FlowerDust.net

this one cut straight to my core.

Regarding the Sabbath: “It’s hard to preach about a commandment The Church doesn’t keep.”
– Dr. Matthew Sleeth

(the entire message: download here)

two years ago, being the color-coded spreadsheet chart-and-graph making weirdo that i am, i decided to analyze chris’ and my starbucks spending pattern. in april and may 2006, we spent $237.21 (or $118.61/month) on coffee drinks that make us gain weight.

seeing it on paper like that was a shock, so we have cut back significantly.

well, at least, that’s what i thought.

i just went in and added up our starbucks for the last two months. in april and may 2008, we spent $42.82 (or $21.41/month) on coffee drinks that make us gain weight. actually, that is way more than i thought (and hoped) it would be.

monday, i shared with you a decision the pinkhairedgirl and i made to forgo our annual tradition of tattooing. with that donation, the one-month salary for a rescue center employee was just paid. with crystal’s donation on top of mine, two employees had their salary paid.

today, i am sharing with you my “no more paying for starbucks” decision. i am not going to buy anything at starbucks for the next year. the java chip frapp i am sipping on right now will be my last until june 1, 2009. i am taking that money ($20) and de-worming 128 kids a month. because really? that is a lot of kids with worms and that just isn’t right.

i am sharing these facts and figures with you not as a “oh, check out MY sacrifice” kinda thing…but to show you that we are putting our money where our mouth is (or perhaps taking away our money from where our mouth is?)

your starbucks fund can help feed children. even if you just gave up two or three lattes a month, look at what you can do.

as aaron said earlier…we are unapologetically asking for your help and sacrifice.

it’s your turn. you will make a decision today. what will you do?

WILL YOU GIVE UP YOUR STARBUCKS (OR _________) WITH ME? ONE YEAR. DARE YA.

i usually don’t answer my phone when i don’t recognize the number, but since it was a DFW area code, i figured…

what the heck?

on the other line was a very nice gentleman from american airlines. evidently they thought my online complaint from april had been resolved (because of this post).

he was super nice, apologetic, and even posted some miles to my american advantage account. and he told me my email to them was the first one to really ever point them to a blog post. and now they are going to pay a little more attention to their online reputation.

so…i wanted to share the happy ending with you guys. maybe there is hope for airline travel after all.

people have still been commenting and linking to the post “keeping your mouth shut” – about things you feel you can’t say in church.

i found out yesterday it was featured on a radio station in Australia! you can listen to the discussion online here. i have to admit: it’s pretty cool to hear “flowerdust” said with an aussie accent! they read some of the comments too…maybe they read yours!

the discussion is great though. take a listen!

what do you have to lose?

pinkhairedgirl.net (her real name is crystal) and i have been friends for about five years or so now. and, every year for the last three years, we’ve upheld a tradition of body modification (tattoos, piercings, etc.)

this year was no different. she flew down to okc, we made an appointment…and this is what happened. (and seriously…could my freeze frame be any more awkward?)

after you watch, click here for more information.

another letter came in the mail for chris and me from linet, the girl we sponsor in uganda. that is three letters in the three months that we have been sponsoring.

“i want you to know how much my family and me love you.”

yeah, i got a bit misty eyed from that.

her birthday is sunday…i wonder what she’ll be doing?

it’s really easy for us to see how a seemingly nominal $32/month and the occasional birthday or christmas gift is helping her. i wish it was just as easy for her to see the difference she is making in our lives.

shaun was right. a trip like this will morph your life. i can’t believe it’s been three months since we’ve been home. honestly, i thought the emotions would wear off by now.

until i realized what i am experiencing isn’t emotions…it literally is a complete and unexpected reformation of my spirit. even though chris wasn’t able to go on the trip with me, god has been reshaping his heart too. we look at everything so differently now. it’s made our marriage stronger. it has changed the way we spend money. the way we look at the world. the way we look at the poor, the rich, and ourselves. we pray differently. we hope differently.

around 30 children have been sponsored from this site. i mentioned earlier that you all purchased at least 110 mosquito nets.

your lives are being changed, too. it’s been beautiful to see us all walk through this in different ways, together.

i haven’t posted a specific child who needs a sponsor for a while, but i thought i would today.

this is gipsi. she is five years old and lives in columbia.

