I got everything thing working except for a few minor things. Here are the results with a few observations added...
If someone sends an Echeck, it loads it to "Pending Transactions" and does not complete the transaction. I am still waiting for the transaction to complete to see if it posts the name to the list of donors. I will add it manually if it doesn't, but I will have to wait and see.
I received feedback from one of my users who said he got a "Thank you for your donation of $0.00", which as you can see it did not show the correct donation amount. The good news is that it successfully processed the transaction and posted his name with the correct amount in the donors list. As a workaround, I changed the vbphrase and removed the "{1}" so as not to confuse the donor with the $0.00 dollar amount. Does anyone know why this is showing a zero "0" dollar amount vs. the correct amount donated when redirected back to the site?
When using the "Paypal Sandbox", I was able to see the correct amount donated when returned back to the site (unlike the "live" response), but it placed the amount in "Pending transactions" and did not complete. I guess it is designed to this though...
I'm sure there is a simple fix for the "$0.00" issue, but I am not a coder and will not try to guess.
Didn't want to bore anyone with my results, but I thought it might help someone.