A letter to you:
Hello! Well, here we are, printing the first issue of “Young Women Stepping Heavenward”... It’s definitely been a fun and challenging experience to put this issue together, and we hope that every one of you enjoys reading the submissions as much as we have!
Thank you so much! Thank you! Thank you so much, girls (and ladies), for all the wonderful spiritual stories, poems, testimonies, and articles that you sent in! We truly believe it’s a blessing when teenage girls can learn to share with other teenage girls, not only about the practical, everyday areas of life, such as cooking, sewing, gardening, etc., but also when they can open up and share how God has saved them and speak about what He has been doing in their lives!
About this magazine... Have you fully comprehended what the purpose of “Young Women Stepping Heavenward” is? It is to encourage young women like you and me to "Press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." - Philippians 3:14 -
We are to strive to be perfect here on earth, even though we know we will never attain that complete perfection until we leave our earthly bodies and go to be with our Lord. In our Christian walk here on earth, we should be continually growing, stepping higher and higher, becoming more and more perfect, and shining brighter and brighter with the glory of our Lord so that all can see who we are... Christians! - Servants of our Lord Jesus Christ! For this reason, we want this magazine to be a reflection of how we as Christian young people should be living our lives on earth for Him, and for Him only!!!
Just to let you know... We hope that it will be the Lord’s will for us to continue printing this magazine for many months to come, but as we are not able to tell the future, we can never know exactly what plans the Lord may have for us somewhere on down the road. - Hence the reason for our request that you subscribe to receive only 3 issues at a time. (for 9 stamps)
Also, our parents feel that it’s very important that this magazine doesn’t become such a big deal in our lives that it becomes more important to us to send the issues out by specific dates, than it does to spend time serving and helping in our family. So... if the issues are not always sent out on time, please bear with us and understand why. We will do the best we can, but we must not allow our family and prayer lives to suffer at the magazine’s expense, or else Satan will be effective in his attacks against our family. If the magazine gets to be too much work, we may have to cut it down to 4 or 5 issues a year instead of 6... So please pray for us. Please, please pray for us!!! Thanks so much!
You deserve an explanation... Perhaps those of you who have read our advertisement will be wondering why we don’t have the regular section titled “A Day At Our Home”, printed in this issue of “YWSH”... Well, we had planned to print both “A Day At Our Home” and “Meet Our Family” in this issue, but later decided against printing both of them, as we felt it would be best not to take up so much space writing about our family in only one issue. Because so many of you don’t even know us, we felt it would be best to go ahead and print only the “Meet Our Family” article, and wait till the next issue to begin printing “A Day At Our Home” (2+ up-to-date diary pages illustrated with photos).
Since we wish for this magazine to be a source of fellowship for you and for us as well, we would love to receive letters from each of you! We'd love to see and hear about your families and your beliefs, etc. We may not be able to answer you personally, and that is the main reason why we will print "A Day at our Home" in each issue. (It will be our letter to you. :-) )
If you have any questions to ask us, please send a form letter with spaces for us to answer the questions on, along with an SASE, and we will try to respond to any questions that we can't address in the magazine. Or, you can e-mail us at: ywsh@pilgrimpromo.com - Thanks!
We’re looking for submissions!!! We’ve changed our minds about making “Be A Servant” and “Hey, What Happened to My Free time”, two of our regular sections. Instead, we’ve decided to print two special sections in each issue. We will inform you of these two special sections in each previous issue, so that you can know what to write articles on. However, if any of you were already planning to write articles for either “Be A Servant” or “Hey, What Happened To My Free time”, please don’t hesitate to do so. Please! Anything written with a spiritual emphasis will be deeply appreciated...
...Our special sections for the next issue will be titled, ""I Love My Sister!"”, and "How Can I Be A TRUE Friend?". For the section titled, "I Love My Sister!", please write and share with us something that you like about your sister or your sister “in Christ” so that we can print it in the next issue. (You may want to write in secretly as a surprise for her!)
For, “How Can I Be A TRUE Friend”, please write and tell us how you think a TRUE friend should act or shouldn’t act. Or maybe you could write and tell who you think we should be friends to... Only a few people?... Everyone?... Why? What must we be careful of when we are around friends who are not yet saved? Give examples. Give illustrations... Make it convincing!
Perhaps you are wondering what else we are looking for to print in this magazine... Here is a list of suggestions, but it’s not conclusive. - Anything written with spiritual emphasis will definitely be considered for printing, so just ask the Lord to give you some ideas!
However, here are the things we are definitely looking for: Spiritual stories, poems, recipes, herb articles, testimonies, crafts (or inexpensive gift ideas), pen-pal requests, cute things that your little siblings said or did, lessons that you have learned, sewing, canning, and gardening tips, suggestions for the magazine, and book reports for our regular section, “Praise and Criticize the Books”. (Please send in book reports on Christian books you’ve read. - But don’t only write about the desirable books. We Christian girls also need to be warned about the undesirable books as well!!!)
Mothers and grandmothers, we would also love to have you write! Anything you feel would be helpful to pre-teen and teenage girls we would deeply appreciate!! Just a few suggestions: Testimonies of godly, “hands off” courtships, birth stories, and perhaps the hardest thing for you to write (but the most helpful) would be a testimony of a mistake you made in your life that you paid dearly for afterwards. (Example: See article, “My Experience With the Dating Game” on page 8 of this issue.) We inexperienced teenagers need guidance from those older and wiser women who have already learned much from their own experiences! -Titus 2:3-5 says, “The aged women... That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their husbands, that the word of God might not be blasphemed.” So please feel free to pick up your pen and write if you feel led of the Lord to do so... We girls would appreciate it so much!!!
To anyone who wishes to write a letter... We would love to be able to print a page of letters in the issues to come, so.. please write in! Why don’t you let your letter be a letter of testimony?! Write and tell everyone which articles meant the most to you and why. How have they blessed your life? There is nothing more encouraging to the writers than to know that they are actually blessing someone spiritually by sharing! Well, I guess it’s time to wrap this up! May God bless your lives as He helps you to serve Him, and may your hearts burn with fire for Him, and for Him only!!!
(Everyone please note: Any work you send in, might be subject to editing and revising as we see fit.)