In her home, Gipsi helps by making beds and cleaning. She lives with her father and her mother. Her father is sometimes employed and her mother maintains the home. There are 2 children in the family.

Gipsi is not presently attending school. Playing with dolls, playing ball games and running are her favorite activities. She also attends Bible class regularly.

gipsi has been waiting over six months for a sponsor. i pray that wait will end today. and i am assured whoever takes a step into this little girl’s life will be just as changed as she will be.

CLICK HERE TO SPONSOR GIPSI. please make sure you do not click the “select this child” button unless you are sure you will be sponsoring her, as doing so will make her sponsorship page unavailable for an hour or so, and someone else might miss their chance. thank you…

if you try to sponsor gipsi, but it says she has already been sponsored, you can always search for a child here!

a few people i known have referred to blogging as a grown up and online version of high school. you have all your stereotypical groupings…the cool kids, the nerds, the teacher’s pets, the testosterone-driven, and the moms.

(yes, the moms. i grew up in west texas and in high school, the moms had their own table. but i digress.)

based on the description of others, evidently i sit somewhere on the cool kids table. but since punctuality is not in my nature, i consider myself to still be standing in the lunch line, waiting on my rectangular pizza from a greasy lunch lady named helga.

(but again, i digress.)

i used to watch my stats and analyze them all the time. how did i stack up to others? will i ever break 100 subscribers? 500? 1000? will i ever break 100 authority on technorati? 300? 500? can i hit 10,000 pageviews a month, 30,000, 75,000?

let’s just say i became a little obsessed. especially since the giants of this blogging business are mainly men…i wanted to be the cool little sister who was able to follow closely behind.

to confess: jealousy was a commonly played tune in my head. all the cool kids went to all the cool conferences. they got free stuff. they met each other and it was all off the hook. i mainly sat behind my computer.

if only i could be one of them. if only…

and then i realized…

even if “if only” happened…would i really care?

don’t get me wrong. i love my blogging brethren. i have met many of my fellow bloggers in person and they are sharp, and they are amazing. they are impacting the church culture in so many ways.

but me? my heart and my passions are expressed in different ways. and that’s just peachyfine by me.

for example - i am not a conference-going kind of person. i am not uber-extroverted leader, and speaking to a billion other uber-extroverted leaders would probably make me curl up in a ball and suck on my thumb until jesus comes.

it took a while, but i finally realized that it’s not a large amount of influence that matters.

it’s the right kind of influence.

so, i look around.

kids living in poverty are being sponsored left and right because of the community on this blog. over 100 malaria nets were donated from the community on this blog. pastors who were broke and needed help were helped, mission trips were funded, people were prayed for, addictions were spoken about, and ultimately…god’s name has been glorified by this community BEING the church in relational and missional ways.

this blog isn’t about me. it is about us. a group of believers reflecting the love of christ to the world in a million different ways.

that’s the right kind of influence.

thank you for being a part.

i recently got a copy of jesus brand spirituality, a book by ken wilson, which came out this week. anyone who knows me well knows i love reading, but i read so much, i really only skim books to find nuggets that will stick with me.

this book, however, had me sucked in from the first couple of pages. technically, it had me sucked in from the title. last weekend, i read it in about three hours and highlighted/underlined so many things in it.

i’m going to have to do another post just to share all the insights, but i thought i’d share the first chunk with you now.

i should also say that nobody asked me to review this book…this is straight up out of my own felt need to share this book with you and express that i think it is one of the most important books any church leader or believer could read.

with that said:

• we can only hope jesus will continue to challenge every effort to hijack his brand, because he is, and always will be, the main attraction.
• jesus invited curious onlookers to help him do what he was already doing so that his actions would have greater impact…there were no faith quizzes to pass before you could help out; all it took was the willingness to go somewhere with jesus because you liked what he was doing.
• jesus was a mystic who prayed with his eyes open
• the roman empire embraced christian faith as the state-sanctioned religion. this in turn gave birth to the monastic movement as devout individuals sought a more spiritually enlivened form of faith, removed from the trappings of the empire (*my thought: we are on the cusp of this again, with people getting worn out from “trappings of the empire” and are longing for a deeper, more Christ-like faith)
• since religion can both illuminate and obscure jesus, sometimes we need to dig to find him. a good place to dig is the gospels. here, we find jesus on a mission from god to repair the world. in his glance, we catch an invitation for us to join him.
• caring for the most vulnerable isn’t a matter of compassion alone; it’s a demand of justice and the true sign of religion.
• as we engage with the realities that engaged jesus’ attention, we are more likely to encounter him.
• the gospel is a message with personal, social, and global reach. if it’s not good news at all these levels, it’s not good enough.
• have we front-loaded people with so many matters of belief that we are, in effect, asking them to swallow the whole package as a pre-requisite for a meaningful engagement with jesus?
• as a result of our long and productive love affair with rationalism, we tend to suffer from an anemic view of what we call “spiritual experience.”

