This week we were encouraged to find news about Thinking About Suicide posted by the ASSIST News Service.

An article written for ASN by Michael Ireland, Senior International Correspondent, shared how our founder, Linda Evans Shepherd with Right to the Heart ministries has ministered to the suicidal since New Year’s Eve, 2003. He quoted Linda:

“That night it occurred to me to use Internet marketing tools to put our interactive gospel presentation, GodTest.com,  into the suicidal lanes of the Internet.

“Before the night was over, we saw 20 people come to faith. Since then, we’ve added tools for the depressed and helped over 300,000 come to faith, while preventing literally thousands of suicides.”

When Google changed its search algorithm, it became more difficult for faith seekers and hurting people to find Godtest.com.

Looking for a solution, Linda took online marketing classes, then founded the blog Finding God Daily to help lead people to God Test. But this past November, an incident prompted her to start our site, Thinking About Suicide. She wanted to offer a faith-based suicide prevention site with personal stories to comfort those who have lost family or friends. It is also of course our hope to prevent desperate people from taking their own lives.

From Ireland’s article:

It was 10:35 a.m. when she (Linda) heard sirens screaming down her street. Later, on the local news, she was shocked to learn that a beautiful 22-year-old neighbor, who had just graduated with honors from University of Colorado Boulder, had purposefully ended her life by throwing herself in front of an 18-wheeler.

That this suicide happened three blocks from her home, only feet from her church, the very church which helped to sponsor her ministry’s efforts to reach the suicidal, was not lost on Shepherd.

“I was heartbroken when our newspaper reported that Katy’s last online search was ‘how to kill yourself.’ How I wished she could have found our helps for hope, life, and faith, instead of those ghastly instructions on how to die.”

Shepherd then asked members of  the  Advanced Writers and Speakers Association (AWSA, an organization for Christian writers and speakers which she also founded) to write for our site.

“It’s our hope that by creating over 200 new articles per year on suicide, featuring bullying, military, teens, marriage, divorce, job loss, depression, surviving the loss of a loved one, survival stories, chronic pain, and illness, that we will populate the Internet with help and hope,” said Shepherd.

Since its launch in March, Thinking About Suicide has reached over 1,000 people per month from around the world. It has already helped to prevent suicides, connect the hurting with helps, and seen over 800 people come to faith through God Test.

“Suicide has touched almost every family in the US as well as families from around the world. Please join us in prayer that our online encouragement will make a difference as we point our readers to hope and to a God who really cares,” she said.

Please tell others about how how our site can help the suicidal and those who have lost friends and family to suicide.  You can subscribe to our site via the subscribe button, or share (through Twitter, Facebook, Google + and other places) any  articles you believe are helpful and possibly life-saving. Please share the good news about Thinking About Suicide.

Many thanks to the Assist News Service for printing this information about us. Click HERE to see the original article.

Also we just discovered that  Lisa Copen from Rest Ministries (Chronic Illness Ministry) did a wonderful video review of our blog. (Thank you, Lisa!)

Thinking About Suicide Blog Has Encouragement and Heart