Apparently, while we had our head turned or something, our website had (at least since we started tracking these things) our 50,000th visit! Hooray! As near as Orin can tell, it was someone in California checking out the lyrics to our song from the NCCYM comedy event a few years ago, May God Bless and Keep You (Far Away From Me). We’re also over 100,000 page views, which is noteworthy.
Thanks, Oddwalkia, for the support over the years and into the future!
Allow us to reintroduce to you: us! Oddwalk Ministries! No, we’re the same two guys, the same mix of faith and fun, just refocused now with a message of “Jesus, Justice, Joy.”
JESUS – The man at the core of our ministry, at the core of our Christian faith. Jesus wants a relationship with each of us personally, and as his ministers, we much help people discover that relationship though his actions in our words and deeds.
JUSTICE – Each of us is made in the image and likeness of God, created to be a place for the divine to dwell. Once we are able to accept that and see it in others and ourselves, we can never treat another human the same way again. Treating each person with the dignity they deserve is at the core of who we are.
JOY – In the words of Pope Francis, “You are invited to join in the feast, to the joy of being saved, to the joy of being redeemed, to the joy of sharing life with Christ. This is a joy! You are called to a party!” Oddwalk through our music and storytelling, tries to embody God’s invitation to each of us.
To go along with our refocus selves is a spiffy new logo. We hope you like the same-but-new Oddwalk!
The map below highlights (in blue) all of the places Oddwalk has been over the years. Some of those states look sooo lonely dressed all in white. They’re bummed because we’ve never been there. Some of the highlighted states are “blue” because we haven’t been back there in a while.
If you’re looking to cheer up a few sad and lonely states, just follow this link: http://oddwalkministries.com/oddblog/contact-us/
Congrats!
With some helpful sleuthing from the winner himself, we are please to announce that Matthew Robaszkiewicz from the NFCYM offices is our big winner! Congratulations Matthew, and let us know what you’d like as your prize, and how to get them to you! (You know how to find us.)
Hooray! And thanks again to all who helped us reach this milestone.
Well, #40,001 did not step forward to claim the big prize so it’s on to #40,002. Here’s what we know:
– Visited our site from in or near Hyattsville, MD
– At 10:09 Eastern time
– From a windows machine running Firefox at screen resolution 1920×1200
– Came to our site from a facebook posting
– Visited several pages while dropping by (thanks!)
– May have something to do with the Catholic Legal Immigration Network
– Or maybe a theological college nearby?
(It’s a bit frightening how much we can easily find out, isn’t it? And we’re not even Facebook or Google!)
So, this person now has 24 hours to identify him-or-herself. If not, the $40 merch prize will go to visitor 40,003, and we already know who he is! So, a winner in the next day for sure. Thanks again for visiting!
Yes, we have our first candidate for a winner of the $40 in Oddwalk merch – and yes, visitor 40,001, because according to our sitemeter, visitor 40,000 was Orin, checking to see how close we were, and of course, he’s ineligible for the prize.
So, here’s what we know about visitor 40,001 – he or she is:
– from or near Colorado Springs, CO
– visited our site because we posted about it on facebook
– that was around 7:55am Colorado time
– adlephia.net could be their service provider
So, if that sounds like you, let us know! You have 24 hours to drop us a line. If that person can’t be identified, we’ll move on to 40,002 and on and on until we have a winner! So, keep leaving self-identifying comments, just in case!
Thanks all for helping us reach this milestone!
Hello friends! As of this posting, we at the Oddblog are about 150 unique visits away from number 40,000 (since we’ve been keeping track, anyway). So, it’s prize time again! Our 40,000th visitor will receive $40 in free Oddwalk merchandise – CDs, shirts, fair trade, etc. As always, Oddwalk and our families are not eligible. It would be most helpful for your cause too if you’d leave a comment on this post when you visit so we can try to identify you. If we can’t identify visitor 40,000 or that visitor doesn’t respond to our “You Won!” email, we’ll move on to 40,001 and on and on until we do have a winner.
So, visit the Oddblog early and often, and tell your friends to do so too. We expect a winner sometime this week or early next at the latest. Thanks for all your support over the years, and good luck!
We assume the book also has a bottom half.
We were excited to learn today that a psalm setting of ours, Psalm 31, “I Give My Spirit” has been included in a large resource for Christian worship titled Psalms For All Seasons. It’s being unveiled this weekend at the Calvin College Worship Symposium. It’s a unique, moody setting of the Good Friday lament, not at all our usual fare. You can listen to a little clip here – it’s on our GIA CD “Walk Away Different” and already included in their great resource “Cross Generation” as well. Thanks for sharing in our good news!