Thursday we sent the snail mail version of Odie's newsletter. Today I am posting it here for you. On The Road Again is an important part of staying connected to our families and the churches where we have preached. It is a project Odie started shortly after we went back on the road nearly 16 ago and it has been well received.
2003 was well before social media begin to come of age. Although we had ditched a land line, we only had one cell phone in the family and we were lucky to be able to check our email more than once a week.
Not much internet connectivity here.
Our family did move into the smart phone age and began to tap texts and emails with our dinosaur fingers, but we kept right on plugging along with On The Road Again newsletter and eventually our website. We still send hand written "thank you" notes and even the occasional letter.
We know that we could probably connect with more people by diving headlong into social media, but we are happy to be free from the corresponding drama of social media. We are satisfied speaking to the millions, OK, just one million, that read this website and the hundreds that receive the newsletter.
I think it might be nice to hear from Odie concerning the newsletter. In the interest of investigative journalism, I asked Odie some hard hitting questions about On The Road Again. Odie's answers are below in red. I hope you enjoy our fun little interview.
-When did
you begin the On The Road Again
newsletter and what did you write about?
We sent the first issue out on February 6, 2003, one
month after Dad resigned the church in Wichita and we hit the road.
I
wrote about the revivals we had preached in Oklahoma, Kansas, Tennessee and
back to Kansas. I also wrote about pulling our trailer to Ohio for licensing,
visiting family, attending one morning of the Minister’s Conference in
Strawberry Plains and a couple more of the churches where we had preached.
I ended the first newsletter with this, “Well,
I hear the truck starting so I better go ‘cause we’re On The Road
Again!”
How old were you at the time?
I was 17.
Do you remember what gave you the idea
to begin a newsletter?
That is a good question, I am not sure what gave me the idea, but I asked Dad if he and Mom would help me do it and he said they would. He likes to say, he bought the paper, the ink, the envelopes, the labels and the stamps, edited the content, printed the letter and allowed me to soak up the credit. It is pretty much an accurate statement, but it was MY idea!
How did it start out?
We sent it to our families and the
churches we had recently preached in or were scheduled to preach in. It turned
out to be a great way to keep our family and friends informed about our life
and schedule.
We have pretty much kept it that way. Although the address list has grown by leaps and bounds, we have purposely kept the number in check so that we could be good stewards of the resources God give us.
How many issues a year do you publish?
We have published between 4 and 7 issues
a year. We have tried to settle in at about 5 issues each year.
Do you do it all by yourself or is it a
team effort?
It is absolutely a team effort!
My Mother has taken a larger role in recent years. She does the layout, helps
Dad with printing labels and often helps me with stuffing envelopes, labels and
stamps. We started having the newsletters professionally printed a few years
ago. It adds a little to the expense, but it gave us a lot of flexibility in
design and a nice looking presentation.
You are in your 16th year of writing the
newsletter. Do you have any favorite responses from readers of the newsletter?
I love getting feedback from readers. So
many stories come to mind.
In 2007 we sent the song
Bro. Joe Bill Houston wrote, “Fix It Man” to southern gospel radio across the
country. My Friend Ambrie was much younger at the time and she read about the
single in the newsletter. Her mom told me that Ambrie was ready to sit and
listen to the radio until she heard us on XM Enlighten.
My cousin in Kentucky told
us one time that their pastor read our newsletter to their church. It was a church we had only preached in one time. Then they
had special prayer for us. That was an encouragement to us.
It must seem like a chore at times. What
keeps you motivated?
Yes, at times I get
writers block when I sit down to write the newsletter. Then I start rehearsing in
my mind God’s blessings and all of the great people we have been around the previous
weeks and that motivates me.
The process of preparing them for the mail gets
overwhelming. As I mentioned, Mom helps me and sometimes others chip in
some labor. My friend Autumn Galiher helped me this week.
I like
to go through the address labels and think of our friends and pray for them as
I am preparing the envelopes for the mail. When someone lets me know they
enjoy reading, it encourages me to keep sending them!
Do you intend to continue?
Yes, we plan to continue to publish the newsletter for the foreseeable future. Our newsletter has
been an official part of Boggs Family Ministries for several years. Although we
have a website with news of our family and ministry and our schedule, the
newsletter is still a great way to let people know what is going on. A lot of
churches post it on their bulletin board. Hopefully it reminds people to pray
for us.
That is all for the hard hitting news today. Thank you for reading today.
Davy
I am hoping this link with take you to the PDF of the September On The Road Again newsletter. I have been trying to do this for a long time and I think I have finally done it!
If not, here is a picture of the September 2018 On The Road Again Newsletter.
