Good Thursday afternoon, Siestas! I’m not sure if this week has flown by for the rest of you like it has here, but whew, the fact that it’s near the end of the week and close to the end of May is slightly insane. Time really does fly when you’re having fun, or just flat busy. Grin.

I know this may be the most boring post of your entire reading career, but lately I’ve been getting a lot of emails and questions on the blog about this here blog and I thought we were due for a little blogging 101. This just means we have some new readers, which is exciting, so bear with me as I try to clearly answer some of your basic questions so we’re all on the same page!

1. How do I become a Siesta?

We are far from exclusive around here, which means, there is nothing you need to do to become a Siesta. If you read this blog, consider yourself a Siesta. However, if you want to get more involved by commenting and adding to the conversation, feel free to keep reading to learn how to do just that. Many of you have asked where the term siesta came about, and here is the back story: “Isn’t “siesta” the Spanish word for nap? Yes! Then why are our LPM blog readers called siestas? One time Beth typed out the word “sistas,” referring to our blog readers, and her spell checker wanted her to change it to “siestas.” The name stuck! You can read about it here. If you read this blog, consider yourself a siesta! It’s just another word for sister.”

2. I got a new email address, can you please update your contact so I get the blog emailed to my new address?

Unfortunately, your email is not stored through Living Proof. You originally signed up through our RSS feed, and we have no control over that. If you got a new email address, please re-subscribe with your new address and you should be good to go.

3. I get your blogs emailed to me, but it doesn’t tell me who the author of that post is. Can you please make this more clear?

That is a great question! Since the RSS feed does not provide an author name at the top of the post in your email, the easiest thing for you to do is to click on the link to that particular post, and the author’s name of that post should be under each title.

4. If I “reply” to a blog post that has been emailed to me through the RSS feed, does that mean I’m leaving a comment on the blog?

Although that seems ideal, it actually does not work that way. If you hit “reply”, you are simply sending an email to the blog. To leave a comment, see the next question. This will help both of us out!

5. How do I leave a comment?

I’m so glad you asked! Each blog post has a title, under each title there is a little brown box that has a number in it. That is where you leave a comment.

Step 1) Simply click on the brown box and it will take you to the current comments.

Step 2) Scroll to the bottom of the comments page, and you will see a box that says, “Leave a Reply”.

Step 3) Under that there is a box for your name, an email address, and a website. You do not have to have a website to comment, only your name and email address are required. Once you’ve filled out the appropriate boxes, type your comment in the empty box provided, then hit the little button that says “Submit Comment”.

Step 4) Once you’ve submitted your comment, it will show up as you’ve typed it out, and out to the side it will say, “Awaiting moderation”. If you see that, you have correctly submitted your comment which means that now either Beth or myself will publish it once we read and approve it. We try to moderate comments in a timely manner, but thank you so much for being patient with us! We moderate them to both eliminate spam, and any unrelated comments or questions. Please know as hard as we try to read every comment, we reserve the right to moderate without reading, especially if we have 500 waiting to be moderated. If you have something that you do not want shared on the world wide web, please be careful when posting, even if you write “please do not publish this comment”, we may not catch it in time. The best way to share something privately is through our contact page here. That is the most appropriate and efficient way to get questions answered and for private matters to stay private matters.

6. How do I sign up for the Summer Bible study?

Tuesday, June 26, will be our official launch day. By then you should have your group assembled and workbooks purchased.  You will sign up by simply commenting and answering a few fun questions about your group.

7. Is there a way I can search for an old blog post?

If you look to the right of the blog, in the right hand column under the “Welcome to the blog of Living Proof Ministries” there is a search bar, there you can type in the blog you are looking for and it should bring up a variety of blogs that match your search.

8. How do I receive the blog in my email inbox?

If you’re looking on the right column again, there is a link that says, “Receive feed via email”, simply click on that and it will  take you to a feed-burner page where you’ll insert your email address. Then you should be good to go!

9. The blog posts seem to take a while to get to my inbox, is there a way I can get it faster so I don’t miss out on the Q&A’s or the giveaways?

This is so common and I am so sorry! I realize you are getting the blog to delivered to your email so that you don’t have to check the blog daily, but we have no control over when you get your blog post from the time we published it. Since it comes through a 3rd party feedburner, the timing of it actually depends on your internet provider and when their server information is updated. This may be the reason your neighbor gets it within an hour while you don’t receive it until that night. Again, so sorry there is nothing we can do for you!

Congrats on making it through the entire post. I hope it was somewhat helpful. We love y’all and want to serve you well!

Good afternoon, Siestas!

I have a few housekeeping items that I wanted to share with all of you so I hopped on real quick.

Oh, but before I get into the details, could you please give the Lord some praise with us? We woke up to 50-degree weather this morning and it was glorious. We’ve been waiting for this day since March. In fact, we were so thrilled we ate lunch outside today. Thank you, Lord!

First off, we are all up in social media’s business. Doesn’t that make you so happy? Never do I want social media to replace my real life, face-to-face friendships, but let’s be honest, the times are changing and social media is big deal. Of course, we here on the blog are well aware of social media because well, that’s exactly what this blog is. Grin.

Secondly, as you can see we are having a few blog formatting issues. A few of you have brought it to our attention and we just want you to know that we’re working on it. Please be patient with us as we fix this minimal issue. We know it makes commenting a little more difficult because of where everything is placed, but know that we still have commenting capabilities, you just have to search a little harder for it. Y’all are always so sweet to bring things to our attention that we may not see right away!

Thirdly, and I’m not sure why we haven’t said anything up until now, but we have an official Living Proof Ministries facebook page. Can I get an amen? If you’re on facebook and want to join us just click here and “Like” our page. How easy is that? So far we’re just posting status updates and pictures, but it’s been fun learning all things “pages” on facebook. Help us spread the word and share the love.

Fourthly, thanks to our third item, we have now created a SSMTC event on our facebook page. Because we know the vast majority of you are traveling from all over the U.S., we decided this might be an easier way to connect with other Siestas coming from your state as opposed to putting your information out there on the blog. Please know that by “attending” this on facebook, does not mean you are registered. We still need you to register for the celebration on our website by clicking here, but this will be a wonderful avenue of connection with other Siestas. You have all the privacy control you want on facebook. Aren’t you so thankful for that? Click here to see the invite and attend! Yay, facebook events!

Fifth, and lastly, we now have a twitter account for Siestaville. Y’all, seriously, we’re going all out over here. So, if you have twitter and want to join in on the fun, just simply follow @Siestaville. Easy peasy! This account will be both fun and informative.

Well, ladies, that’s all I’ve got for today. Whew!

With all of that said, don’t forget to hug someone today. Or tell them you love them. Face to face. It’s just different and unexpected in this media crazed world. We love y’all!