How it Began

HOW IT ALL BEGAN:
  My husband Steve and I began this website so we could share our creative and challenging puzzles with the world, as God seems to be directing us to do.
As a puzzler myself (all kinds of word and jig saw puzzles), I have come to love a real challenge, and have grown weary of regular Word Search Puzzles that have a simple list of words (related in some fashion or other, like “ Three syllable words that start with the letter “B”) and consequently felt the need to come up with something unique and more challenging for those of us who like to go ‘above and beyond’ the crowd, so to speak.
Thus, the “Mertes Method” of designing and creating unique, challenging and educational Word Search Puzzles was created due to direct inspiration from God. He speaks to me often and guides my hand as I write and create, and I know that when you have a personal relationship with Jesus, He will do the same for you as well. Unfortunately many Christians haven’t learned to ‘listen’ to what He says and then ACT on what they heard.
  I was one of those for many years. An idea would come into my head and I would almost instantly dismiss it with thoughts like, “Oh, that would never work,” or “I’m sure someone else has already thought of that”. This, I believe, is the Devil planting seeds of doubt in your head to keep you from acting on God’s inspirations. He delights in doing things like that. Once you start listening to Jesus, and acting on what He has told you, He will begin to share more and more ideas with you.
   Let Him know how grateful you are for every little thing or idea that he gives you or does for you (like helping you find the keys you misplaced, or getting you through a traffic jam quickly so you won’t miss an appointment), and the more gratitude you show Him, the more He will bless you. It’s true that “The nearer you go to God, the closer He will come to you".  (James 4:8)
  I guess I've always been a puzzler, along with being a teacher by profession, an entrepreneur by necessity and a crafter, jewelry designer and game creator for fun. And somewhere along the way God also made me a writer.
He also made me an outside the box type of thinker, and this mentality has been demonstrated throughout my teaching career, my various entrepreneurial pursuits and, of course, my hobbies as well. He even prompted me to home-school our children years ago when it was not the 'in fashion' thing to do.
  So, one day God put a particular word search puzzle in front of me and let me know that I should design one of my own. Just designing that first puzzle was challenging but I wanted to make it deeper and more complex, so as I always do, I began thinking outside the box.
Steve was supportive right from the start and he designed a special grid for me to use as more and more puzzle ideas flowed into my mind. We have a friend, Debbie, who enjoys doing puzzles, and we enlisted her to help, and so now we are a tiny group of 4, with God as the Top Dog and CEO.
I guess God has no immediate plans for us to retire, and I've noticed that there is no mention in the Bible about retiring anyway, so He's blessing the work of our hands through this enterprise He's given us to undertake in our golden years.
Having been a teacher for 20+ years, I delight in freely sharing with others any and all talents God has given me, as I believe this is what the Bible means when it says, “For we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God has prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:10)
God has also provided me with the most wonderful Tech and Data person, my husband, Steve, who continues to be indispensable in setting up and ‘web-mastering’ this site and the technical aspects of creating the puzzles.
I hope you are blessed by our puzzles,
Jeri Mertes