I'm back!!!

Praise the LORD!!!
   
    Since I've been off line for sometime, I believe I should let y'all in on what has been happening in my life and in the ministry. Going off line was caused by the fact that I moved out of my host family's house and into an apartment of my own. In so doing I was out an internet connection until I could afford to get one on my own. I've been working two separate jobs, doing apartment turnovers for two different companies. This has left me with very little time to do much else then work. Because when on hasn't the work for me, the other one surely will. I've been putting in 10 to 12 hrs./day. Now this wouldn't be that bad if the pay scale was better, but $8-9/hr. barely affords me the comfort to meet the bills. I've been cutting corners on food expenses, so I've managed to save the money to get the internet turned on. I've faith that the LORD will bless me to keep it on also.

   While off line there were some problems with the computers. As you may remember there were two old systems, both donated systems. The better of the two was frozen from a virus and to get it functioning I had to use a Windows disk from the other system to have an operational system for it. Well any of you familiar with "Windows" policies know about the activation period they grace you with. Well it ran out while off line and it blocked the computer completely, causing me to redo things in this same way. Now this wouldn't of been that bad, but in the process the hard drive designations were changed. This messed up every program set up, causing many files to be lost somewhere in 'hard drive' hell:))) Something else that happened in this snafu was the lose of all the updates to the operational system that had been made. This put the operating system on par with Windows 98, none of the latest graphics programs would work, nor my Logos 4 Bible study (needs SP 3 to work!) I was greatly bothered by these loses, though not worried about them, especially the lose of Logos Bible studies.You see, with backpacking here to Kingsville, I could only carry one Bible with me. This left me at a great lose, because my Logos programs have over 350 Bibles, commentaries and other studies available on them and I depend on them greatly in my writings! I went to sleep last night while running a download(4.6 G) on these and awoke this morning with one of them up and running. I still need to get the older version running though (why two programs, when they have basically the same books? They're both great and have a few differing features that are usable to study and open up the WORD!!!)

    The ministry now has several other computers to work with. One of my bosses donated several(6) older(03) systems to me. I've been blessed to get two of them functioning at this time, but with the same problem as before. I've had to use a operations system disk for another computer and can't activate them properly. This means I'll have to come up with the money to purchase a Windows XP Pro master disk with multiple license Which will cost and at this time I just haven't been blessed with the funds. Please join me in prayer, that people will take this ministry seriously and begin making donations!!! Shortly we should have the ministry coming under an "umbrella clause" for our 501.c.3 Non profit classification. This will help by allowing us to receive discounts and a tax-free status on purchases of such items. Though these saving will be small at this time, every cent saved will help get things up and running better much sooner.

    I'm still currently working on getting all the sites I'd been networking logged into and updated. Plus there are still a good number of programs and other functions that have to be straightened out to have our systems functioning properly. All this will come in the LORD's time and I'll remain diligent to keep working until all is back to where it was before the move. Please keep the ministry and myself in your prayers, for truly we do need it and GOD is the only one that can truly bring this HIS ministry into fruition!!!

 GOD bless and good day,
 Rev. Marshall Barth
 Vine of CHRIST Ministries
 Vine Ministerial Network International