It's been a while since I wrote anything on here but it has certainly been a busy last few months. A lot has happened but I mostly wanted to share something with you regarding the prison ministry. In short, Yahweh has put His stamp of approval on this ministry. Literally. I'll explain.
For a while now I've been trying to find some software that would allow me to perform mail merges directly onto the teachings I send out. For over a year I've been printing the addresses on labels and matching them up manually to the mailings. It wasn't that much of a chore I suppose but it did add hours to each run. I also have been considering applying for a bulk mail permit so I don't have to affix stamps to every mailing. I wanted to just print my permit right on the mailings and cut this part out of my process. This too adds a decent amount of time to the process. With my job demands growing lately I needed to find a solution that would make things easier. I tried many times searching for solutions, praying and not finding what I needed. I brainstormed ideas on how to make it work, searched out software and every time I wound up having to stop and move on. My thought was that maybe God just wanted me to commit to these mundane tasks. I came to a place where I didn't particularly care either way whether I found a solution. So I continued on for months not looking to improve the process.
One day I was searching for an answer to a problem I was trying to solve for work. I use Excel and Google Sheets to organize company data and assist in managing payments for contracts. I discovered a function that would help in the prison ministry. Later I tried it out and it worked. This sparked my interest in wondering whether I could find anything to help with some of the other improvements I wanted to make. It didn't take long before I found some software packages that use both Excel and Adobe Acrobat to perform advanced mail merges. I did some testing and found a program that does exactly what I need called "
AutoMailMerge" by a company called Evermap. It took a while to set up but now I can pull data directly from my Excel spreadsheet to do mail merges. Basically, this program allows me to open a PDF file with an SQL statement attached to it that looks in the Excel spreadsheet for all contacts who are to receive that PDF next in their sequence. It will then print a version for each person. This company also has another program called AutoBatch which will allow me to run multiple PDFs in a sequence so I don't even have to open one at a time. I haven't bought the second program yet but I plan on it.
After a prayer of thanks and asking for God's further guidance with the ministry, the next thing I decided to look into was the bulk mail permit. I researched how it works and found out that there are some criteria that I just didn't quite meet. I won't explain all that here. I decided to ask the local post office about it anyway. I have a good relationship with them because I go in there quite a lot to buy stamps, drop off mailings for the ministry and check mail in 2 different PO Boxes. I thought, "It wouldn't hurt to ask." At first it seemed like it might not work out but after about an hour of talking with the Postmaster we came to the conclusion that we would give it a go. There was some confusion over what the application fee was and the cost per item but we got that all sorted out. After she finished setting the account up she told me my permit number. "Your permit number is 7."
I froze for a moment, knowing that God was just present in what just happened. I asked the Postmaster, "Just 7? Not 4867 or something?" She said, "No, just 7." It was a confirming moment. I knew God wanted me to have that permit. She gave me a slip of paper with the permit number, the date (3-4-2019) and her signature. I was so happy to receive it that I immediate drove home hoping Joseph was still around so I could tell him. He was home and we decided to celebrate by having lunch at the local Mexican restaurant. While sitting there he asked me, "What is today's date?" He had a rhetorical tone in his voice and look on his face. I thought, ummm... 3-4... 3-4? I wasn't sure what he was getting at. He looked me in the eyes and said, "March Fourth! March... FORTH!" We shared a laugh and he told me that Yahweh does things at specific times for a reason.
Before I left the post office that day the Postmaster told me I'd have to get an indicia made. I wasn't sure where to go to do that but I went home and looked it up. It tuns out that as long as you meet certain requirements you can make your own. I didn't know how far I could take this since the only indicia designs I'd seen were just black boxes with text in them. I wondered if I could make one that looked like a stamp. My reasoning was that the black box indicia looked very institutional and I wanted the inmates to get something that didn't feel institutional. I thought, again, "Why not try?" So I designed what I thought looked good, with an emphasis on the permit number 7 and took it down to the post office. The Postmaster was there and when I showed it to her she took a long hard look at it. She said, "I don't know..." I explained that I looked up the requirements on the US Post Office website and it fit their specs. I showed her the specs on my phone and she took another long hard look at it. I felt like I was standing there for an hour but it was only a few minutes. She finally said, "You know what? They've been pushing towards this kind of thing for a long time now. I'm going to put it through."
I'll be honest. I was SHOCKED. I really didn't expect her to approve the design. I had never seen one like it before and clearly, neither did she. This apparently was a first. It MUST have been God working through this situation and in the end I knew that He had just given me a great gift.
Here is what the indicia looks like. I know it's a small thing to get excited about but when Yah speaks to me and I can see the results right there in front of me what other reason could there possibly be to get excited than that? He gave me His stamp of approval and said, "March forth!"