anything resonate with you?

if you’d like to get your own copy…you can get it right here! i seriously can’t tell you how much this book rocks.

(note to my mom and grandpa. please don’t read this post. thank you). :)

remember it is the week of hot sex over at one of the blogs i contribute to, deadly viper. we’re having an honest and biblical discussion about seldomly addressed questions about sex.

yesterday, my friend mike blogged about gay fantasies and homoeroticism. today, it’s my turn with sex toys and videotape…

here is what i wrote…i am closing comments here so please leave your comments there today!
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We got a lot of questions about sex toys. Someone even asked if making a video tape of two married lovers was Biblically alright.

Before we got married, Chris and I went through several weeks of premarital counseling — one or two weeks included what was okay in the marriage bed.

The key word in these questions isn’t vibrator or video, but BIBLICAL. And since these things weren’t really hanging around thousands of years ago, the Bible doesn’t literally state, “thou shall not have edible underpants.”

So, what does the Bible say about the yays and nays of sex?

1. Fornication/Adultery - Sex outside marriage either physical or mental/emotional (1 Corinthians 7:2, 1 Thessalonians 4:3, Matthew 5:28)

2. Homosexual acts - (Leviticus 18:22; 20:13; Romans 1:27; 1 Corinthians 6:9)

3. Orgies - (obviously violates #1 and sometimes #2)

4. Prostitution - (Leviticus 19:29, Deuteronomy 23:17, Proverbs 7:4-27)

5. Lustful passions - (having someone or something you can’t have - Mark 7:21-22, Ephesians 4:19)

6. Sodomy - Contextually in the Bible, this is a homosexual act between men. It is not referred to as anal sex between a man and a woman.

7. Incest - (Leviticus 18:7-18; 20:11-21).

So, what does this mean??

We are free in Christ, and we are free in our marriages - as long as we don’t do something that the Bible forbids. Paul says that nothing is unclean in itself in Romans…and that everything (within God’s law) is permissible. This doesn’t exclude what happens in the bedroom.

So…if a guy and his gal are BOTH cool with using some toys to enhance their love life, it doesn’t violate any Biblical principles, then…rock and roll with it, sweetheart.

For a porn-free, Christian based “Marital Resource” store (wink, wink)…go here - http://www.book22.com.

*Special thanks to Linda Dillow & Lorraine Pintus who covered this topic in their book, Intimate Issues.

What do y’all think?

COMMENT HERE

one would think i think entirely about boobies too much.

over the last week, i have had some great conversations about my thoughts on boobies, part 1 and pete’s rendition of it on his blog as part 2.

so far, the conversation has slanted towards things like lust and fantasizing and a guy’s reaction.

today, we’re talking about how the boobies might affect the ladies.

women, generally speaking, are notorious comparison makers. i know i am, and if i’m not careful, it can take over my thought life. women check out other women — not so much because we get turned on — but because we, either consciously or subconsciously compare.

for example, let’s say i see a woman at the mall.

in about .005 seconds, my mind has already compared:

-height
-weight
-hair
-how well dressed they are
-skin & complexion
-chest, stomach, junk in the trunk

and if i “win” i feel good about myself. if she “wins,” i feel like the most hideous person on the planet.

(please realize, this illustration is by far the comparison thought process at its worse, not the norm.)

the situation presents to me two choices. i can either bounce my eyes (which is what i try and do most of the time, instead of checking someone out and playing the comparison game) or i can do just that. stare and compare.

and let’s face it. when people wear less clothes, people tend to be noticed more.

now, i realize this does not place every ounce of responsibility on that person (especially if he or she doesn’t know any better).

i love what eugene cho wrote when he discussed part 1 and part 2 on his blog.

