This was a pleasant and fun experience, and turned into more than I expected
Written: Mar 22 '04
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I first found the Christian café because I got an advertisement in my email. Most of the time I don’t read those, I tend to just delete them. This particular one intrigued me for some reason. I had recently lost my husband to a sudden death, and I enjoyed chatting online with people so I figured give it a try why not. When I first signed on they were offering 10 free days to use their site. Now I wasn’t really looking for a date, it was more just to see what this whole online dating thing was about.
When first signing up you have to fill out a questioner. Now as I answered these questions I was thinking anyone could just put whatever they wanted here. One thing that made me feel a bit better was that this was a Christian site. I filled out my information honestly and pretty freely, I have nothing to hide. There are several areas to this site after signing in.
Quick Match: This area will match you based on geographical area, age, type of religion, and the type of relationship you may be interested in. Mine at the time was listed as just friends. Okay this was kind of cool, at that point you can send an email to the people that you might want to talk to. It tells you if that person is online at the time, and you can send messages back and forth through the quick message option. As you talk with others you can add them to your friends list.
Friends List: This list tells you when your friends are online or not. You can go to each of their profiles from here or leave them a message for later. It also tells when the last time friend was on the site. That was cool because you would know if they had been on yet for the day or if you just missed them or not. This is also available in the who’s on section.
Who’s on: This area is a listing of who else is on the site while you are. You can select to only look at the males or females or both. From here you can choose to quick message someone and talk back and forth.
Testimonials: In this section you can read what members have written about the site or the people they have met on the site. Always good when you have a dating site to have some listed that have met and are happy here.
Post a Prayer: You can post a prayer request, for other members to be able to read and pray for. I liked this section, as I would read others requests and remember them in my prayers that day.
All of the above areas can be used free. Which leads me to the paid area which is the chat mode. You could only use the chat area if you were a paying member. Now I had a 10 day free trial and at the time they allowed you to chat for free for those 10 days. Just to get you hooked. LOL Well I also found if I posted a photo on my profile I could get 5 more days free., and if I referred friends and they signed in I got 3 more days for each one. Okay really cool.
Chat: When I first decided to enter the chat arena I was cautious, but I soon found everyone there to be so friendly they really made you feel like one of the group. The café was fast becoming part of my daily routine. The café offers chat topics along with the regular room. They have scheduled topics on each different day, and you could choose to join if you wanted to. Well I joined in on a few topics, one being a topic for single parenting. It was a great group where moms and dads shared ideas and view on parenting. I was quickly one of the group, and I was even asked to fill in as a moderator for the single parenting chat by the group moderator. For doing this I got a few more days of free time. Then the café offered a special to anyone who moderated a chat room could have free café time. So I designed my own chat topic and submitted it with a plan of action and soon I was a fulltime moderator of my own topic “ Forgiveness and God’s Grace” each week I held my topic and had quite a room full of people joining me.
The feeling in the Christian café was so warm and friendly it became a place I really loved to go. There were many there who were widowed, even at a young age. I felt I had a common bond with other people there. Although the site had many who were definitely looking to meet their mate, there were also those of us who just loved the company. I did sign up for a 1 year membership which they were having a special at the time. Another nice feature in the chat rooms was the ability to go to private chat also known as PC with another member, so every one else in the room could not see what you were saying to each other.
Membership fees:
Biscotti (2 weeks) is $16.95
Coffee (1 month) is $27.95
Café Latte (3 months) is $44.95
Mocha Java (6 months) is $69.95
Coffee Collection (1 year) is $99.95
As you can see there is a savings for joining for each longer period of time. I signed up for the full year, and to my surprise when I did that because I moderated a chat the company matched my time.
They offer relation ship advise, Christian cruises, and safety tips as well.
Well as I got into the café more and more I guess I became a sort of icon I watched as couples met and married and moved on. It was great all the support there was in the café. Different groups got together and met and then it started to grow soon they had big meetings and the friendships grew.
My personal experience:
I started on the Café in April of 2002. As I had previously stated I was not looking for a partner, just friends to talk with. Well there was this person who would come to my chats and we would talk here and soon we would PC each other. Now nothing would come of this as I lived in NY, and he lived in Texas, but it was becoming a nice friendship. We talked about the kids, houses, jobs, and everything else under the sun. Before long we exchanged phone numbers and started talking on the phone. Yes you guessed it one thing leads to another. We decided to meet. Now being the mother of 4 I wanted still to be cautious, so I decided to fly to Texas and meet him there I did not want my kids involved. They had already been through enough. I know these are chances you take, but I was careful or at least I thought I was. He had given me his work number I knew that the things he had told me so far had checked out, and my sister knew where I was and how to get a hold of me. I had my cell phone. As it turned out he was indeed exactly who he said he was, and we had a nice weekend. I still figured okay we would be friends and all was fine. Well yes one thing still leads to another and he wanted to meet my family. So he came to New York, and before long he made a decision to move. Yes from Texas to NY. We became engaged in Dec. of 2002 and we recently married in Nov .2003. Yes we took our time and got to know one another. Now our connected family consists of His 2 grown children and my 4 children, 2 dogs and a cat.
If it were not for the Christian café we would have never met, and I still continue to host a chat on the café and also use the chat to encourage others. It is still a great community with many friends that I don’t want to leave behind.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
uffda6
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Location: Sunny AZ
Reviews written: 195
Trusted by: 48 members
About Me:
We moved from NY to AZ so I am getting used to my new surroundings.
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