On Christmas Eve, 1999, in accordance with my duties as Director of Public Relation for the Sixth Episcopal District Lay Organization, I created and published a website for the Sixth Episcopal District Lay.

In Mid-June, 2002, America Online lost this site along with hundreds of others on AOL. After a month of promises, but failure to locate and restore this site by America Online, I have with much effort reloaded its contents and restored this site to its original URL.

Although I considered moving the site to another domain, I opted not to do so because the original location comes packaged with the mere cost of my membership on AOL, and thus without cost the Sixth District Lay. I also considered that the URL is now familiar to a large number of visitors and search engines, so moving it would make it more difficult to access.

However, the visitors count which exceeded 1350 has now been reset and began at zero. This site is the only one which shares information for the entire Sixth Episcopal District, as the District has not yet developed one of its own. It also has vital links and information pertinent to the entire African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Please consider visiting us once again and please spread the word. Thank you in advance for doing so.

This site may be accessed at the following link: Sixth Episcopal District Lay Organization

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2002

Answers

I strongly encourage you to move to a new ISP. In the industry, the phrase "you get what you pay for" is so true. The ISPs that charge more, offer more (backups of your data---which you should have made yourself, redundant power, redundant machines, faster access).

My wife and I run a website, and had pondered running it "on the cheap" (AOL, Angelfire, etc). We opted not to do so, knowing that God will make a way for you when you are doing His will and His work.

Now consider this: Our website has been seen by over 30,000 people from 69 countries in 2 years. Considering that it is a marriage counseling site, that's amazing. We offer devotionals and Bible Study. We cannot afford for the site to be down for 1 day. Who knows which soul needs to see your site? Who knows if your site will be the only Bible a sinner sees?

Check with your accountant, but I believe you can write off the cost of the web site, so it still won't cost the Lay Organization anything.

God Bless You,

Rev. John Harper

-- Anonymous, July 15, 2002

Robert congratulations on getting the 6th district lay web site back up!! I do not know of many lay organizations in our denomination with a web site. It is indeed exciting to see what you have done. As with all web sites it is an ongoing process so continue the good work. You are such a treasure to our denomination, thank you for what you have done and without the laity there would be no church. God will reward you for taking the iniative and representing your district. Keep us posted as you update your site. God bless!

-- Anonymous, July 15, 2002