Praying for safe travels and good health.
It was a blessing for my family and me to meet you all. I also enjoyed being able to chat with Steve and Christopher during the intermissions. My wife, Emmy, and my two children (Sarah and Joseph) had been to your conference in McMinnville a couple years ago. At that time my wife had came back speaking very highly of you guys. When I heard about your conference this year in McMinnville I was determined to go with them. We went both Friday evening and Saturday. I was really touched by the messages. I was very impressed about the message to the men about how to treat our wives. It is a real encouragement to me to be around and hear other husbands and wives who believe similarly to how we do, about the importance of the husband and wife relations, and for us parents to actual raise, teach, and train our children ourselves.
In addition, your message about the beast (the TV) added to my own conviction. We haven’t been watching live TV for a number of years, but, over the years have purchased a lot of “clean” “family” movies. In recent months the kids have been watching more and more of them. I knew we had to make some changes. Hearing your encouragement to get rid of the TV confirmed what I knew we had to do. After coming home from the conference I talked with my wife what I was thinking. She was in agreement, the TV needed to go. The next step was to tell the children. We called the children into our room and talked to them about getting rid of the TV. Fortunately they had also been to the conference and had heard much of the same message. When we first told them, I could see them struggling with it. But after we talked a while, our 17 year old daughter, Sarah, said, “This feels right”. This was the confirmation that I needed.
The very next day way we took our TV down to Goodwill. We wanted it out of the house. Once the TV was actually out of the house, the “pull” of the videos was gone. The next step was getting rid of the movies and videos. I had to say “good bye” to my daily exercise videos. It’s been a little harder for our Joseph, our 11 year old son, but he’s handling it better now.
We had to figure out a disposal method. We could have just taken them off to Goodwill and have been done with the videos. But the kids have been wanting a dog for some time and we haven’t been able to afford one (the landlords wants a sizable pet deposit, plus the purchase and care and feeding of the dog.). So we decided to sell the videos to raise money for the dog. In addition to that, since I do my own websites, I’ve been been previously studying how to set up an e-commerce (shopping cart website). I used this incentive to do some more studying how to finish installing and setting up the modules. I also wanted to use this whole experience to teach the children to help with setting everything up. So I had them take pictures of the fronts and backs of the video containers and then upload the pictures to the website. We have the shopping cart set up at our website.
We’ve got a lot done, but still have a ways to go. (the pictures that Sarah took of the VHS tapes turned out very well. However, the pictures Joseph took of the DVD’s didn’t’ turn out well at all (many were very blurry), so those pictures had to be retaken) and will have to be replaced on the website. Once we get all the videos uploaded, we’ll do advertise in Craigslist and put links over to the shopping cart.
Having a goal of getting the dog has helped the kids (and us parents) a lot to go through the work of putting everything on the websites.
Thank you so much for all your encouragement in making this important step.