Saturday Ramblins, Vol. 1, No. 9 (July 11, 1998)

Members ask from time to time questions about the Angel Friends service. How did it begin? How does it work? How has it grown? I thought I'd take a few minutes today and talk a bit about Angel Friends, where it came from and where it is today.

Angel Friends did not start out to be what it is today. It still amazes me how it grew from, essentially, an exchange of messages between a few friends. In November of 1996, I had only been online a little over two months. I'd spent most of that time on America OnLine and had made a few 'puter friends.

That November, I participated in a weekly prayer meeting with members of the AOL Catholic Community called the Total Consecration. I also, at that time, belonged to an Internet e-mail group. Between the two, I'd met some nice people. They passed on little stories, prayers and quotations they found and I began to do the same.

Initially, there were about fifteen people on the mailing list. I'd find a quotation each day and pass it along to these friends. One day, I came across some beautiful quotations about angels. I copied one and pasted it in an e-mail with "An Angel a Day" as a header. As will happen, one or two people forwarded the posts to their friends, some of whom forwarded it to people they knew. In time, some of those recipients asked if I'd include them in the mailings.

I don't remember exactly when the daily posts became formally "Angel Friends" with a regular format, but by January 1, 1997, this service was operating under the name with around 100 subscribers. Today, there are more than one thousand e-mail addresses receiving the posts. Members live around the world, in countries from Romania to the Orient; most, of course, come from every state in the union.

I must say that Angel Friends has grown beyond my wildest imaginings from those early days. For more than a year and a half, I'd been sending out daily posts--something I've always enjoyed putting together. I would receive an e-mail from a member now and then, to thank me for something that touched them. During that time, membership grew steadily. I had no idea, however, of the power of God working through this service all along. Not until I lost Lana.

I have a three-ring notebook, four inches thick, containing hard copies of hundreds of e-mails sent by members expressing sympathy, caring and love, in the wake of my beloved's death. I have never been so over-whelmed by anything in my life. It wasn't just the sheer number of posts; it was the spirit and love of God pouring through these computers — between people who are, in effect, total strangers.

I honestly had no idea what the thoughts passed on each day meant to many Angel Friends until you returned it to me during the darkest hours of my life. The credit belongs to God. Even when we don't realize it, He is using us to help each other. This may be the key to real service in promoting the Kingdom: to stand back and let God do His work by simply being His willing instruments. He will find the way for us to do it.

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