An Update

I've been wanting to update you all on our situation since the family meeting, but wanted to wait until we had some kind of good news, so as not to seem completely hopeless, which is how we've been feeling most the time.

Scott's meeting with the family search team went really well. They are really excited about his product, but they wanted him to make one major change - update to the new api. They are in the process of switching everything from family search to the new family tree. It is still very new and has a lot of bugs, which is why Scott chose to use the old api. Also, there was a gem (a piece of code) written to use to connect to the old site, and not one written to use for the new site. So, while we were excited about their overall reaction to Scott's product (which, by the way, is called Arbor Vitae Reports), we were very discouraged at the prospects of several more months of struggling to try to learn how to write the new code. Also, it was very discouraging to know that he would not be able to present the product at the conference coming up next week, which we had been counting on to be able to start making some money.

Scott also heard back from the company that had said they wanted to make him an offer. It's a really long, bizarre story, but the main point is that they chose another candidate.

So, we've been discouraged and stressed and working really hard to try to figure out what to do. We still feel very strongly about finishing the program, but really have no idea how long it will take. And we can't go much longer without an income. Though we absolutely know that the Lord has provided for us, as He promised, and that He can continue to do that, we really want to be able to provide for ourselves again.

Today, we had a couple of glimmers of hope. Scott is starting to understand what it will take to make the necessary changes, and now just needs the time to do it. And this evening, the main guy at the family search office called to invite Scott to participate on a panel with 2 other new developers at the Roots Tech conference next week. He'll be able to briefly introduce his product and answer questions. So, we're excited about that and so hopeful that by some miracle Scott will be able to have the product ready to go by then. (If not, he can show it using the old api, but it would be great if he could get them interested in a product that would be currently available to subscribe to.) So, that's what we're praying for.