Thanks for Sharing!

Pat shared about our new Hope Endures Radio Program:

“Having that real-time connection to Rest Ministries makes me feel like we’re sitting together over a cup of coffee with good conversation. THANK YOU for all your hard work!” -Pat

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There is a new discussion in the Sunroom called, “Thankful for Friends Here.” Here are some of the posts we wanted to share. Click the links above to respond!

Posted in Why I Love the Sunroom

Jolene shares, “What I love about the Sunroom the most is that no matter how long its been since Iam here I always get a welcome back and its so wonderful to always know that we have such wonderful encouragement and support from everyone no matter what our struggles are. I love this place. It is what got me doing what God wanted me to. I’ve been blessed with lots of good friends I’ve met as well. It’s given me the inspiration to reach out and share my life with others as well. God is definitely at work here.”

This week at Rest Ministries…

• We continued our new radio podcast series, with nearly 500 listeners to the program so far. Don’t forget you can listen live or to the archived program at any time. See www.blogtalkradio.com/hopeendures
• Lisa moved her whole blog over to WordPress (from Typepad) for easy of use and it’s much more colorful and fun. Guys, she made it kinda pretty… sorry! We hope you can deal with the pink and focus on the green colors. You can find it at www.ChronicIllnessSupport.com or LisaCopenBlogs.com (whatever is easiest for you to remember) [sometimes we are getting error messages, sometimes not you can always reach me here
  chronicillnesssupport.wordpress.com while I figure thisi out]
• Lisa updated the articles she has that are free to reprint. You can find them easily here at her blog by just choosing “Articles to Reprint” category.
• Lisa wrote a new article, “You’re Too Young to Be So Sick.” You can read it here and feel free to reprint it on your blog, web site, ezine, whatever. I’d love for you to post your comments too!
• Jeff kicked off a new men’s ministry and it was just in time when a man emailed us saying he couldn’t find anything for men. The “Just Men” group in the Sunroom became a “featured group.” Read more about Jeff at his Sunroom page He was a guest on our Hope Endures program 2/12/09. Listen here.

Are You Feeling Blue this Season?

We’ve set up a special group in the Sunroom
called, “Thoughts of Depression and Suicide during Holiday Season” that you can participate in to get you through the dark moments.

5 Things You May Not Know Exist at Rest Ministries Web Site

1. A beautiful screensaver you can download free to your computer
2. Articles, links web site and more specifically for pastors who
   are interested in understanding more about chronic illness
   or who want their church to better outreach to the chronically
   ill.
3. Daily updates from our founder Lisa from her Twitter (fast and easy to read and also available on the right column of the Sunroom)
4. Resources for how to help a friend with a chronic illness
5. Special groups in the Sunroom like
   • Parenting Kids Under 10 When You Are Ill
   • What’s Happening to My Marriage?
   • Beyond Surviving Homeschooling
   • Gluten Free Living and many more! Be sure to check them out under the “group” tab

What Lisa has been working on

Since I’ve been gradually feeling better my time for Rest
Ministries has been spent on:

(1) Catching up with emails.

(2) Reading submissions (over 200) for HopeKeepers Magazine. We will soon resume publishing it but we will be taking the path many publishers are such as –and publishing it online. We know that’s not everyone’s ideal, and it can be printed out. But it will temporarily take the place of the “hard copy” due to printing/postage increases.

(3) Working on our new store. Most items are now listed; we’re getting some assistance on working out the last bugs.

(4) Updating the Sunroom

(5) Putting together a list of places we need volunteers and then soon matching those up with the people with passion!

(6) Blogging again! We were blessed to be a part of this month’s Grand Rounds Vol. 5 No. 19 and also the How to Cope with Pain January Carnival. Why do I do this? Each time I blog and it gets sent out via one of these groups, a bunch of people who would never find us otherwise!

(7) Planning a podcast schedule for 2009!

(8) Did you help us by making a wonderful donation in December? Lisa will be getting your letter out to you in the next week. Thank you sooooo much!

Rest Ministries Sunroom Connects Many People

We’ve started a social network
Rest Ministries Sunroom is at http://www.restministriessunroom.com and in just a month we have over 200 members. This is a “social network” of Ning. It’s easy! You can just visit the webpage and wander around to view the messages people have written or you can join and the create your own page with your favorite photos, videos, music, blog and more. You’ll also find links for the daily devotionals, Lisa’s blog and new articles on the Rest Ministries web site! “I’m really excited about how people are connecting,” says Lisa, “and it’s great to see everyone’s photos and read about them. Plus we have lots of men participating, so that’s great to see.”

As heard in the Sunroom…”Thanks for creating this social network. I’ve made new friends & hope to support others, as I’ve been supported in the past!” -Randall