500

Monday, Art and Kris delivered the Elder Conference supplies to church just before lunch.  I helped them unload the trailer, then met them for lunch in Eureka along with the folks, Andy, and Pearl.  We had a nice visit and it was good to catch up with the news from Lester, the relatives, and their family.

Yesterday we had snow flurries, but today it snowed on and off most of the day.  There is very little accumulation, but we were clearly informed that winter is indeed here.

So, Blogger tells me that this is my 500th post.
How did I get here and why?

Several things happened back in 2005 that pushed me into social media.  It probably started with a letter to all parents from our High School Principal.  He told us about a website called Myspace that students were using and he recommended that parents monitor what was being posted and discussed by our children.  We had two children in High School at the time and two in college.  I was also a Bible Class teacher at the time.
So I created a Myspace account (as well as accounts on less popular sites) and searched  for my children, their cousins, their friends and all of my Bible Class students.  Then I did a Sunday School lesson on the dangers of social media.  My opening statement was "If you have a Myspace account or any other similar, I have seen your page and profile!"  I'll never forget the raised eyebrows, wide eyes, and dropped jaws of the students who had accounts!

About that time we started hearing about blogs.  This was a trendy place for college age kids and twenty-somethings to share and discuss.  So we started monitoring the blogs of anyone we knew or our children knew.  We wanted to know what was happening in our children's world and who and what was influencing them.  And we discovered that our daughter had a blog.

Not much later, our son informed us that there was a new social media site just for college students called Facebook.  You had to have an official college email address to join and participate.  Since I am a U of I alumni, I was able to get an official email address and join Facebook.  I was "friended" by my children and their college friends and so was able to monitor and participate on Facebook.

In the fall of 2005, our daughter had moved down to the U of I.  Since I am not a chatty telephone person, and neither is she, I decided to try this blog thing to keep in touch with her and  keep her informed with what was happening at home.
I also just wanted to experiment to see if I could post regularly and if I would actually have anything to say.  In May of 2006, I gave it a try.

So 500 posts later, I am still here.  Not a great accomplishment in the blog world, but not bad for a shy, quiet, old farmer.

 As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.
Proverbs 25:25

And he charged them that they should tell no man: but the more he charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it;
Mark 7:36