Winners, All!

We have winners to our Partridge in a Pear Tree contest, which wrapped up on the 7th. Congratulations to Shonequa and Carl on finding that little bugger, hidden on our Quick Reference page. They should be receiving their nativities this week. Good job!

We also have some winners today in our Bible or Babble contest. Congrats to Joan, Anita and Marcella in correctly identifying that the quote was not from the Bible. It was actually something that Mother Theresa said. Their prizes will be sent out to them as soon as they tell us which they would like.

During the year, and especially at Advent, we experienced some awesome feedback from our GGG Facebook family that just blew us away. We love our GGG family and we love to share our faith with all of you. Your comments show us that there are good, faithful, people in this world that are centered on God and prayer. It is just so important in today's world and we are humbled by the feedback, shares and likes. It isn't a reflection on us; it is a reflection of your feelings toward Our Lord so we don't aspire to take credit for anything. The credit is all yours because we know you have your priorities right.

We are also quite pleased with our Ebay feedback and thank all of our new customers on there. Those comments we very much take to heart and we are happy that we have met your expectations with our products and services. We will certainly continue to do that in the year ahead and appreciate honest feedback. Feel free to read the comments at: http://www.ebay.com/usr/gloryglorygifts.

Our thanks go out to all of our GGG family members, whether you are local, national, international, Ebay, Facebook or Pinterest ones for making 2014 a stellar year in sales. We hope to not only meet, but exceed your expectations of us in 2015. Remember, we are a not for profit business and all of our Holy Land product sales are helping to support our Christian brothers and sisters that still live there and depend on us for the livelihood.

I leave you with a quote from Mother Theresa (I love my Mother Theresa)

"We must know that we have been created for greater things, not just to be a number in the world, not just to go for diplomas and degrees, this work and that work. We have been created in order to love and to be loved."

God bless and have a wonderful week!

Mare

Social Media; The Good, The Bad and The Downright Ugly

Truly? I am on the fence about social media which is odd coming from a blogger. My personal favorite is Pinterest. On that site I like to include a little bit of me, a little advertising, butterflies and a bunch of purple colored flowers to accentuate and punctuate the page.  Twitter I am just getting the hang of and joined to follow a few on there because, frankly, everyone is on there. Do I use it to it*s full potential yet for the business? Absolutely not. Facebook is wonderful for a business to have to connect with our fans and to network with other small businesses. Blogging? Well by now you should know I have an opinion about everything, but am not necessarily comfortable with sharing them all. Nor do I think anyone needs to be preached too. You have your Priests and Pastors to do that, as well as your own consciences. However, I do tend to do it as well when I get a bee in my bonnet.  YouTube is a whole other ball of wax. If it does nothing else it proves that I do not have photo shop and that my video developing needs, well more development.

This post, though is not about our use of social media as a business; it is about the drawbacks of using it in your personal life. One thing that drives me insane is being with someone, at a dinner, or whatever and they are glued to their cellphone. To me, that is one of the rudest things to do and it gives the impression that the game or text they are involved with is much more important than those around them.

What I do not understand is Facebook. My personal page, not the business page, has followers. Why? To be honest - I am not that interesting. All I can assume is that they are from one of the business communities I belong to and are mistakenly following me instead of the business page on FB. It would freak me out a bit to think that they are so interested in what recipes I share, or quotes I like or what posts I *Like.* The only reason why I went on FB to begin with was to create our business page. I am an incredibly private person and do not share photos, health updates, where I am nor what I am doing on it and I actually cringe when someone *tags* me in a photo or I show up on a map because the person I was with posted it (i.e. at this doctor with my Mom - ahem thanks Tom).

This week on FB, though, bought out the ugly in me and the ugly in a *friend.* We were reduced to cyber arguing. Seriously? Not my finest moment, that is for sure.  It is the last thing I would expect myself to be embroiled in, but it happened. After thinking about this person, prior chats on there with that person and things that the person said to me about others I said to myself, self, it is time you learned how to unfriend people. Why should I open myself up to the possibility that the person is sharing my personal information with others, just as that same person has shared other*s intimate information with me? It is tremendously awkward to know an extremely personal fact about someone that I know just well enough to say hi to in passing. This event had me so rattled, upset and angry that I practically ran to confession yesterday. That is no small feat (or should I say feet?) on these wobbly legs of mine.

Still, it amazes me what people do post on their FB page. In this day and age I would think that people would be a little more savvy in what they share and in pictures that they post. One of my older friends recently took his page down as he is job hunting. It is a wise decision in my opinion and he is in no way a renegade. The more I read on there, the more I see on other types of media sites, the more I know that privacy is a thing of the past. The more I read of others lives the more I ponder who are these people? Then again, they are probably thinking the same about me.  If I could be affected by cyber-bullying from spammers, trolls and yes even Facebook friends while sitting here selling Christian products, well then nobody is safe. Oh my gosh, I feel it coming on I am going to preach........if we as adults are open to all the downright ugly things that the internet has to offer then I implore you to know who your kids are talking to on Facebook and other media sites.  I have only two words to say about that - Parental Control. At the very least, keep your kids safe! Stepping down from the soap box now.....

Have a good week, and God bless,

Mare