MY NEWSLETTER CHALLENGE

I hope you all have received my newsletter by now...as I thought I would share how crazy it was to send it from Mangochi, Malawi to the States via internet. You just have to shake your head!

Well.......things continue to be a challenge here in Malawi and the last was trying to get my newsletter emailed to my agency. I had been trying to send it since the 1st week of March. I had tried to convert it to another file format (actually many), reduce the file sizes, separate the pages into 2 separate emails, have a friend try to send it from the big city when she went...and finally, after I went to an internet shop (NOT like ours in the states, hot and costs per minute to use) and attempted to send it many ways as well, for 4 hours..I had to give up and think of another plan. It was very frustrating and in the 3rd hour, I received and email from my agency saying they hadn't received my newsletter yet...hmmmm.....I had to hold back on that one......wanted to cry or write a sarcastic email by that time....hehe Of course I did not.

I then went home..took about an hour break from it, and then started over.
I dissected my 2 pages and removed all but one of the pics (total of 9), sent each page individually without the pics with the written part only, and then sent each pic individually to my agency as well as jpegs (picture format) of the 2 page newsletter so they could see how to put it back together again.....it was 14 emails! The total time that I was working on trying to send it that day...was 8 hours…...CRAZY Huh!?! To boot, the internet would not work even for the simplest email until late last night....and when it finally opened up (the window to send)...I was frantic trying to get them all sent before the window closed again. The internet had been really bad again that week with the Sat and Sun following it with no access (on occasion, my mac mail would pull an email through from gmail even though gmail or skype would not open and it would send an occasional email...very weird!.

Anyway, Paula at Equip, had been trying to put it back together for me with another program and had to do some adjustments........I was hoping it turned out okay after all the work I had done on it. I will definitely do it differently next time...I knew it would be hard, but NOT this hard!

I figured I had spent a total of over 20 hours just trying to send it since the 1st of March (not including the hours my friend tried to send one of my original files before I made it smaller....she said many hours).

Last time I tried to do my blog...it took a really long time to get it to post and it wouldn't let me post any pics...

That stress is no fun...when it constantly kicks you off in the middle of it loading and trying to send and receive files.

Not including the cost to send them out once finished...that newsletter figured out to be about $25 USD for emailing, by the time I was done paying for all the prepaid units and the internet shop....... NOT GOOD!

I will try harder to do short updates…I have plenty of stories…just do not like the crazy costs and stress it causes almost every time I try to upload anything.

Have a blessed day in the Lord!