MY SIMPLE TAKE: We’re all responsible for our own selves but we can’t dismiss that [Christian] men and women are called to mutuality, partnership, community, and fellowship. Simply, we don’t live on an island to ourselves.

could the way women dress cause other women to stumble? it can put our heads in the wrong place too, if we let it.

CompassionBloggers.com - WOW. from the first time brian mentioned the trip to me, to now, three months after returning from uganda, i don’t think anybody really knew the impact blogging could make in releasing children from poverty. well, needless to say, it has blown everybody’s stinkin’ minds.

shaun (in between wearing a dress and a cute little girly hat, and hanging out with cuban assassins) has been working really hard on this site which connects bloggers and children to the world. the next blogging trip is in november, and he is looking for people to go that want to passionately explore this new road of getting children sponsored and having their own lives changed forever. oh, and you can also post about 2873 cool widgets and stuff on your blog.

VISIT COMPASSIONBLOGGERS.COM NOW! :)

WeTheChurch.org - i love prayer. i love praying for others, and hearing how god is working in their lives probably more than anything in the world. it is powerful and transforming.

my friends chad and scott launched an amazing site called WeTheChurch.org. people submit either prayer or praises — keeping their thoughts within 140 characters like twitter — and from all over the world, people can pray and celebrate with them.

my favorite part of this site is that i can get new prayers/praises in my twitter feed. let me tell you there is nothing like reading,

“A friend’s father had a massive stroke today, in ICU, doctors said he has 50/50 chance of surviving, if he does, he’ll have permanent damage”

in between the daily tweets of “at starbucks” and “my cat barfed up a hairball.” it’s divine. truly.

CHECK OUT WETHECHURCH.ORG and FOLLOW THEM ON TWITTER.

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in all the craziness, i have had some great posts brewing in my head this week that i haven’t fleshed out. thanks for hanging in there with me.

what site or blog have you been digging lately?

crystal asked me to guest blog on her blog this week. it has been one of those weeks where i have not been taking very good care of myself…not sleeping great, not eating great, not drinking enough water, and running like a chicken with my head cut off. and it has caught up with me as i am working from home this morning, eating zicam tablets to ward off whatever little bug seems to have latched on to my throat, and taking it a little easier.

so, instead of coming up with something original, she was gracious enough to let me post something i wrote a while ago.

you can read it here. it’s about sorrow without despair.

sorry i haven’t been around much this week. it has been crazy at work as we are getting near to the one prayer launch.

my friend pete continued the “boobie” discussion over at his blog today…from a man’s point of view.

you should check it out!

how many emails to you send/receive a day (include all - work & personal).

what the?

yep.

as some of you know, i am buddies with the guys over at deadly viper, and they let me do some cool stuff over there…(like blog…) because as we know, the seven deadly assassins don’t just target guys.

so next week, we are having a very frank discussion about sex on the deadly viper blog.

and we want your questions.

nothing is off limits. at all. don’t believe me? read the post mike has up today.

feel free to post your questions here or if you’d rather keep it private, feel free to email me at anne {at} flowerdust {dot} net.

NOW…

i realize some people think we talk about stuff like this to the extreme level we do for sensationalism or to create a buzz or just to get comments.

please hear my heart when i say

THAT IS NOT IT AT ALL.

we realize that just because we are christians…it doesn’t mean we don’t struggle with things, or wonder things, and wonder what the bible says (or doesn’t say) about sex.

this will be uncomfortable. even when mike, jud and i were emailing today about next week, i was literally squirming in my seat too. i was uncomfortable. and chances are, if you were to ask me these questions face to face, i’d blush and stutter and sweat.

but hey, blogging just might allow us to be a little more vulnerable. to have time to process things and respond. and to ask and answer questions appropriately…just a little bit more easily, perhaps.

