Happy New Year to one and all!
The LifeSite team wishes to express heartfelt gratitude to all who donated during the Christmas campaign period — both as direct donors to the campaign and as regular monthly (sustainer) donors.
The campaign goal was achieved and exceeded by almost 10 percent! For that we thank you and we thank God.
As we note during each campaign, the goal that is set is only a minimum amount needed, so when the goal is exceeded we are especially relieved. The constant pressures of what we can or cannot afford to take on are gratefully lessened and we are therefore able to serve you better than ever. That is all we ever want to do.
Every day we go through a morning assignment call and many important story proposals have to be shelved because we don’t have enough journalists. Thankfully, however, that has been becoming less of a problem because of your generosity.
As well, and thanks again to you, we have now reached a stage where we are finally able to pay our staff more reasonable wages than the sacrificial wages they had to cope with for many years. And, because of that, we are also able to attract even more competent persons to this mission to make it the best in the world of its type.
Hopefully, our campaign letters gave you a good idea of the enormous amount of complex work and long, intense hours our team members put into this mission day in and day out. Most of them are married with young children and many of them are sole providers for their families, several of whom have five or more children.
Your generosity allows us to retain these incredibly committed and talented persons and to hire more to fill in the gaps that still exist in our needs list.
One of the next projects that we need to tackle is the development of a fund to ensure that LifeSite will be able to continue through periods of financial downturns in the economy or other large, unexpected financial hits to LifeSite. We usually, at the beginning of each campaign, only have sufficient funds in the bank to keep us going for about a month at best, and often less.
If any of you are able to become involved in a long-term financial stability program for LifeSite, we would love to hear from you. Living on the edge all of the time does take somewhat of a stress toll.
But once again, we are extremely grateful for all of the financial, prayer and other support that we have received from loyal readers.
In reality, you are the engine that drives this mission. Your numerous messages of support assure us that we are doing the right thing and greatly help us to confidently endure the attacks from those who accuse us of all kinds of unjust things because they are repelled by truth that they don’t want or can’t bear to hear and don’t want anyone else to be exposed to as well.
Jesus Christ said, “I am the Way, the Life and the Truth.” We are totally committed to Truth, which is the greatest way to love our neighbor, through our news reporting.
Thank you ever so much for permitting us to do this wonderful work for you. It is a great privilege.
God bless,
Steve Jalsevac
Co-founder and president
LifeSite
