FROM: Carey and Lisa (Shimonauff) Kinsolving, Kids Talk About God
“The only mind that understands the things of God is the child mind.”
– Oswald Chambers
Table of Contents
PERSONAL
1) Hurricane Season: Looking Back
2) The Seagull & The Snake (not for the squeamish!)
3) Sand Castle Days
4) More Gulf Sunrises
5) Our Egg-Citing and Oh-So-Amusing Marriage
MINISTRY
6) Technology vs. Humans
7) Both New Websites Complete!
8) Ministry Goals
9) Financial
Hello Family & Friends…
We pray this newsletter finds you well. Here in South Texas, we are settling into the chill of winter. Temperatures have plummeted into the 80’s! Once in awhile, we get a wild thunderstorm that ushers in a cold front, and then it’s in the 70’s for a couple days. Brrr.
1) HURRICANE SEASON: LOOKING BACK
My first hurricane season living on the Texas Gulf Coast is drawing to a close, and boy was it a doozie! There was a record-breaking number of storms, and hurricane season isn’t even over until November 30. Three of the hurricanes affected us somewhat: Emily, Katrina and Rita.
With Katrina and Rita, all we saw was a very impressive “storm surge.” That’s where the surf is coming up much higher than normal on the beach. In both these cases, it sent some water and sand into the first floor of our building (we’re on the third floor). One unit had the sliding glass door knocked off. Needless to say, that one got more than its share of sand and debris. It’s a good thing to have tile floors here!
Tip of the Day: if you want to find the best/most seashells, be the first person on the beach after a storm surge subsides!
With Hurricane Emily, we actually got a piece of the storm itself. That was really something to behold, even though we didn’t get a direct hit. We did see 60-70mph winds for about a day and a half. We also had a 14-hour power outage.
We had quite a bit of rainwater forced in by the wind through the slider tracks. We kept up with it pretty well at first by placing towels, then running them through the dryer every time we changed the towels. Once the power went out, that got harder! My wringing muscles were never so tired. We had this whole towel-drying system rigged up in the bathtub: two shower rods with the mop and broom crosswise over them, and the stepladder standing in the tub, etc. It was quite a sight.
I have to say I learned a LOT from this experience. I never realized all that’s involved in hurricane prep. Besides boarding up windows (or, in many cases here, rolling down the motorized steel shutters), anything outside that you can possibly move needs to be brought indoors. The city pulls all the trash cans off the beach. The caretakers here submerge all the resin patio furniture in the pool (on purpose!). I don’t think I would have thought of that!
One thing we forgot to protect was the car. We don’t have a garage or even covered parking here. It was just sitting in the middle of a wide-open parking lot. Well, the Lord was looking out for us, because the only damage we had was four small dings in the windshield. A huge piece of solar paneling was blown off the roof and landed a few inches from our car, but didn’t touch it! (Check out a photo of this at: http://www.kidstalkaboutgod.net/CareyLisaphotopage/tabid/569/Default.aspx).
2) THE SEAGULL & THE SNAKE
(Warning: This section is NOT for the squeamish!)
The phenomenon that affected us more than the hurricanes was the Red Tide. That's an abnormally high algae bloom, which kicks spores into the air big-time. It makes everybody cough (especially if they have asthma), and dumped LOTS of dead fish on the beach! It's so gross... the seagulls went around pecking out the eyes of the dead fish! Why?!?!?
One day, I saw a number of dead water snakes on the beach. One seagull got ahold of a snake that was about two feet long and about as thick as a roll of quarters. This bird wouldn't share his find with the other seagulls. (Yes, the seagulls in Finding Nemo are very true-to-life… “Mine! Mine! Mine!”) He chased them off, then picked up one end of the dead snake and just… started… swallowing... UGH! I stood morbidly transfixed.
I was pretty sure it was too much for that one bird to eat, and I wanted to see what he would do. The seagulls here are smaller than your typical California gulls, and I figured it was roughly the equivalent of a human trying to eat a piece of spaghetti that was 12 feet long and 3 inches thick.
He just kept gulping more and more of it down. Finally, he HAD to stop with about 6 inches of the snake still hanging out. Birds have no teeth, so he couldn't bite it off. He stood there for a moment with a "What now?" expression and finally flew off with the snake still dangling from his beak. (Sorry… no photos of this one!)
I thought if he had let the other seagulls tear it up with him, they could have ripped it into more reasonable serving sizes. As it was, this bird probably suffered from a massive tummy-ache... as the other birds were saying, "Hey, dude! You need to floss!"
I'll never eat spaghetti again.
3) SAND CASTLE DAYS
Here on the island, they have a fun annual event each October called Sand Castle Days. They bring in “professional” sand castle builders from around the world to compete! Their creations are pretty elaborate. It was really fun to watch them work.
Click this link to see a couple of photos of our visit to Sand Castle Days: http://www.kidstalkaboutgod.net/CareyLisaphotopage/tabid/569/Default.aspx. Sorry if the photos are a little “grainy” (haha)! For some better photos of the sculptures, visit http://www.sandcastledays.com/archive.html#2005.
4) MORE GULF SUNRISES
For those of you who didn’t get enough of the Gulf Sunrise shots, I have a bunch of new photos in my Gulf Sunrises album on the Kodak Gallery site: click here.
