Our Wives of Faith Board of Directors got together this week for a meeting via Skype. It was our first time not to meet in person since my husband and I made the move to South Carolina last month, but I was happy to see the distance made no difference in our discussion and planning that took place!

We have some great folks leading on our Board and I hope for you to get to know each of them over the coming months. Shauna Irizarry has been with WoF the longest (besides me), serving on our original leadership team, and has become heavily involved, not just as a board member, but also heads up the Rutherford County local Wives of Faith group as well as our Prayer Ministry. My husband, Cliff, a Navy Reservist in his 13th year of service  has been there since the beginning too and now offers his civilian marketing and promotion experience to our board.

Deanna Fullerton has some incredible experience in her professional work with the National Guard, as well as being a National Guard wife for more than 20 years. She’s a wonderful asset to us in terms of knowing and making available the resources that are out there for military spouses.  And Stephanie Arredondo has been working very hard behind the scenes with our treasurer, Allison McCord, to get our i’s dotted and our t’s crossed when it comes to our books. Stephanie’s business background and corporate board experience has already helped us a great deal. As a National Guard wife, Stephanie shares the Wives of Faith vision to reach and encourage other military wives and I’m excited she’s serving on our board.

(For more info on each of our board members, feel free to check out our Board page, under the About section. )

During our meeting, we discussed many things but there are three important pieces of news I’d like you to know about now.

Our biggest news? We are now a 501 c (3) non-profit ministry! We will post a more formal announcement in the coming days, but we applied and have been accepted by Logos Global Network as an associate ministry under their organization. Our ministry and all decisions will still be autonomous to Wives of Faith, but through LGN, we now can accept tax-deductible donations. This has been a desire of mine for a long time for us to be able to raise money and resources that will not just keep the ministry going but be put into ministries and programs that will directly bless and encourage you and other military wives and now, with this news, we’ll be able to do that.

So with that change, we also have a few changes happening online with this website. Our poll we’ve been running for about a month now has received great response and has helped us pinpoint what new features you’d like to see with Wives of Faith. We will be redoing our website during the month of July so please bear with us as you notice changes.

One addition that received the highest number of votes will be a weekly Daily Word of Encouragement. We would love to eventually turn this into a Daily, but we will need your help to do that. More details on that to come…

Another addition we are working on is a message board. This was the second highest vote from our poll. We currently have been “sharing” a message board with FMWCN but we’ve had several requests for us to create an online community here on our own website and I’m happy to announce that Crystal Perry, an Air Force wife currently stationed in New Mexico, has agreed to be our Message Board Director and is working on our board as I type this! She will need help, though, so…

• if you consider yourself a “people person”
• if you LOVE chatting online with other ladies
• you’re familiar with how message boards work and like the idea of helping be part of starting one from the ground up
• if you find yourself wondering how you can help encourage other military wives
• you love the mission of Wives of Faith and want to be more involved…

then Crystal wants to hear from you! Email her at crystal@wivesoffaith.org and let her know you’d like to help as a moderator!

And last but certainly not least, we are talking about holding another conference! Several of you have asked over the last year or so if we might be planning anything and this week when our Board got together, someone made the suggestion that it was time to do another one. This one will occur next year in 2011 in honor of Wives of Faith’s Fifth Anniversary. It will be in Nashville and we are looking at September tentatively. Once we have some more details confirmed, we’ll send out a “Save the Date” notice, but if this sounds like something you’d like to be a part of, let us know!

So, sorry for the long update, but I wanted you to know what’s happening and that we’re moving forward with a lot of fun and exciting things. Thanks to all of you who have been updating your member info with Jessica – it’s been fun to hear from everyone and especially those of you who have been so sweet to share what Wives of Faith means to you. (And if you haven’t yet become a member, let this be your invitation! It’s free! Here’s the member form…)

It is my fervent prayer and desire that this is a ministry that helps you connect with other military wives while connecting and growing deeply into the women God desires you to be. If there’s anything we can help you with, please don’t be afraid to ask! (sara@wivesoffaith.org)

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