when the lady was responding out of her own pain. Others on our team have regularly prayed for Jess for months. Then one day early this month, Jess was in a conversation in open chat and led one of our newer visitors to the Lord! After sharing for quite some time, she came into the online small group (moderated chat) to share this good news with the ladies present that evening. The ladies rejoiced and prayed for this new life. Would you join us in praying for her growth and that of others who have accepted Christ this month? It’s incredible that every single day, thousands of people come to the site looking for information, conversation and often answers to some of life’s tough situations. Many people are looking for information on tough relational issues. When they find our videos and articles, they often join the community. One of our articles reached over 1,000 comments this past week. As people comment, we have mentors who are responding and coming alongside these people. The goal is to connect current realities to God. In the context of relationship, hearts are open to hearing the message of Jesus. - - - end - - - Thank you for your ongoing prayers for us in reaching these people with the love of Christ. Please continue to pray that God would make us even more effective and show us how best to reach the next generations. Please continue to pray also for our support. It has been really encouraging to see that it has been increasing lately, however we also still have a long way to go. As it stands right now, we have raised approximately 46% of our total need. Thank you again to all of you who have been standing with us so faithfully. We wish you God's blessing this summer in all you do. All the best from James, Carolanne, Benjamin & Julia.

Sharing Prayer

Fri, 11 Mar 11 20:36:17 +0000

It has been an exciting few months here in TruthMedia. Now that the majority of our work has been finished on the Power to Change supersite, we have had the opportunity to branch out into a few other projects that were waiting on the back-burners. One of these, was to try and build a facebook app that would let people send in prayer requests. Power to Change and TruthMedia’s new “Need Prayer?” Facebook app helps connect our team of dedicated volunteer mentors with people who need prayer. Mentoring is free, secure, and entirely confidential. Help us share this app with your friends, and help them discover or reconnect with God today! Here’s how you can share the “Need Prayer?” app: 1) Visit our “Need Prayer?” application 2) Like our app 3) Share it with your friends! You can simply ask “Do you need prayer?” Click here to watch a video on how you can use this tool yourself. Another project that I've been working on is a coaching / mentoring system for athletes. Destined for use by our Athletes in Action ministry, this application will be reaching out to athletes to connect them to Christian coaches who will help with their personal development and guide them in their spiritual journey. It's not quite released yet, but I'll send more updates when it goes live. Since I last wrote, I've also gone through another surgery and am now healing slowly. This was my first surgery with the specialist in Burnaby and as far as I know, things have gone well. I seem to be healing properly, but we really won't know for sure until my next appt. with him in April. Please pray that things will completely heal, and that no further surgeries will be required. The progress on our support raising effort has been slow, but steady. I've written in the past about the $1000 that we are trying to raise in monthly support by next June. We have seen a fair amount come in already, however we also still have a long way to go. You can help us by praying that the funds would come in, considering a donation yourself, and sharing or liking our promo page on facebook. There have also been a few of our ministry partners who have either started giving or increased their giving and we want to say thank you very much! Thank you also for your ongoing prayer for us and your willingness to stand with us in this ministry. We really have appreciated your faithfulness and friendship.

Raising $1000 per Month by June

Wed, 26 Jan 11 15:15:57 +0000

Many 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

Quick Ministry Update

Mon, 20 Dec 10 09:35:41 +0000

Dear Friends, As many of you know we have been delving more and more into the realm of producing and using evangelistic video content on the websites. To that end we have developed a number of video "channels" aimed at reaching a variety of demographics. As an example, one of the channels we're developing is a "Family" channel in which we show an assortment of videos designed to help families and marriages. The channel covers topics like Parenting, Marriage, Divorce, Relationships and Teens. You can check it out here: http://powertochange.com/family/ Our hope for this new year is that these channels would begin helping us reach out to today's video-hungry audience providing help and answers to the questions of the day. Through the videos and blog entries we are hoping to become even more effective in leading people into deeper spiritual discussions and ultimately to committing their lives to Christ. Please pray that God would use us effectively in these new fields of evangelism. Pray also that God would provide the funds that TruthMedia needs to continue ministering. We as a couple also need more support. Thank you SO much for all the prayer and support that many of you have already given us. James, Carolanne, Benjamin and Julia Warkentin

2010 End of Year Update

Wed, 17 Nov 10 14:50:51 +0000

We recently mailed out an end-of-year ministry update for 2010. We tried to get everyone we could think of who could possibly be interested in receiving an update about us, but if for some reason you were missed, we are putting it up here on the ministry site for you to read. You can download it in PDF format here. One of our big needs right now that we mentioned in the letter is for monthly financial support. We know that many of you already do support us financially and we are truly grateful for your generosity. Thank you! This letter was not intended to make anyone feel obligated to give more than they already have been giving. That being said, if you do feel that God is leading you to increase your support or begin supporting us we would be super grateful. We would also really appreciate if you know of anyone else who may be looking for someone they might support. While that may sound like an unusual situation to be in, I suspect (and hope) it may be more common than we might expect. I know for Carolanne and myself, we set aside a certain amount of our tithe each month and try to keep our eyes open for people who may be in need of our help in that way. I'm sure there are others out there who do the same. If you know of someone who might be interested in helping us by joining our monthly support team, we would love to get in contact with them. Wishing you all the best for the end of this 2010 year, James and Carolanne Warkentin