I started this valentine's business with a brother from my caregroup.Though business isn't really good up till today, think our publicity is still very lacking, think i ve learned alot from this experience and think God really guided me in my thoughts throughout and also, felt challenged many times.

Last yr tamar started this thing abt selling flowers for valentines and guan rui also did his selling of cards. Tamar was very successful in hers and guan rui did not ve many sales. Think his lack publicity. So seeing this i was like lets combine flowers and cards together to sell for v day for 2008. Told guan rui abt it and we both thought it was a good idea.

We never mentioned it again until like one week b4 sch start, when i realised how close v day was and we ve not started on it at all. So i guan rui if he is really interested cause there is a commitment to make and lots of things to do. He said yes and tt it was one of his new yr resolution too. So tt week we set off to find our source of flowers. An idea struck me and that was to make our sales more attractive with add-on bears for the flowers and also cards, cushions and key chains for friends and couples.

Many ppl will often associate v day with couples and friends are often left out, hence we included this aspect into our business too. We did not ve much time to source for the items for friends, thus think our items may not be tt attractive.

God really blessed us because on the day wen we were supposed to hunt for our flower supplier, i suddenly rem my mum's frien who is very resourceful and knows alot of ppl. Called her and her husband knows this florist very well and so we went straIGHT there to find her and she gave us a good price. There were both flowers and bears. So save us alot of trouble.

On my way to meet guan rui, i was just thinkin about the name of our 'shop'. Suddenly i thought of immanuel. So i suggested to him "An immanuel valentine's" which means a god with us valentines. A valentine's day with the presence of God, remembering God's love in our lives too. and tt's how we got our name :)

we settled things quite quickly and was really efficient. On sun we started on our blog. Jasmine did the blog skin for us, while i name n added descriptions of the bouquets of flowers, bears, keychains and cushions and put on the prices. Guan rui on the other hand put the pictures and the descriptions onto the blog itself. We were good partners, each ve their own set of skills and our strengths and weaknesses.

By sun night our blog was up and kicking and we officially email out to everyone. We also publicise on slips of paper too.

Another thing that was really amazing was: while doing the blog on sun, i was looking for the meaning of valentine's day cause i needed to do the introduction for our blog. Den i came upon this christian website which talks abt the true meaning of v day and abt God's love for us. TT's why our "an immanuel valentine's" talks about God's love for people. At first i was wondering why immanuel suddenly came to my mind when i was thinking abt our name, Howver, after i came onto that website, i understood.

v day isn't just abt love btw man but also god's love. it is god who first chose to love us and tt's why we are able to experience love n are able to love. Love started and came from God himself. I pray that ppl who visit the blog will be imapcted in 1 way or another and tt a seed ll be left in them. So far abt 500 ppl has visited our blog, over a period of 1 week :) God's love is being spread around!!!

Thinking of putting an addition part to our blog that invites ppl to service for v day. yup yup... will think this thru 1st and see wat we can do abt it.

i learned alot thru this because i understood myself better, in terms of my strengths and my weaknesses. In the midst of doing this, my initial plan was to glorify god with the profits we earned. But in the midst of it i was so distracted in earning more n more profits and was so driven by it tt i was really affected when the sales were so low. Think i was feeling down and kept wonderign y god didn't bless our business. Thru this, i also struggled with the issue of pride and was taking pride in the things i was able to do n the ideas i had. Which was really silly cause God was the one who gave me those ideas and used me to glorify Him. For e 1st few days, really struggled with these issues but thru prayer and asking God to purify my thots and to help me understand all these, i managed to find peace again.

Its abt putting my perspective right. On God or on the things i do. ALso realised tt i m not good at publicity. haha.... but thank god tt guan rui is able to fill up this gap :)

Still ve 3 more weeks to go. As we do what we can to reach the masses, i pray tt ppl ll be impacted and tt i ll stay focused on the reason of doing this.

 

Signing off at 9:16 AM