That Was Easy

As I mentioned in our last blog post, we have been quite busy lately. More specifically, we were very busy for about two weeks while we were working on getting our promotional materials and table setup ready for itineration. The initial prep work or leg work or whatever you prefer to call it is always the toughest in life. You start from nothing to produce something. That's where we're currently at. Considering we just received final approval last Friday and have not officially made a dent in our budget yet (though we do already have some generous friends and family in line to get the ball rolling for us very soon with regard to support), it should not come as a surprise that we're still doing the laborious work at the beginning of this process. Polly and I split up the tasks. I focused mainly on the promotional packet and she focused mainly on the table setup. Genevieve focused on looking ridiculously cute. She's very good at that.

After finally finishing our ministry logo (which I shared in our last blog post), I got to work on the promotional packet. This included my letter to pastors/churches/friends, a mini-biography on our family, some country facts and the ministries we will potentially be involved with. Counting the cover, this was a 6-page document. In and of itself, 6 pages (a couple of which were very simple) is not all that significant at all. Anyone who has ever received an email or Facebook message from me or has read more than one of my blogs knows that I can create 6 pages worth of material without batting an eyelash. What made this a more difficult task was the fact that I wanted everything to be just right. I mean, let's face it, this is the means by which many will first hear about our missionary journey so it's important for it to be done well. This meant rewording and rewriting and reorganizing thoughts multiple times.

I finally completed the promotional packet on Friday. This put us a little into rush mode because we wanted to have a number of them available for distribution at our table on Saturday and still had other things to get done on Friday night. Initially we were also supposed to hang out with some friends on Friday night but their son got sick and they had to cancel. As disappointed as we were not to get to see them, this freed-up time proved valuable to us. We had a lot to get done.

In order to eliminate some of our workload, I called Staples to quote a price for printing 100 of our promotional packets. I figured they'd be a bit pricey, but thought that it might benefit us to suck up the cost this one time to alleviate some of the pressure. Once they gave me the $280 estimate, their slogan had a whole new meaning to me. Left with the decision of keeping the extra workload or spending a ridiculous amount of money to have it done for us, all I could think was, "That was easy! There was no way I would spend that kind of money on printing!" We printed on our friend's printer until it ran out of ink. We didn't end up with 100 packets, but we had enough and saved a bunch of money. (This reminds me, we need to buy more ink for our friend's printer, haha). I have a strong gut feeling that we will not be utilizing Staples' services too often in this process.

In the next blog post, I will go into a little more detail on the table setup which will include a helpful tip for general shoppers as well.

If you are interested in supporting us, we have added a "Partner" page at the top which gives some instruction on how this can be accomplished. If you have any questions/comments or would like to be added to our newsletter mailing list (for when we begin utilizing that mode of communication), please feel free to email us at mikeandpollybrown@gmail.com.

God bless,

Mike