it's been three years since i began work on an idea i had nearly 7 years ago. www.i58wear.com is up and running. got a couple of quirks to work out apparently. seems the contact us page on the site isn't working. something is not right with the email accounts. i need make it easier to get to the products from the website. but overall...design, development, deployment...it's finished.

www.i58wear.com

www.cafepress.com/i58

while this has been my baby since inception, there are 4 people to whom i owe a great deal for their help in the process. John Daharsh took my first design and worked into a functional site and content management system. unfortunately, by the time i got that site up, i hated it. Mark Ward met with me and helped me get my logo designs organized and simplified, and helped with structural ideas for a new site...layout and navigation. I never built that site, but it was key in deciding what to keep and what to toss. Andrew Marrah did a few evenings of graphic design making backgrounds, etc. for that design, as well. although we didn't go with that one, his eye for what's right is great. Georgia Bateman (my sister and an extraordinary artist) came down and spent a day with me as i tore apart pretty much everything and started over. she asked what i wanted to capture, and then helped me find exactly what i wanted. with her help, the design aspects of the final site design came together quite easily. without you guys, i'd still be putzing around on my old laptop trying to figure out how to draw a line in illustrator. thanks so much!

for the past 2 months this is pretty much all i've worked on. evenings, sick days (or rather, very sick days), weekends...i worked until bleary-eyed. cafepress isn't the most user-friendly place to work, and because of the number of products, there was a lot of tedious time spent...not the least of which was yesterday. 8 hours in a coffee shop (good) saving product pics (bad) and re-uploading them (worst) in order to finish the cafepress store and i58wear website. it's good to be done.

nice time for a break, right? nope. i have to get the word out. countless blogs and facebook groups and emails...it's going to be a lot more work. i think for the foreseeable future most of my free time will be rolled up in this. it's a great idea (so i've been told) but people still need to hear about it.

so...if you read this blog, maybe let your circle of friends know. ask them to buy a mug or a shirt...something. we all use this kind of stuff every day anyway. the difference here is that we have the potential to change the future through this. it's not like a non-profit where you donate and then trust they're doing good things with your money. here, at least, you're getting a product in return for your investment...and it is an investment. this for-profit business is not built to make rich the owner or shareholders. this one is a business built to store up treasure in heaven, and to be a part of His Kingdom, on earth as it is in heaven.

i'll have a link to the i58wear blog soon. that blog will inform on any goings on around the world of i58wear, whether reporting how we're coming toward our long-term goals, or describing the days between then and now. in the meantime, please read Isaiah 58 for yourself. meditate on it. see how it applies to you and your circle of influence...for as much as it's written to you and me, it's even more written to "us". let's be rebuilders of walls and restorers of cities. let's take it seriously and see what it means to see our salvation come like the dawn.