For
Anyone Interested in Any Aspect of the Catholic Rosary
and Chaplets, Especially Rosary Making
Volume II, Issue 3,
March 1, 2000
Editor: Michael J. Wellik, mailto:mikew@seeds-of-faith.com
Published Monthly on the First Day of the Month
Publisher: SEEDS OF FAITH
Online Archives: http://www.seeds-of-faith.com/e-zine/index.htm
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IN THIS ISSUE
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- Editor
Comments
- Eye
on Devotions and History of the Rosary
- Featured
Writer
- Supplier
News
- Rosary
Making Tips, Hints, Ideas, etc.
- The
Rosary on the Web
- Events
Calendar
- Classified
Ads
- Subscription
Management
- Contact
Information
- Disclaimers
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1. Editor Comments
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This
will be my last issue of this e-zine. I have decided to
put the domain, website, and business named Seeds of
Faith up for sale. I have been asked, how can one sell a
ministry. Somewhere along the way, the ministry became a
business though it retains many characteristics of a
ministry.
This decision was especially
difficult, especially since I started this e-zine only a
few short months ago. But, no decision is easy. A
decision to continue would have been difficult as well.
This edition of the e-zine will
be somewhat abbreviated. It is my hope and prayer that
someone will continue this work. If not, the Rosary
Makers E-zine will become history. Rest assured though,
the list of subscribers will not be sold or made public.
I will continue to be involved
with rosary making to some extent. Recently, I bought
three new domains, two to continue a ministry and one for
my new web design endeavor. In the near future, check out
the following sites to see what I'm up to.
http://www.ourladyoftears.com
http://www.ourladyoftears.org
http://www.firststatewebdesign.com
In the "Rosary on
the Web" section I'll pass on some of the
information about buying and owning a domain. I hope you
find it of value.
May God continue to bless all
your efforts on behalf of your devotion and service to
Our Blessed Mother.
Mike
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to Index
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2. Eye on Devotions and
History of the Rosary
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Mike, please use the story and
make any corrections you deem necessary. This story is
absolutely true and I am still in that after-glow of
wonderment at it....
Double-Teamed....
Yesterday (Thursday Feb 17th) a young man (I will call
him Jon) showed up at the parish office selling a
cleaner. After demonstrating it's obvious quality to
myself, the maintenance man and the housekeeper, we were
convinced and bought some from him. He was a very
pleasant young man, no 'walls', you know very open and
friendly and obviously a real nice guy.
At one point in the middle of
this, he saw my blue wire-wrapped wall rosary which I
have hanging at work and remarked that he had attended a
St. Patrick's church and Catholic School as a child (that
is the name of my parish), but had not been a
'churchgoer' since then. I said that was a shame, and
showed interest in his tales, so continued on saying he
used to know all the prayers, but had forgotten them. I
couldn't talk too much as we were watching him clean
things through this and he was touting his product and
the other two with me weren't Catholic....(I know,
excuses)
Just as we were finishing our
transaction, Father arrived from his travels. We showed
him the product and had the guy demonstrate again. Father
too was impressed... Jon went out to his truck to get the
box of cleaner we had purchased. As he walked out the
door, I was inspired to reach into my rosary box and
choose a rosary for him....(the God-incidence here is
that I had only brought them in for another gentleman to
pick two out, they are not usually in the office!)...
which I put next to his cleaning bottle with a 'pray the
rosary' flyer containing the prayers. He came back in and
spotted the rosary as he reached for his cleaner. He
immediately picked up the rosary and looked a
bit quizzically at me. I said something like "It is
for you, you said you had prayed it and liked it, so now
you have one again and the prayers are all on the paper
so you can learn them." He was taken aback, but
obviously touched. He began talking about the rosary and
thanking me.
Just then Father walked back in.