5) OUR EGG-CITING AND OH-SO-AMUSING MARRIAGE
Carey is wonderful about cooking or helping me cook (he does windows, too!). One day, I was making Chicken a la King, and Carey was peeling the hard-boiled eggs for me. He asked me if I wanted them sliced. I said yes, but please throw away the yolks. He asked me why. I told him I was trying to reduce the fat content of the recipe. In eggs, all the fat is in the yolks, while the whites are fat-free and full of protein. He told me the yolks added a lot of flavor. But of course… that’s what fat does!
He seemed reluctant to part with the yolks, so I suggested he put them aside. He could add them to his own plate, but I didn’t want any. Then, he gave me this priceless, sad-puppy expression, and said, “But… I don’t want us to be unequally yolked!”
I gave him such a sweet set-up, yet I never saw it coming. He “cracks” me up!
KTAG Ministry Updates
6) TECHNOLOGY VS. HUMANS
In working on new website, Carey ran across some online language translators. Supposedly one day, Google will be able to translate any website into other languages. We tried putting in “Kids Talk About God” and requesting translation into Spanish. We got back “Los Cabritos Hablan del Dios.” (roughly: “The young goats talk about God.”) If you’re a human translator, I think your job is still very secure.
7) BOTH NEW WEBSITES COMPLETE!
First things first: The Kids Color Me Bible went LIVE on September 29, 2005 at 11:11pm! It is now available in its entirety on our website. This was a very important addition, as it provides a more activity-oriented Bible learning experience for children. Each lesson may be printed free of charge. There are spaces for your children to answer questions and draw their own illustrations for the Bible stories.
Huge news! We have completed construction on BOTH our new websites. We officially launched on November 7, 2005 (received our first online order on November 11!). Please visit the new site at www.KidsTalkAboutGod.org. This is what I refer to as the “pretty” site. All the good content and fun stuff is here.
The other site is what I call the “traffic-getting” site. It’s designed around keywords that we found would be effective in helping those who are seeking what we have to find us via the search engines. All the content on that site is designed to quickly send visitors over to the other one. The traffic-getting site is www.Kids-Talk-About-God-Bible-Lessons.com.
If you possibly can, please snoop around on the sites thoroughly (especially the first one), click on everything and even proofread. If you find ANYTHING amiss (broken links, misspellings, grammatical errors, inaccuracies, etc.), please let us know.
Also, please keep us in prayer. We may be getting a TON of traffic soon, as we’ll be featured on the new website for Bible.com. This is a solid, well-established site that gets around 1.5 million unique visitors per month! If we even get a fraction of that clicking over to us, we’ll be extremely busy. But we don’t really know what to expect. They are set to go live with their new site any day now, so we’ll be finding out soon! We’re now receiving suggestions for additional strategic partners.
If you want to view Bible.com’s new site, go to http://bible.com/. Click on “Christian Community” and then “Kids”. You’ll see us in two places on the page!
The other big new “tech” thing is this module we had custom-made for our website. Now, when we make a sponsored web page for a client (such as www.kidstalkaboutgod.org/grace), visitors enter on a version of the home page that contains an ad for that client. Then, wherever they go from there on the site, the ad follows them to every page! This gives the appearance that the client is the sole sponsor for our entire site. The ad will also follow when a visitor uses the “Send This Web Page To Friends” button.
8) MINISTRY GOALS
Our constant goal is to provide free, online, Biblical content for kids and grown-ups so that they can draw closer to the Lord. We also want to do everything we can to make our site more visible, so that more and more people can find us. We’re doing this through keyword optimization, the “Send This Web Page To Friends” button, Sponsored Web Pages, Friendship Cards, Value-Added Business Cards and strategic partnerships with like-minded ministries (such as Bible.com). If you have any ideas in this area, please let us know.
We also have plans to continue to hone our site, so that it is even more user-friendly. One idea is to create a comprehensive, clickable index of all of Carey’s inspirational materials (columns, TV spots, Bible lessons), cross-referenced by subject, keyword, etc. so people can more easily find something specific to their needs.
We hope you will enjoy receiving periodic personal/ministry email newsletters from us. If you don’t wish to continue receiving them (or if you have a different email address you’d prefer us to use), please reply to this email and let us know.
Again, thank you SO much for all your prayers! Keep them coming! Pray for us as a couple (especially on days when the Kings play the Spurs!), and also for our ministry.
We hope to hear from you soon. Give us the scoop about what’s going on with you!
Loads of blessings!
Carey & Lisa Kinsolving
Helping Christians Inspire Children
Kids Talk About God
P.O. Box 3846
South Padre Island, TX 78597
956-772-1920
www.KidsTalkAboutGod.org
“The only mind that understands the things of God is the child mind.”
– Oswald Chambers
9) FINANCIAL
P.S. – Please pray about supporting our ministry. If God leads you to do so, please send checks to: Kids Talk About God, P.O. Box 3846, South Padre Island, TX 78597. We are also now equipped to accept donations via PayPal on our website:
http://www.kidstalkaboutgod.net/Home/SupportThisMinistry/tabid/188/Default.aspx
A giving receipt will come from AMG International, the mission organization under which Kids Talk About God operates. We need your help, and anything you can do would be a huge blessing.
Financial report: The Kids Talk About God marketing and licensing program is just starting out, and we only have a few paying clients at this point. We are currently receiving $525/month in licensing fees and $270/month in donations. Neither of us is taking a salary from the ministry. We are trusting God to increase the support so that this ministry He has given us can continue and grow.