(also, feel free to comment anonymously).

i look forward to the conversation.

occasionally i post the random searches that land people here at flowerdust. without further ado, the searches…and responses.

pantyhose blog
you will find none of that here. i haven’t worn pantyhose in…10 years?

girl dies from spider laying eggs in throat
that sucks.

doggie day care hot springs arkansas
i prefer cats, actually. and really? day care for dogs? i thought that would be called, “a yard and a rabbit?”

purring cat paws at my face
that means he loves you.

why does my cat put his butt up and in my face?
that means he doesn’t.

what to do when you live in the middle of nowhere and stay at home with your child
open a doggie daycare.

my husband of 38 years ran into his old girlfriend what should i do?
did she fall down? well, make sure she’s okay! chances are she’s pretty old.

chicka chicka boom tree shaped cake
uhhhhhhhhhh………

sister teaching brother to put on pantyhose first time
and let’s hope it’s the last time, too.

evil leprechaun drawing
like this?

sister farting on a airplane bathroom
and how, exactly, would you know?

any surprises in your stats lately?

this weekend, i am sharing my thoughts on blogging community at the lifechurch.tv internet campus. something i am talking about is how this community here on flowerdust.net has formed over the last few years and how we truly do cover each other in prayer, support, advice, and even discuss the questions of life. we even fight a little bit. all signs of healthy relationships!

so, with that…i think it’s time to have another post dedicated to how we can pray for each other. i will be checking in over the weekend and praying for you, and encourage you to come back and do the same for others.

i’ll start.

chris & i could really use your prayers about our finances. we have cut back so much, but like some of you shared, similarly, we have made poor decisions in our past that we are paying for now. there is also quite a bit of medical debt that we were able to defer but it is now staring at us in the face and is making a tight situation tighter. i could identify with much of what anonymous had to say earlier this week.

please pray that we are sensitive to areas we are able to cut back on so we can build more margin into that area of our life. and for god’s protection. we don’t have any room for emergencies!

wow, that was hard to share!!!

your turn…

it started last week when i was watching the today show. matt lauer was quietly peering through the door of a buddhist temple. the monks, quietly chanting. matt left his shoes at the door to respect the sacred space, and took a step or two in.

“it’s nothing like anything you’ll ever see,” he said.

a friend sent me some stats. it confirmed what i was questioning.

the mainline protestant church is NOT REALLY growing.

from the report:

Mainline Protestant denominations continued to decline, according to the 2006 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches. The United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church USA, and the United Church of Christ, all reported slight decreases in membership in 2005. For the first time in many years, the Southern Baptist Convention, a conservative evangelical denomination, also showed a decrease of 1 percent.

i am by NO MEANS a historian, or a theologian. but from what i’ve read, other, non-protestant religious sects are growing much faster than protestants.

so then i wonder…what are we doing differently?

my gut reaction came kind of easy…too easy…so that is why i wanted to run it by you.

none of these other faiths are really “modernizing church” the way the west is doing it. (and please humor me; this is just me wondering out loud rather than any stance i am taking).

when we (the modern, western church) are blending into our culture by appearances, other religions still keep to many of their sacred traditions, even to the point where it does not make sense at all.

but the christian church is barely scrapping by statistically…the growth has come to a near-screeching halt, and less people are hearing about their one true love.

your thoughts??

[PS - this is simply going off statistics. this is not a reflection on spiritual growth. we'll save that topic for a rainy day!]

i’m not *too* geekafied, but as i wander the streets of the blogosphere, i noticed a few things and thought i should contribute some knowledge (which has been passed down to me by many older, wiser, bloggers) and some things i’ve just learned on my own.

1. SUBSCRIBING TO BLOGS - i realize this is blogging 101, but you’d be surprised how many people are unfamiliar with RSS readers and email subscriptions.

do you bookmark all your favorite blogs or manually type them in when you visit them? save yourself a ton of time by subscribing.

you can do this easily by subscribing by email (click here to do that with my blog) and have my updates come straight to your inbox.

or, use an RSS reader like google reader or bloglines. all of your favorite blogs should have a subscribe button (mine is up top under my header that says “feed”) and by clicking on this on each of those blogs, you are pretty much consolidating all the blogs you read into one webpage! it is automatically updated whenever someone posts something.

i use google reader…here’s a screenshot. see how all the blogs i read are in that window? i can just scroll through them all to read them, and click on them if i want to leave a comment.

use a reader to subscribe to my blog by clicking here!

2. POST TITLES - see how in the URL bar it has my domain, then is followed by the date, and then the title of this post? this helps people find your blog through SEO (or search engine optimization). sometimes blogs use a numbering system instead…search engines don’t like that.

use thoughtful titles and you’ll have more people discover what you’re blogging about.