He looked rather quizzically at both of us..so I
explained that Jon had said he prayed the rosary as a
child and had attended Catholic school but had forgotten
all his prayers, so I had given him a rosary so he could
learn his prayers again. Jon then began retelling Father
some of the things he had told me. Father asked if he was
attending church. When he said no, Father asked what was
holding him back. Jon replied "I have to apologize,
I know I probably
should, I apologize Father, I really should, I know I
need to go to confession again too....." and that is
as far as he got! Father took his arm, said "Come
with me" and ushered him into his livingroom and
shut the door. I am assuming Jon went to confession for
the first time in about 20 years!!!!
I just sat there and grinned
like a fool for a few minutes...too stunned to do
anything but mutter 'Praise Jesus' under my breath...good
thing nobody came in, they would've carted me off!!!
This was such an example of the
power of the rosary and of witness! I called this story
Double-teamed, which comes from that foolish wrestling
stuff, meaning that not only did the guy who was the
'opponent' fight with a wrestler, but his friends show up
and hit him too! Now I am *not* a wrestling fan, but
remember this from the few times I happened to see it on
TV...and it is a great description....
There Jon was, being inspired by
Mary and the memories of his faith.....Then she, through
the Holy Spirit, inspired me to give him a rosary (which
just happened to be there), and then the Holy Spirit
brings Father out at the precise moment that Jon was open
and overwhelmed and hits him again.... Mary and the Holy
Spirit had a field day with this boy!!! (please excuse
the wrestling 'jargon' but it makes the point!)
So, Praise Jesus for his
presence in our lives as witnessed by these miracles that
happen every day if we keep our eyes focused on Him.
Praise Him for the gift of His Mother and the rosary, and
Praise Him for the gift of our Ministerial
Priesthood.....please pray for this young man that his
return to the fullness of the faith has begun and pray
for all our Priests.
Janine LaRose
j9@slic.com
http:www.bibletech.com
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3. Featured Writer
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Hello
Again,
This month I would like to take up where we left off last
month, dealing with the Lord's Prayer. We say this
beautiful prayer five times when we pray five decades of
the rosary. We really should know what we are praying.
Last month we left off with "who art in
heaven." The next phases "hallowed be thy
Name." (sanctificetur Nomen tuum.) As modern people
we can get a bit confused with the word
"hallowed." Dr. Kevin Orlin Johnson in his book
"Rosary" says this word looks like part of our
word "Halloween"; he goes on to say there's a
good reason for that because it comes from the old
English word meaning blessed or holy. Halloween is All
Hallows Eve, the night before All Hallows - All
Saints-Day. In the Latin you can see that
"hallowed" corresponds to the word
sanctificetur, which looks like our word
"sanctify." What we are really saying when we
use this word is, "may your Name be praised as holy;
may your Name be respected.
These days there seems to be so
little respect for anything or anyone even God. We use
God's name as we would use anyone else's name. We call
God to witness to our actions without ever stopping to
realize when we do that we are asking God for His
judgment. We hope for His approval, that is, if we even
think of what we are saying in the first place. God is
HOLY, God is Good! When the rich young man came to Jesus
he asked Jesus what he should do to inherit eternal life
and he began by calling Jesus, "Good Teacher."
Jesus responded to him by saying: "Why do you call
me good, no one is good but God
alone." First, Jesus
wanted this young man to acknowledge that He was God but
he could not. That was his first mistake. If he had known
to whom he was speaking he would have known who Jesus was
and would have asked his question differently. When we
pray "Hallowed be Thy Name", we must be aware
that we are in fact speaking to God. God always hears our
prayers but He does not always answer them in the way we
want Him to. Sometimes it appears that our prayers are
not heard. When we experience this we should look at how
we have prayed. If we pray rightly, God always hears us.
In fact, He hears us no matter how we pray, but St. Paul
tells us in one of his writings, "We don't receive
because we don't ask in the right way." God has
given us many graces. He first gave us life itself. He
gave this life to us for one purpose only: to be HOLY.
Jesus said: "Be Holy as your heavenly Father is
HOLY." We must first recognize that without God we
can't do anything, we have to remember when we pray that
we are standing as it were on Holy Ground and speaking to
the only Holy, Good God. The God who loved us so much
that He sent His Son Jesus to live as one of us, to
suffer and die and rise again, just to show us the extent
of His love for us.
