The conference was Friday evening and then Saturday until 2pm. We were so blessed to have two people offer their homes up for us to stay at, so we saved money on a hotel for the night! What a blessing!
Friday we headed up a little early to get some dinner before the conference started at 7:00pm. We went to Crazzy Greek in Columbus. It was alright. I was expecting the same as Gourmet Exprezz, which is the place we went to in California all the time. So, we're still on the hunt for an excellent Greek restaurant around here!
Then we headed over to the conference and met up with our good friends, Adam and Ashley. It was about 2 1/2 hours of worship and hearing peoples' stories with foster care, adoption and love. Wess Stafford, the CEO and President of Compassion International, was the main speaker for the night. It really was an amazing evening. We got two books signed by him and got to chat with him a bit, too! Oh and we might have gotten our picture taken with him. :)
We wrapped it up with going to Jeni's in Columbus for some ice cream! So good! We went to our adoption BFFs' house for the night, chatted with them for a bit and headed to bed since we had to be up early the next day.
Saturday was amazing. There is just so much stuff that I learned about adoption, how to care for the kids that are 'left behind', etc. So first they had the main session and had some more people tell their stories about how they got into adoption and orphan care. Let me tell you, it was so beautiful to be in a room full of people that care for orphans and want to do more. I was on the verge of tears for these two days (I definitely shed a few, too) because it's just so powerful that there are more people that want to do something.
After that, we had our first breakout session. There were 10 different classes to choose from and you could only go to one during that time, so Adam and I split up to get the most out of it. Ashley and I went to 'Helping the Unadoptable Right Where They Are' and Adam and Adam went to 'Working Toward Self-Sufficiency'.
Mine was kind of lame. It wasn't what I expected and since the guy wanted everyone to introduce themselves, it really took a lot of time out of our 45 minutes we had to learn from him. I did take some things out of it, but it was less than I expected, which was kind of a bummer.
Then it was break time for lunch. We all got the boxed lunch and the turkey wrap had mayo on it so I couldn't even eat it. I loathe mayo. Sad. I ate the apple and the chips, though.
Breakout session 2 was next with 10 more options to choose from. We all broke off for this one. Adam went to 'Moving Beyond Raising Awareness' and I went to 'Attachment in Adoption'. This was the best one. I learned so much. I learned about attachment during adoption (obviously) and how to do that and what it looks like. It was really interesting and it brought a lot of stuff I've heard about attachment in and helped it make more sense to me. It was really great.
After that, there was another Main Session, but we missed it because we were looking at all the booths they had there. There were so many orphan care/adoption places represented. It was fabulous.
I bought a necklace from Project HOPEFUL that was made by women in Uganda that have HIV/AIDS and it helps them support their family. I've been wanting a bead necklace from Africa for a while and now I've got one that helps a great cause, too!
All in all, it was a wonderful weekend. I learned a lot and I'm still processing through a lot of it. But, up next weekend is our marriage conference at church! My brain just might explode from all this learning I'm doing! We also have our Sunday night parenting classes for six weeks. Ahhhh, brain overload!
At least it's all good stuff. Never a dull moment in this house! :)
1 comment:
Loved hearing about your orphans summit. There is always so much more to learn about helping orphans, attachment, and parenting in general. Share away. :)
Post a Comment