Before I tell you about a very baffling mystery I encountered this week, I want to welcome my fellow Elisabeth Elliot friends. I’m so glad to have you here, and hope you’ll come back again sometime.

To my regular readers: Some very cryptic and curious things happened around here this week.

On Tuesday I got a notification on my phone’s home screen that said: “Your blog stats are booming! Dwell Abide Adorn is getting lots of traffic.”

That’s really never happened before, and it’s okay, because while I do love connecting with people here, I’m not really seeking “booming stats” and “lots of traffic.” (And for that I am a disappointment to those who have prodded me in that direction. Maybe someday?)

For years I have gotten a chuckle out of this blog’s tag line: “Read by tens of people every single day.”

Yep, pretty much.

Now, Sophie’s blog is actually read by many more people than mine, but her humble and humorous tag line describes what happens here every single day: tens of people read daily. Occasionally, a hundred or more people read in the course of a day, but on Tuesday, over 500 people had visited here by midday and the number was over 1,000 by the time I went to bed that night. People from all over the world.

It was such a mystery to me.

I rarely check the stat counter that is embedded here, and when I do, I can only tell how many people visited in the course of a day, what city and state you are from, and how you got here. For example, I can tell that you are from Houston, Texas and arrived here via a Google search or via Facebook. (Though sometimes it only tells me “United States.”)

When I began to investigate Tuesday’s spike in stats, I could see that people from Canada, Mexico, Kenya, Singapore, Romania, India, Greece and many more places were visiting, and they were all coming from Facebook.

I could also see that they were reading a series of posts I wrote about Elisabeth Elliot.

I reached out to our friend, fellow church member, and social media expert (among other things), Tommy Moore, to see if he could help me track the origin of all this new traffic. He gave me some great tips, but also explained that if the traffic was coming from Facebook and it wasn’t from an actual Facebook post of mine that someone shared, there was really no way of knowing.

My only clues were:

Traffic was mostly Tuesday and Wednesday.

Traffic was all from Facebook.

Traffic was all to posts on my blog about Elisabeth Elliot.

Traffic was from over 35 different countries.

My only guess was that some missionary sending agency or organization had stumbled upon the posts and decided to re-post them on their Facebook page. I looked at a couple of those Facebook pages, but nothing.

By Wednesday morning it was making me kind of crazy. The stats were increasing almost exponentially. Where were all of these people coming from? And why, oh why was no one leaving me a comment so that I could ask them? I even prayed a couple of times that someone would. But no one did.

(Friendly nudge: Bloggers love comments.)

(Nudge, Nudge…)

I had a lovely early morning coffee date with my friend Isabelle yesterday morning. When I got home, and though I didn’t really have time for it, I decided to dedicate up to thirty minutes trying to solve the mystery once again. After that, I promised God I would just leave it up to Him. He could certainly reveal this if He wanted to.

Tommy had mentioned typing key words into the Facebook search bar, so I typed the name of my blog. Nothing really, except that I could see it was being posted, just not by whom. Privacy settings guard things like that.

Then I typed the title of the blog posts. Again, not that helpful.

Finally, I typed in “Elisabeth Elliot” and up popped a couple of different Facebook pages – one of which I recently started following called “Elisabeth Elliot Quotes.” 

I clicked over to that page, scrolled down a bit, and there they were. A series of three Facebook posts linking to my three posts about Elisabeth and her husband Lars.

Mystery. Solved.

The Elisabeth Elliot Quotes Facebook page has over 72,000 followers. And not only did the administrator of that page post my blog posts, but up to 30 people were then sharing the posts on their personal Facebook pages.

And that’s the power – for good or for bad – of social media. Wow.

I quickly messaged Tommy to tell him about my mystery-solving success and the internet sleuth skills that he helped build – to which he offered to manage all of my social media platforms when I am famous.

Can you become famous for having and writing about your heroes of the faith? I don’t know, but I think I might actually be ok with that sort of fame.

One thing I’m pretty sure of is that blogging about your mysteriously booming blog stats is not one of the top ten strategies for driving traffic to your blog. If you’re still reading this post, I know it’s either because you are just really bored or because you just happen to like me enough to be interested in these not very interesting events of my week.

Thanks for being my “tens of readers every single day,” guys. Maybe we added a few more to our numbers this week? I hope so, because I love connecting with you here, even if you do choose to text me or send me a note in the mail rather than leave a comment. I mean…I do love real mail.

(But comments are still nice. Nudge…)

Did you happen to miss those Elisabeth Elliot posts from a couple of years ago?

Well, here they are:

The Saint on Strawberry Cove: Part 1

The Saint on Strawberry Cove: Part 2

The Saints on Strawberry Cove: Part 3 (and yes, the plural is on purpose!)

And here are some follow-up posts about our time with her husband Lars:

Lunch With Lars: Root Beer Marinated Steak Tips & Holy Moments

Maine-ly About Turning 17 (another lunch with Lars!)

Want to hear about a really fun connection I made through all of this? (Well, fun to me about probably only tens of others.) After I solved the Mystery of the Booming Blog Stats (just call me Nancy Drew…) I sent a message to the administrator of the Elisabeth Elliot Facebook page identifying myself as the author of those posts she had re-posted. She was so happy that I had reached out and told me that she administrates the page along with Valerie, Elisabeth and Jim Elliot’s only daughter. 

And then this happened:

Valerie “friended” me!

She also sent me a lovely message, and she even asked me to pray with her about an idea she has. An idea completely unrelated to me or my blog posts, but definitely related to her mom and a unique way to honor her. What a privilege to pray along with Elisabeth’s daughter and be entrusted with a specific concern of hers.

Thanks for reading about the exciting and mysterious events of my week, friends. I know you are just dying to leave me a comment now, aren’t you?

But really…more important that letting me know you are reading this blog is that you go and read something by Elisabeth Elliot. You also really, really need to watch the documentary of what happened to her and the missionaries she served with in Ecuador.

Do it. You’ll be both inspired and encouraged.