« Journey Notes

News, notes and anecdotes about our life with the Akha hilltribe

Thank you for taking the time to view Journey Notes - our online journal. In this Journal you can read about Paul and Lori's experiences living in Northern Thailand as we work with the Akha Hilltribe.

Please also take a look at our prayer and praise reports and our personal blogs from the links on top of this page for more updates from us in this adventure. You can also visit our homepage at to view our bios, photo galleries, newsletters and a little information about the Akha hilltribe (more to come the more we learn - we're still new at all this).

Now... on to the posts!

We Have a Visa!

Friday, April 25, 2008

Our Family in Singapore with the Merlion.

We are happy to announce that we have recieved our visa for Abigail from the Thai Embassy here in Singapore. The process was amazingly simple since we already had our work permits and visas (and having all the paperwork from the foundation we work through really helped). The bad news is that outside of Thailand you can only receive a 3 month visa, so we will have to begin the 1-year application process for her as soon as we get back to Thailand. But she is on the "official grid" now and the process, though long and expensive, is achievable.

Since we had to come to Singapore anyway, we are enjoying our time here. We have some friends who have a daughter just a few months older than Abi who have graciously played host for our impromptu trip. We have seen the Singapore sights and eaten of the numerous food options here in the Lion City while little Abi and Maya have had a great time playing and interacting with one another.

We are heading back to Thailand on Sunday afternoon and plan on getting back to the village this week once we have begun the application process for Abi in country.

Thanks for all your prayers! We'll (try to) keep you posted.

Tags:

Comments on "We Have a Visa!"

Joe said ::

I’m writing this to inform you about a project I am working on something that will help missionaries like you raise awareness and support. I am in the planning and design stages of launching a missionary news website (GodWitness News) and I would like you to be part of it. The purpose of the website will be to increase awareness about what missionaries are doing around the world. It will be missionary related news, by missionaries. The design I’m working on will be similar to the Yahoo News or to the BBC News websites.

I’m a professional Internet marketer, SEO expert and web designer. I have been thinking for some time that there must be a way I can use my skills to further God’s kingdom. After doing some analysis, I discovered that although there are many missionary blogs and websites, there are not many that have been optimized correctly to get a lot of readership traffic. You are probably aware of this, but a couple of the most important ways to get a lot of traffic is by having a high Google (Google, because it gets the most search traffic) PageRank and by having new content – A LOT of new content.

That is were you come in, with the content. Before I launch the news website, I would like to get 100 (eventually, I hope to have even more than this number, but this would be a good start) missionaries around the world to agree to be “news journalists.” If you are interested, I would like you to be one of the 100. If successful, there would be thousands of hits a day on the website. You would benefit by having many thousands of people around the world read about how God is using you, the work you are doing, and the people you are working with. Hopefully, some of the people visiting the website would support you with prayers and/or finances. Maybe some of them would want to volunteer to help with some of the projects you are working on. You could also benefit from having increased traffic to your website (each article you write could have a link to your website).

If you choose to participate, I would like you to agree to provide at least 12 articles in a year’s time. If you don’t want to write that many, you don’t have to feel obligated to do so though. The topic choice would pretty much be up to you. You could write about events in the country, challenges you are facing, tips for new missionaries, how God provided for your needs, and more. The articles don’t even have to be all that long. If you want to write more detailed articles, that’s fine, but if you want to write short ones(minimum should probably about 300 words), that’s fine too. You can also submit videos and photos. I just ask that everything submitted is good quality (you know, dot the i’s and cross the t’s, spelled checked, etc.) and original. It’s fine if it’s been published in print before, but if the content is already on the internet, the news websites PageRank will be reduced if the content has a copy somewhere out there on the web (yeah, the search bots are picky like that). Search engines don’t care about copies of videos and photos, so no worries there. The reason I say a year is because that is the time period through which I will evaluate how well the idea is accepted and whether I should continue the project. Call it beta testing if you want But that is about the necessary time needed to make the website a success.

If you are interested, please contact me by sending an e-mail to joe@josephkolb.info. Please let me know your name, the country you are working in, your missions name, your website, your contact information, your website, and any questions you have. Please provide as much of that information as possible as it will be hard to keep track of everyone if I have so many participants. Sometime after I get your e-mail and once I get the site going, I will send you a user name and password for your publisher account. I may also send updates or more detailed article criteria (good titles, photo sizes, etc.). I will also send a statement of faith that will have to be agreed to. Pretty much Jesus is the only way, the truth and the light and no one comes to the Father but through him.

I think that’s about it for now. Oh, yeah one more thing, I would like participants to add a link from their website (if they have one) or blog to the news website. In-links is another way that Google uses to establish PageRank. Also, I have had some people respond saying that they were uncomfortable with having the articles link to there blogs, if you don’t want to do that, it’s fine. And if you feel uncomfortable giving me some info, then that’s fine, I understand. I won’t sell it of course, but you don’t know me, so I can see why there would some level of distrust.

Along with the news website, I’m thinking of launching a social networking website (maybe part of the news website) for missionaries and those interested in getting connected with missionaries. It would be very similar to myspace’s set-up, but would be geared towards the specific audience that I just mentioned. Before I launch that though, we’ll have to see how successful the news website is. It would take considerable resources to get the social networking site up and running.

If you don’t want to write articles, adding a link on your site directed to the news site would help increase it’s PageRank. If you only can do that, email me and let me know and I will let you know when the site is ready.

So think about it, and most importantly, pray about it! Thanks in advance!

If you have any ideas that would help with the website, let me know!

God Bless You!!

Joe<><
joe@josephkolb.info

PS. A little introduction to myself: I’m Joe Kolb and I’m from Britton, Michigan. I go to a church called Hope Christian Fellowship and North Ridge Church on weekdays. I’m currently working as a web/graphic design and finishing my second degree. I am engaged to an awesome girl and Lord willing, I will be getting married January 2, 2009.