We travel soon we hope, maybe mid august. We should be fundraising for our Molly but are caught up in fundraising for our 3rd annual conference in Kiev. We only have 10 days until departure so all our efforts are going into meeting the budget for this conference. We partner with Almaz Church in Kiev and they find the hall, do the promos, take reservations, arrange for our stay, do the printing, and send us the bill. It has gotten so big. Use to be a ma and pa thing but it's grown beyond us. Thank God.
This conference sprung up from one presentation to the young adults at Almaz who wanted to work with special needs orphans but knew little about them. We covered the basics. One of the questions was, "What do kids with DS look like?" All we had was a scrapbook which we shared. It had all 7 of our kids with DS who are all different. These kids are not seen on the street, if they are kept at home then they are kept at home. Ukraine does not have any handicap accessibility to speak of so travel for these kids is hard.
Pastor Sasha asked us to please come back and do a conference in six months on the Needs for Children with Disabilities. We said, "Right. Come here in the winter in just six months. I don't think so." But God had a plan and we were back in six months presenting with our group of 5. We took our Anya with us because she was the first child with DS to get out of Ukraine as far as we know and she is a charmer. She was our photographer but she mostly took pictures of the ladies boots. Many people got their picture taken with her. There were even a few moms who were brave enough to come with their disabled child. It was wonderful!
Anya taking a picture of herself. We get a lot of these!
The next year we had 15 presenters! Such a great group who worked so hard! Our keynote speaker was Jenny Jensen, a young lady with DS who delivered a great message and brought the house down!
No comments:
Post a Comment