This month let us look at the
crucifix and meditate on the sufferings of Jesus and try
to understand how deeply the Father loves us. Lent will
be a great experience if we let God reveal Himself to us
as Holy though the person of His Son Jesus in the power
of the Holy Spirit. God bless you and have a beneficial
Lent and an awesome Easter.
Deacon
Harry Prestwood, S.F.O.
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4. Supplier News
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None
this month
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5. Rosary Making Tips,
Hints, Ideas, etc.
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Don't
Make Too Many!
About two years ago I talked with a very wise man who
gave me the following advice: "don't make a hundred
crystal rosaries before you find a place to sell
them". ...............
I didn't heed this advice and it
really cost me about a year ago. I'm telling you this to
emphasize it's importance. I was preparing to be a vendor
at a large conference. I was told that this was THE
conference and people would go nuts over my rosaries. So,
I made 20 sterling silver/crystal rosaries. I got only
the best supplies. In addition, I made over a hundred
job's tears rosaries and assorted chaplets.
I didn't sell one rosary. It
took months of sales on eBay and other places to pay the
bills off. A lesson learned the hard way. Unless you have
an outlet for what you make, be overly conservative!
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A
Reader's Thoughts
Dear Mike,
I would be interested in hearing about how other people
pray the rosary, i.e. favorite time of day, light a
candle, say other prayers mixed in with the traditional,
have a special place in your home, prefer to say it with
a group at/from church,or with other family members or
any other ideas they have for incorporating the praying
of the rosary into their lives .
I also wanted to mention that
there is a really excellent video called the"Rosary
for Young Children", where most of the prayers are
sung, they learn them pretty quickly that way. I would be
glad to share a short description of a rosary book I have
been assembling,which I use when I pray to help me focus
my attention on the mysteries.
I don't know if this is what you
meant Mike, but I would be interested in hearing about
other's rosary/prayer experiences. I want to say thank
you for all your effort in putting together the ezines,
and I especially
benefited from some of the articles pertaining to the
computer, and other practical matters . They were exactly
what I had questions about, and I would really like to
see the ezine continued, perhaps if we all pulled
together and contributed articles, we could keep it
going. Maybe it wouldn't be anything fancy, but just a
place to share our experiences, information, that would
have a little bit more detail than our emails to the list
generally have in them. Thanks again, Michael.
Anne
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6. The Rosary on the Web
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Feasts of
Our Lady
http://www.divinewill.org/feastofourlady.htm
Titles of
Our Lady
http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/saintbvm.htm
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Getting
Your Own Domain
Not everyone should start out with their own domain. I
didn't. I started with my free pages with Prodigy, then
moved to a $9.95/month account with dc-adnet.com. And
then finally to a full domain. If you want to start small
and cheap to begin with, there are more choices than
ever. One I would recommend checking out are the choices
at
http://www.catholichost.com. Also contact http://www.catholic.org. But, if you're anxious to have
a name of your own, I don't blame you.
As I mentioned earlier, I
recently bought three domains. When I bought the first
domain, Seeds of Faith, there was only one company
selling/registering domain names, Network Solutions. And
the price reflected a lack of competition. It was
$100/year with a minimum of two years. Last year it was
all opened to competition and the last I checked there
were 98 competing companies for this business.
The business of registering
domains is fairly simple. One searches a database to see
if the chosen name is available. As I understand it, a
domain can now be up to 23 characters plus the .com,
.org, or .net. There are other extensions available like
.md, .to, .edu, gov, and more to be added. The .org were
meant for non-profit group, the .com for commercial
sites, and .net for networks. There are no hard and fast
rules about what's best for you though. Choose the
extension that's best for you.
The domains I bought recently
were $17.50 per year and you have to buy two years, so I
paid $35 per domain. I chose http://www.Totalnic.net since they are the cheapest.
They are located in Australia but I didn't find their
website to be slow at all. In fact, it was more
responsive than many domestic sites I visit. In all is
was a great experience. And exhilerating. Owning a domain
is like buying a new house, escept you have the only one
of its kind.
