This week we have been getting some good feedback on Hannah’s story tract. As we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, God used one of these in a young woman’s life to help her see her need for God. She accepted His “Gift of Life!” This week we heard of a man who was traveling for business in Spain. He carries these with him and was able to share them with people there. Specifically, he was able to share one with someone that he met over there who has a peanut allergy themself. It’s amazing how God is using Hannah’s story even overseas! We also appreciate that there are people who are prepared and using these as a tool to help others understand the God’s love and His “Gift of Life.” This man says that he likes these story pamphlets because they are about a real person.
While shopping this week, Janean saw a man in a wheelchair asking for assistance outside the store. He’s a Vietnam War Vet with diabetes. She bought him some food and gave him one of these Hannah Tracts. The man lit up when he saw it because he had heard about Hannah on the news. In fact, it was something that he and his friends had talked about, and he was excited to share her story with them too. We don’t know what God is doing, but we do see that He is using Hannah’s life in a unique way.
While on this subject, the Spanish translation of these pamphlets is still being worked on at Bearing Precious Seed. With the busyness of summer and the many responsibilities there at BPS, they have not been able to get them printed yet, but we do hope to get them relatively soon. Also, we are sending out over one hundred letters to churches in Wisconsin today. These letters contain a note from us with a brief explanation of who we are and why we’re writing, and they also include four Hannah Tracts. We understand that our biggest hurdle isn’t our message, but it’s the fact that most people don’t know about us, don’t follow us (in part because people don’t read much anymore), and they aren’t aware of what we’re doing. We are sending these out so that churches can help us share God’s love to others through the real story of Hannah’s life. We offer these pamphlets for free to anyone who asks for them. We would like to get lists of churches and organizations in other states and mail these to them as well.
Finally, we are in the process of making “Hannah Helps” a legitimate and legal not-for-profit organization. As mentioned last week, we are working with professionals as we set this up. We accomplished a couple of the initial steps in the process this week. As you can imagine, this isn’t as easy as starting a Facebook page. With both the State of Wisconsin and the IRS involved, it’s very intimidating! For me it’s kind of like, if you were doing a set of complicated taxes by yourself. With each question, I am afraid that somehow, I will make a mistake and end up in BIG trouble. Once this is set up, however, Hannah Helps will be “real.” Any person, organization, or business can donate directly to this ministry, rather than to “us,” and they will be able to claim it on their taxes. This assistance will help with many things, like: the distribution of Hannah Tracts (we pay shipping), paying for website support, hosting, and other online services that we use for making these posts and videos, and in time, it would be great if we, personally, were financially able to devote our full time and attention to Hannah Helps. Although this definitely is our life now, we constantly feel torn between the ministry opportunities and paying the bills. We can spend an endless amount of time helping people with grief support, learning more and sharing about advances in allergy medicine and awareness, working in voluntary roles with organ donation groups, and spreading the news of God’s love through Hannah Helps on social media and Hannah tracts. But, as we are doing these things, we are also having to try to make ends meet. It’s hard to focus 100% on moving forward with Hannah Helps while feeling the constant pressure to be working full time too. We will see what the Lord has planned for us. We have no doubt that He has called us to this ministry and that if He has called us, He will provide for us to be able to accomplish this mission.
We are blessed.
Hannah Helps 