One Step at a Time

I made a birthday cake for my granddaughter this past week. I found a recipe in one of the magazines that said it was the only cake recipe I ever needed. I decided it was worth a try and so bought all of the ingredients. There were numerous steps. The flour and baking powder and salt had to be sifted and set aside. Then the eggs and butter needed to be beaten until smooth and creamy. Step by step I progressed until the batter was poured into the parchment covered pans. Then all went into the oven and 45 minutes later out came three beautiful layers of yellow cake. Chocolate frosting completed the job and wha-la! Birthday cake! And yes it really is the only cake recipe I will ever need!

Most great projects are accomplished step by step. A cake is a fairly simple project, but producing and filming sixty-six DVDs and eleven workbooks was not.

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By October 2004 all of the teaching had been filmed and the Old Testament books completed. But this was just a little more than half of the steps that were needed to complete the total project! We still had twenty-seven New Testament books to produce. Every DVD needed a special opener, something that would grab the attention of the viewer. Kelle and Shane would have a tremendous amount of work to do in order to come up with ideas for twenty-seven creative “grabbers’, and then produce them. Plus we wanted a new theme song and video clip that would introduce the New Testament.

And then there was the music. Twenty-seven music videos had to be produced. Vocalists needed to be found, music chosen and sets arranged. Much of the background music needed to be replayed and recorded, and some even needed to be written! Licenses for each selection needed to be obtained and some of the music required more than one license.

We did not have one testimony filmed for the New Testament books. In the beginning it was really quite easy to find the right story because we knew personally many women who had great testimonies but as we progressed, that became more difficult.

About that time Navpress told us they wanted the entire collection completed by June 2005. We had about eight months to finish the work. It was a massive undertaking and of course always there was the question of money. Would God continue to provide? Could Soteria come up with the creativity needed? Could we find the right music and testimonies? And could we possibly take on such an enormous undertaking and complete it in such a short period of time? There were many steps ahead of us and with each step an unforeseen outcome.

One thing for sure, God’s ways are not our ways and He alone orders our steps. By June 2005 our partnership with Navpress had terminated when sales did not reach the numbers they had hoped. In a very short period of time we had to completely organize and establish a sales/marketing company along with the continued work of production. We prayed and followed hard the steps that God laid before us. And quickly a company began to emerge called Big Dream Ministries which included a Customer Care Director (Dorinda Hathaway), an Office Manager/web site coordinator (Jodie Mannion), a Board of Directors (Sally Shriver, Linda Sweeney, Eleanor Lewis, Robin Rosebrough and myself), a Warehouse Manager (Rosemary Nelson) and a Product Assembly Director ( Franna Luther). As for finishing the entire sixty-six book collection? It would take another year. The last set of DVDs arrived in the warehouse on June 23, 2006.

All projects require one step at a time. But as one follows hard after God, those steps must first be His. We seldom know where He is going but it is His steps we follow, one step at a time, and those steps prove to be the very best!

Uphold my steps in Your paths,

That my footsteps may not slip.

Psalm 17:5