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Greetings To Everyone At AdlandPro From John Sanchez and LaNell!
It’s time again for my favorite project of the week and that is the Feature of The Week! It is my favorite project because you folks and the POTW’s of the week make it a very special event. We are all so fortunate to be a part of this community that is made up of so many friendly and talented people. Thank you so much for your support and for making this event so special. Love and Blessings to you all! John R. Sanchez
The reason the Feature of the Week forum was created was to honor people who have a positive influence on this community. To qualify the person has to be an active member and one who contributes to the positive atmosphere here AdlandPro. Here are the criteria for selecting a member for the Feature of the Week (also referred to as the
Person of the Week, POTW). This criterion can be seen at the site below:
Criterion
How Do I Get Selected as Person of the Week?
To be chosen as Person of the week you:
• Are highly visible on the community
• Are always seen as respectful, professional, and helpful.
• Must be
nominated for the program by another member of the Community and voted on by other members.
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Folks our first POTW for the month of February is an awesome lady by the name of Cheryl Baxter. Cheryl is a very professional and courteous member of the community who is always lending a helping hand. She performs her good deeds without expecting anything in return. She’s a humble and wise woman of faith who lives by her beliefs. It’s an honor to have her on one’s list of friends and it’s an honor to declare her as this week’s Person of the Week. Congratulations Cheryl! Have fun this week!
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Here’s
Cheryl’s bio:
Texas sandstorms, tumbleweeds and oil wells, this is the scenery that I grew up with. Some say that this familiar west Texas scenario gets in your blood and you won’t ever want to experience living somewhere else. Well…that’s not my idea of dream country, though Kermit Texas did have its good points. For one – my life long friend Sylvia. We were first introduced when I was five years old and she was four. Today, Sylvia and her husband live in Midland, Texas. Their two daughters have grown up and gotten out of college and married…and we’re still friends. Isn’t that incredible? I love it!!! Someone who knows all of your history….and still wants to be your friend! I’ll never forget the Christmas that Sylvia’s dad dressed up as Santa Claus and came to our house. It’s so funny thinking of this (and so many other memories of my early years in west Texas). He’s a man about six feet 4 inches tall and a slender build….and though he was big…he wasn’t very round. No one noticed that much though….especially my six year old brother, who’s eyes lit up like a Christmas tree when we opened the door. Very interesting that Santa had on white work gloves, like the ones you might see an oil field worker have on. :-)
We lived just a short distance from miles and miles of sand dunes. One of the fun things I remember was my dad having a dune buggy that he and some of his buddies built. We would go out and ride up and down those dunes until there was so much sand everywhere, I wonder how we could’ve continued breathing with all that sand flying. I think that’s where the term “sand blasting” came from. LOL!!!
When I was fourteen we moved to Fort Worth, where I spent the next few years in school. When I graduated from high school at eighteen, I went straight into a two year program to become an X-Ray technologist. Once this was completed and I passed the national registry certification, I was offered a job in Fort Worth at the hospital where I had done my clinical student training. Here, I worked for the next eight years. Then, I began to feel restless and decided that I wanted to experience living somewhere else. One of my friends had gotten out of the military and was moving back to the Pacific Northwest and I had been invited to go on vacation as she moved back home. I fell in love with the Oregon coast, and everywhere we went was just beautiful! Well, about two months later I called my friend and said “how would you like to have a room mate?” She jumped at the opportunity, since she had moved back to her parents for the time being. To make a long story shorter….I’ll just say that I loved living in Oregon, where I stayed for the next seven years. But I decided after my father passed away that I needed to move back closer to family, so I moved back to Texas and have been here ever since. I have many wonderful friends that I still keep up with and visit in Oregon, and now and then one of them still asks me when I’m moving back. Since my dream home is on the Oregon coast….this could still be in my future.
For the past 15 years I've worked in an area called MRI imaging having passed a certification exam to become a Registered MRI Technologist. This was a natural stepping stone since I had been in the imaging field of medicine all of my adult life. For years I worked many long hours with a lot of overtime, as well as being on call. In 1995 or so, I began to recognize that I needed to find another way to earn money. I had been working 10 -12 hours a day for quite a few years & not only was this exhausting but it wasn’t getting me where I wanted to be financially.
Like many, I felt that I my training had prepared me for only for medical work, so “what would I do?” I could see that I would need more to retire on than I had prepared for. Most people at the age of 65 still have to work to supplement their income. In 1999 I began to see up close and personal just how big of a problem this is for people who are only on a retirement income. My mother had begun to have some major health problems by that time, and she was spending most of her monthly income on medication. I was appalled when I actually saw what she was having to do. I moved back to Fort Worth, TX at this time so that I could help her as much as possible, but after only five months she passed away. I knew from observing my mother, that there must be a way to avoid having to go through what she did. I didn’t know what it would be, but I decided that I must find out.
In January 2001, I began a program that someone shared with me (it was Network Marketing) & it was pretty much a total failure. In looking back I know that I did learn some valuable lessons from going through what I went through. My upline told me I wasn’t doing enough. If I made 100 calls a day, I must make more. I was teachable, coachable, etc. “What was wrong with me.” After a couple of years of this, I was so beaten up that I felt like a total failure in network marketing. It was during this time that I met some people who were successful networkers and who shared a differing perspective than what I had been told for two years. I began to listen in on some of their generic training calls and started to see that network marketing isn’t just about recruiting others who will make you money. Network marketing is a relationship business and with it comes a responsibility to those that we share our business with. I believe that helping others is crucial for long term success, and my desire is to be able to help as many people as possible, so that they won’t have to go through the difficulties that I went through. People are important, no matter what business you’re in…and the more we understand this, the more success we will have.
There are only a few things in life that are extremely important, and here are the things that are most important to me. God is first and foremost in my life and I can honestly say that without His help and direction I wouldn’t have made it this far. My family and friends are very valuable to me as well and I am humbled to think of just how blessed I am in this regard.
Personally, my most valued treasures apart from those that I’ve just mentioned, are the gifts that God has given to me. I love being creative and have been given several creative abilities. Poetry and writing is something that comes from the depths of who I am. Many times I have pushed this to the back burner and when it gets ignored for too long, I find that it starts to boil over from somewhere deep within me. Even as a child I remember having a knack for writing, but back then, I never knew just how special this was. My parents didn’t understand it and they were far too busy making a living, than to encourage this natural tendency, after all -- “it just wasn’t’ practical and I needed to concern myself with learning how to support myself”. Those were almost the exact words of my mother talking to me when I was eighteen years old. I imagine that she just didn’t know quite what to think about having a girl who was always drawing on napkins and jotting down odd thoughts. Well, that’s another story.
For now, I’ll just say thank you to my Adland friends for making this possible. I have several friends who helped me in more ways than I can even know. Also, I want to thank AdlandPro, John Sanchez and LaNell for working so diligently to make the POTW possible. Friends like you make me glad to call Adland my home. I’m deeply honored and want to let you know just how much you mean to me. Thank you so much for allowing me to share my story with you. I wish you peace, love and blessings, now and always.
Your friend,
Cheryl
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Ladies and Gentlemen it’s time to tell Cheryl why we appreciate her so much. If you don’t have her on your friends list take the time to invite her right now, you won’t regret it. We’ll be checking her friends list to see if it increases and to see if you’re listening, so don’t let us down. :-)
Love and blessings to you all from, 0:-)
John Sanchez and
LaNell
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