3. IMAGE TITLES - you know how when you upload pics from your camera, they are named DSC_009 or something? if you change that and use the same hyphenation technique as in #2, this will also help search engines (and especially image searches) find your blog. i’d like to bring some more exposure to compassion international, so for the sponsorship posts, i title my photos “compassion-international-uganda-childname.jpg”

name-your-pics-like-this.jpg and more people will find relevant content on your blog!

there are a million other little things that help make your blog easy to find and easy to read…but these are three important ones!

any tips you’d like to share?

did you know?

–there is a female feature we call breasts. they can also be referred to as “boobies,” or “the twins,” or “the rack,” or “jugs,” so on, so forth.

–most men find this particular feature interesting. tempting. and amazing.

–upon catching a glimpse of said feature (regardless of how much is actually exposed), it is likely for a man’s mind to go to places it shouldn’t.

–with above knowledge, women, you now are educated and have no excuse.

–PLEASE USE WISDOM WHEN YOU DRESS YOURSELF.

aside: call me a prude. call me whatever. i don’t really care. and as much as this may seem like “casting judgment” (said in a very, scary, echo-y loud voice) on members of the female gender, please get a freaking clue.

i was doing some bloggy-clicking-around during my lunch and it amazes me how many “nice christian girls” (some who are even in church leadership - gasp!) show quite a bit of skin. in the office, at church parties, whatever (oh, and then post them ALL OVER THE INTERNET!)

please forgive me if it seems i have something stuck, as they say, where the sun don’t shine.

I DO.

it’s called modesty.

and if you are supposed to be living examples of godly women…you should too!

that is all.

sermon over.

please, carry on.

[this is also part of watercooler wednesday!]

my friend hemant, aka, friendlyatheist, reposted monday’s blog about keeping your mouth shut.

his readers have left some interesting comments.

one comment in particular, caught my attention.

greta writes,

I gotta say, I don’t know if I could say anything harsher or more critical than the comments people actually made on the original post. I’m actually sort of impressed. A lot of them sound more hard-line atheist than me. I just can’t figure out why half of them keep going to church if that’s how they feel.

The one that made me want to cry:
Raising my hand: “Umm, pastor? I have a question.”
Damn. If that’s the thing you can’t say in church, there is something seriously wrong.

now, don’t get me wrong. that post wasn’t there to make everyone feel guilty or anything. i just wanted to know deep down, what some of your thoughts were and how you felt.

why do we feel that way? thoughts?

======

chris and i were staring at our bookshelves (see the fun you can have when you are married?) and we counted 14 bibles (17 if you count the one parallel bible with 4 translations).

how many bibles do you have in your house?

i just had my mind blown.

here i was, on my own darn blog, and i see my own darn compassion international widget.

(it’s over there on the left. see it? yup.)

ok, so on it, i see this beautiful girl and i had to click. so i did.

and i am reading about rosemary. she is seven years old.

her household duties?

Carrying water, gardening and caring for children.

i look up again. seven? yes. she’s seven.

ok, so this is not uncommon. many children care for their siblings in africa. even younger ones.

and then, what do i read?

There are 9 children in the family.

NINE CHILDREN?! OH MY GOODNESS.

this girl helps care for her eight brothers & sisters!

and i keep reading…and learn this:

Half of the adults are unemployed but some work as subsistence farmers and earn the equivalent of $6 per month.

her family maybe makes six bucks a month. i spent that much on gas driving today!

=========

now, imagine with me a moment…(insert floaty, dreamy music here)…

someone sponsors rosemary. $32/month. that is six times what her parents make! her entire humongous family begins to see the benefits of having rosemary registered with compassion international.

but…not only that…

rosemary’s family hears about jesus! (this is a cool story about how a family came to know christ through a sponsored child).

ahhh-mazing?

indeed.

plus, can you imagine the incredible stories you are going to hear from a little girl with eight siblings? that is going to be some fun letter-exchanging going on right there.

ROSEMARY HAS BEEN SPONSORED! THANK YOU!!!sponsor rosemary now! note: please do not click the “select this child” button unless you are sure you would like to sponsor her, as doing so will make her page unavailable for an hour or so.