So, now you have a domain.
What's next? You can "park" it at many sites.
They won't charge you a "parking" fee to just
have it sit there. Their hope is that you will eventually
have them host it since the transfer process can take
some time.
Not long ago there were no free
hosting services. You could use xoom or angelfire, but
not for domains. I've been paying $25/month to Catholic
Online to host my site. Most such hosts provide a few
free services such as free email accounts using your
domain name, cgi bins to send form data to your email
account, free listings in their directories, and some
offer free site statistics.
But, now there are free hosting
services for domains. A couple are
http://www.bizland.com
http://www.webjump.com
http://www.onlineexpress.net
http://www.Freeservers.com
http://www.xprss.com
Check these services very carefully. Most require that
you allow them to put a banner ad on your site. This is
automatic and you have little choice unless you pay them
something. And, they are usually not real selective on
the types of businesses that they advertise for, such as
porno, etc. Check their rules.
Finally, remember, free is not
always better. There are tradeoffs. Catholic Online's fee
is definately offset by the benefits. First, being listed
in their directory brings in a LOT of traffic. And, it's
comforting to deal with an all Catholic operation.
Having your own site is just the
beginning. You then need to learn design a website and
promote it. During the last two years I've learned these
skills in a "school of hard knocks". Don't let
anyone fool you. It takes a lot of work to put together a
website and maintain it. To get it on the search engines
is not hard, but it takes a LOT of work to get listed
high enough to generate traffic. As an example, it took
me two years to get my 70+ page site to an exposure level
to make it successful. At last check the page hits per
month were over 7,000. This doesn't come easy or with a
secret formula. It comes with hard work and spending
countless hours refining, redesigning, and promoting.
God bless you on your journey in
the work of Our Lady!
Mike
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7. Events Calendar -
Conferences, Congresses, Shows, Etc.
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None this
month
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8. Classified Ads
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Send your
classified ads to us via email in the categories below.
We welcome your suggestions for new categories. We
reserve the right to edit ads and the right to refuse to
publish ads that do not fit the intent of this e-zine,
are unfit to publish, or are contrary to the Magisterium
of the Holy Roman Catholic Church.
Rosary
Making Supplies
Our Lady's Rosary Makers
P.O. Box 37080
Louisville, KY 40233
502-968-1434
Free Catalog
Contact Rev. Harry Prestwood
http://members.aol.com/olrm/index.htm
The
Rosary Shop
Custom Rosaries, Rosary Kits, Information and Parts
http://www.rosaryshop.com/
rosaryshop@rosaryshop.com
(503) 534-1941 Office Phone
(503) 534-1942 Office FAX
Bulk
Job's Tears from Hawaii
email Mike
Rosaries
For Sale
Kathy's
Handmade Rose Petal Rosaries
http://www.angelfire.com/ky2/ros/index.html
e-mail rosarylady1@juno.com
or rosarylady@tnt-tek.net
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9. Subscription
Management
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10. Contact Information
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SEEDS OF FAITH
Attn: Michael J. Wellik
70 Ivy Lane
New Castle, DE 19720-2339
mikew@seeds-of-faith.com
Visit Our Website for
the Finest Hand-Crafted Catholic Sacramentals
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11. Disclaimers
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Seeds of Faith
believes that the information in this e-zine is accurate
and reliable, but does not guarantee the accuracy or
completeness of this information. Some of this
information may represent opinion and judgment.
SEEDS OF FAITH
MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, WITH RESPECT TO
THIS INFORMATION, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THOSE OF
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE!
Seeds of Faith
is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this
information, or for the results obtained from the use of
any of this information, and under no circumstances is
Seeds of Faith liable for any loss or damage caused by
reliance on this information. The business names that
appear in this service are trademarks and/or service
marks of their respective owners. Seeds of Faith is not
an agent for, nor in any other way affiliated with, any
of the businesses appearing in this e-zine. Seeds of
Faith can be reached at the address given above in
section 10.
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Copyright © 2000 SEEDS
OF FAITH
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