I just want to tell you how excited I am to be an online mentor.  As a mentor I have the opportunity to share my experiences of living the Christian life, the joys and sorrows, the triumphs and failures of my walk with the Lord and His unfailing mercy and love.  It is wonderful to be able to encourage women with God's word, to pray for them online and to take an interest in what is happening all over the country and around the world.   And all this from the comfort of my own home!  This is missions as well as ministry and I don't have to travel at all.

In case you are thinking that I must be a young, computer-savy woman in her twenties - you're wrong!  I'm in my 50's and about all I can do with a computer is log onto the internet and send and receive email.  I couldn't build a website and I don't know what most of the technical jargon means but I most certainly can mentor online.  MARS (Mentoring Automated Response System) is set up in a very user-friendly way, my privacy is protected and so is the privacy of those who have questions and the system is set up to match mentors with mentorees. 

I get questions from women concerning marriage, raising children, the Christian life - areas that I have identified as being within my range of experience.  I don't get enquiries about dating, living as a single or being a career woman since these things are outside my current experience.  If I don't want to answer a particular request I have the option to reject the email and it will be sent to someone else who feels able to deal with it.  I never feel overwhelmed and I'm in complete control of how involved I wish to be. I get one email a week to answer.

A short while ago I received an email from a lady who wrote in saying that she had accepted Christ as a child but had done something recently that she had been told God could not forgive.  She asked, “Is there any hope for me?” I was able to write back and tell her that YES, there is!  What an incredible thing that was.  She woke up that morning literally hopeless, convinced that she was beyond the reach of God’s grace.  I got to tell her that she wasn’t, that God could reach her, that He was in fact reaching out to her.  Now she has hope.  The world is different for her today because I got to share God’s grace with her.

Email mentoring is such a rewarding thing to do.  I have had emails forwarded to me through MARS thanking me for scriptures, prayers, sharing my experiences of how the Lord brought me through difficult times.  I know that God is using the internet to allow people to reach out to each other and I'm blessed to be involved in this opportunity to serve. - Mary Colvin, Sarnia, ON