The First International Church Of The Web

Church Newsletter For October, 1999

Hi everybody! Greetings from one who loves you!

I'd like to start this issue of the newsletter by asking everyone to continue to pray for the victims of the many natural and man-made disasters and tragedies that have occurred recently. Just this past week there has been an earthquake in southern California, flooding in Mexico, and yet another hurricane on the east coast of the United States. Recently there have been several earthquakes around the world resulting in a great loss of lives, and even a nuclear power accident in Japan. This is only a small sample of the disasters that have been occurring, and we need to be in constant prayer for the victims of these events, and their families. There are also many thousands of tragedies that occur every day, tragedies which may not get giant headlines but which we still need to remember in our prayers. All over the world, senseless violence occurs on a daily basis. Children are being killed in our schools and on our streets. Innocent bystanders are being killed or maimed by gang violence or rampaging armies. The list goes on and on, and we need to always remember these folks in our prayers at all times. Thank you for joining me in praying daily for these victims and their families and loved ones.

Well, our church continues to grow on a daily basis. I'm pleased to announce that recent members include Christians from Argentina, Haiti, Madagascar , and Tanzania, and other countries as well. Of course, our highest number of members are in the United States, but I'm always excited when members from other countries join our church, especially when they're the first to join from those countries. Welcome Aboard! We're glad you're here!

Here's an important announcement for everyone who'd like to continue receiving the newsletter notification. We've grown so large that my mail server can no longer handle our huge mailing list, so I've set up script that will be handled on a seperate server. If you'd like to continue receiving the newsletter notification you'll need to go Here to add your e-mail address to this new list. Of course, you can also remove your address from the list any time you'd like, or change your address easily as well. Since the notification for this newsletter is the last one that will be sent out to the entire membership, you'll need to do this if you wish to keep being notified of new newsletters, or do nothing if you don't want to receive future notifications. Of course, the newsletter will continue to be announced on the church bulletin board, same as always, and past issues will continue to be available on the Newsletter Archive page of our church web site. And, as always, the mailing list is strictly confidential, and will not be shared with or sold to anyone else, ever, period.

The holiday season is just around the corner again, and I'm pleased to announce that the chilidren's outreach ministry of our church, the Teddy Bear Monastery, hosted and maintaind by church member Brother Lance Micklus, has already put up a special Christmas Art Exhibit Page. I think you'll enjoy these graphics, and I'm sure Brother Lance will let you use some of them if you ask him. The Teddy Bear Monastery is doing a great job telling the children of the world that "Jesus Loves You!", so be sure and visit. And if you haven't read the story of how this ministry got started, be sure and do so while you're there, or follow the graphic link below to go to the main site. You'll even find out how to get a free Y2K (year 2000) pocket calendar free from the monastery!

Speaking of Y2K, I know that many of our members are concerned about their computers being Y2K compliant. Well, the good folks at Microsoft ,(cough), have set up a page where you can check your computer's Y2K compliance online, for free! You can get there by clicking Here. Of course, this is for Windows systems only, but if anyone knows of a similar service for Apple or other systems, let me know, and I'll pass it along in the next newsletter.

You long term readers of our newsletter know that I like passing on useful free services I've found on the internet, and this newsletter is no different. This month, I'd like to share two services that provide free virtual hard drive space. One is hosted by FreeDrive, and you can find it Here, and the other is hosted by Advertise4Profit, and you'll find it Here. They both offer up to 20 MG of free storage that you can use for any files you'd like, and a nice feature is that you can share these files with others by sharing your password. Especially handy for those of us with smaller hard drives. As usual, I get no compensation for passing these on to you, I just like sharing useful free services whenever I can.

Finally, I'd just like to remind all members who have links to our church on their own web sites to be sure and upgrade those links to our new URL at http://ficotw.org.Of course, the old URL at geocities is still there, and still gets a good bit of traffic, but that site isn't being upgraded any longer, and I can't guarantee how long it will be active. If you've linked to different pages inside the site, you may need to search out those pages at the new domain and verify that the page names themselves are the same. Most are, but a few were changed, and for some reason a few of the pages could only be saved with an .htm extension rather than an .html extension. I don't know why, but it's true. So, be sure and update those links, okay?

Well, that's going to do it for this issue of the newsletter. I'd like to thank you for taking the time to read it, and especially thank all those members who actively participate in our church by posting regularly on the church bulletin board and prayer request page. Remember, YOU, the members, are what make our church what it is. Thanks again, and God Bless You! You remain in my prayers at all times.

Yours in Christ,
Brother Dave


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