Pray BFF Letter #190
Friday, April 29, 2011
pdf printable version
Hi-Tech Challenges & Urgent Update
Dear Prayer Partners,
A little catch-up
Praise God that the Ethiopian Library for Initiating Spiritual Growth in the Church has been completed, integrated into the website, has its own Amharic video channel and the bilingual English-Amharic Libraries have been sent out! It can get intense hour after hour paying close attention to lots of details.
The second of three seminars on Reaching Beyond Mediocrity (English translated into Luganda) is now completed but needs to be integrated into the website.
The Bible Library urgently needed updating. We could not add any more content to the Bible Library due to space limitation (around 4 gb). So I took a few days to make two separate Libraries, OT and NT. But after adding other files that I could not add before, I found out that 80% of two Libraries (8gb) is already taken up! Anyway, I have another six months of life on them.
Life is funny. I am the one who hated writing in school - I literally hated and feared it. Now if we just print the pdfs (reading material) of the two Bible Libraries, 
it would take more paper than one of those big boxes filled with ten reams of paper (one-sided printing). And this is just Bible materials. To be honest, that I could write anything is a miracle. God can work through the feeble.
Google stumbles
The progress of the BFF website seems to have been whacked by Google again. You can see by the chart on the right that something happened in February, when they adjusted their algorithms. Their adjustment reduced our page views. I was actually expecting our page views to go up because Google was supposedly suppressing websites that pretended to have content but only had republished the content of others.
Biblical Foundations for Freedom, however, is anything but one of those 'content farm' websites. We have loads of original and quality material on a great number of topics.
Usually, January is our lowest month of the year. Basically pages viewed dropped to about 60% of previous standards.
I personally have been focusing on the trip to Africa and could not seriously look into this problem. There might be something I can do to help us along, but I will need to do some research. Maybe it should stand as a priority. About 3-5,000 people each day miss BFF's soul-enriching articles.
BFF is not the only one with this problem. This article articulates how Google's modifications to the algorithm (search mechanism) has affected proper websites.
It took several months to catch the problem when Google black-listed BFF several years ago. We do not have special staff that works on these things (that would make life easier!). God wonderfully helped us out that time.
I need your prayers so that God can continue to minister through BFF to His people around the world. As I travel, I see how sickly and weak the church is. So few believers are well-grounded in the scriptures. If they happen to be, they are often dulled by distractions from the world.
I am sure our website needs help in finding dead links and the such. But whatever the technical cause for the drop, I do appreciate how the Lord has led me to pray more seriously about what He wants for us. BFF must not just drift forward but fight to take land that we did not have before. It will, however, require a battle.
This, I believe, is where we are now and why I write to you so that you can join us in this battle.
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Praise!
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Praise for one seminar to be completely processed.
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Thank the Lord the editing is completed for the second seminar.
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I appreciate Kathryn's (6th child) sense of smell has somewhat returned. Her asthma and nasal congestion was quite severe.
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Praise God for the first time (I believe) we have been able to take salary each month early in the year.
Pray!
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Struggles in Uganda are increasing. Pray for peace.
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Our prayer is that we not only regain our former 10,000 daily page views, but gain increased territory. (I am glad God understands huge companies and hi-tech stuff better than I).
- Preaching and teaching this Sunday (May 1 and other times coming up).
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Urgent Updates - April 30, 2011
There are three urgent requests that have come to our attention in the last few days. Each request comes from a key coordinator of pastors that I have worked with closely overseas.
(1) Northeast India - Pastor Jagannath was visited by heads of a political/paramilitary Hindu party that had been spying on him and his evangelistic activities. He was warned to stop, though his efforts to help educate children are permissible. He hopes to hold another discipleship training seminar in June.
(2) Benin City, Nigeria - The head of this Bible College wrote describing how several of his close workers in the ministry, or their friends, have been involved in accidents, some seriously. Often there is no such thing as insurance so accidents become great financial and health burdens.
(3) Uganda - Pastor Mubiru worked hard preparing for the last seminar that I just returned from. You will remember how 30+ pastors were jailed overnight. The government is very sensitive to protestors - often abusing their power. Some riot police attacked Pastor Mubiru with tear gas as he was coming out of the bank, taking lots of his money, wallet and passport. He is to be married next week. His fiance wrote to me this morning telling me that he is very weak and in the hospital.
Do please pray and cry out for these dear ones in their great difficulties.
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Paul
Rev. Paul J. Bucknell, President and Instructor
Biblical Foundations for Freedom
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Email: pb@foundationsforfreedom.net
Phone: (+01) 412-398-4559
3276 Bainton St., Pittsburgh, PA 15212 USA
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