Hope for the Deaf School

Hello All!
I have recently received some pictures from the school I will be working at in Liberia. The pictures are of students I will be teaching and the staff I will working with. I am glad to see some of the faces I will be meeting. It brings me great excitement to our ever closer departure date. I have also received an draft itinerary while I am there. David has me meeting some education officials, along with teaching several classes. I am a little nervous, but know it will be a life changing opportunity.

Enjoy the pictures, and if you have any questions, please let us know.

Peace.

Back to work--AND NEW STUFF!

Well the vacation went by quickly, and I didn't do quite as much work as I thought, but it was a good vacation. I am extremely relaxed right now. Tonight we are driving to Denver and I fly back tomorrow. We are still going to Pikes Peak today though, which should be a lot of fun.

You will notice a few new things along the side of this page. First of all I started using twitter (sort of) and there's a box for that. More importantly, there are a couple of Liberia related news feeds. One is from allafrica.com and the other is from Google News. You can go to those pages and subscribe to those feeds yourself, or you can simply follow them from this page. This will be a good way for everyone to learn more about the situation that we are heading to, and possibly the best way to keep track of what is happening in Liberia while we are away.

Also, I am going to try and start offering some of Tricia's excellent photography for sale as a way to help cover some outstanding trip cost and then in the long run, support the people of Liberia, specifically we would love to raise some money to help send kids to school, and also help the School for the Deaf that Tricia is going to be working at. The site for this shop is stil VERY much in its infancy but you can find it at www.cafepress.com/tricia_aaron

We are starting with photography, but plan on adding more in the future.

I have another new page, also VERY much in its infancy. I'm not sure exactly what I am going to do with it, but my vision is a less personal view of the work we are doing in Liberia. I hope to add more objective views of the situation in Liberia and some of the institutions that are working there. That page can be found at www.squidoo.com/liberia2008. Squidoo looks like a very neat site, so I encourage you to look around and possibly get involved.

Finally, you will notice a button at the bottom of this post to email it to anyone you think might be interested, and you are invited to do so.

I think that is all for now, I am writing this in a bit of a rush, as I am already late to pick up Tricia from school, I can fix the grammar mistakes later. Thanks to everyone who contacted to me to let me know that you are reading...it was very encouraging.

'till next time.

Break Time

I am trying to post more regularly now that the trip is coming up in just over a month. Tricia and I have been pretty busy putting together the details of the trip and what we are going to do when we get back. I plan on posting some details about that later.

As some of you might know, Tricia has been student teaching in Colorado Springs for about a month and a half now, and she will be there until she graduates on May 10. I've been home by myself while she has been away, but I was able to come out visit this week. If you haven't ever been out to Colorado it's pretty amazing. We spent the weekend at a nice little resort town just outside of Rocky Mountain National Park, and did some hiking yesterday. Everywhere you look you can see something stunning, I love it.

Tricia is still teaching during the week so I am just wandering around Colorado Springs enjoying my vacation, and seeing what there is to see.

So how is this post related to Liberia? Well first of all, I wanted to remind you all about Tricia's teaching experience and the awesome professional opportunity that this trip is for her. And also remember the expertise and experience that Tricia will bring to the School for the Deaf while we are in Liberia.

This is week is going to be a great opportunity for me to relax and think creatively about the work that Tricia and I are doing in Liberia and the type of life we would like to have after we get back. I am also doing some brainstorming about how we can do the work we want to do, most effectively. Hopefully this week I will post some sort of insightful ideas that occur to me this week.

Finally, I would like to ask a favor of anyone who reads this. I am not sure how many of you there are out there, so please feel free to email me or leave a comment, even an anonymous one. Since I have been posting so irregularly you can subscribe to this blog (Google Reader is a really neat program for this, I love it.) But you should definitely expect for frequent posting from me. At least until we get to Liberia, I have no idea what to expect as far as Internet access goes there.

Thanks everyone.

Cancellation

We have canceled the April 4th fund raiser. Thank you to Otterbein United Methodist church for all of your support, I had a great visit there this past Sunday.

Dates are Set

Hello:

The April issue of the Illinois Great Rivers Conference newsletter is up. There is an article about our trip and other articles about the work in Liberia as well. You can download that newsletter here: The Current: April 2008

If you have read the article and are visiting here for the first time, thanks for checking us out. I do have some news to share. We have our departure and return dates set. We are flying out of O'hare airport on May 20 and will return July 27, things are getting real now.

Fund raising Update:

First of all, I would like to think everyone that has supported us by coming out to a fund raiser or by writing us. We appreciate it very much and are glad to see that so many people (even people we have never met) believe in what we are doing and are willing to demonstrate that; it's been a humbling experience. The fund raisers have been very successful and I would like to thank Megan Devenport for coming to Mansfield to share about her recent trip (she's in the newsletter as well).

We are finally going to be in the Mattoon/ Charleston area over the next couple of weeks, at least I will be. This Sunday, March 30th, I will be speaking at the Otterbein United Methodist Church in Charleston at 9 Am. Here is a MAP to the church.

Then, next Friday at 6 Pm we will be having a fundraiser at the same church. I think I want to have a pie auction. So it would help if I had an idea of how many people vs how many pies will be there. I would very much appreciate it if you could RSVP here, by calling or by emailing me so I can know. Donations are welcome (both financial donations and pie donations).

Thanks, maybe if I update more often I won't have to post so much at once :).

Just an Update

Hello,

It's been a while since my last post, I have had some connectivity issues at the apartment.

We can tell that the trip is getting closer, we have started fund raisers and have had the opportunity to meet with a couple of people in the past week and talk about the trip.

The Hudson Fundraiser went very well and I want to thank everyone for coming out, and a lot of thanks to everyone that helped us out with it. We had about 40 come out and support us and that is very encouraging.

The other day we went to an event featuring Rev. Fannah T. Tartieh the District Superintendent of the Grand Gedah District in Liberia. We were able to talk to him for a few minutes and he told stories and showed pictures of his work in the rural areas of Liberia. If I am lucky I may see him when while in Liberia this summer.

Last night Tricia and I had dinner with Paul Black, the Director of Communications for the Illinos Great Rivers Conference. Keep an eye on his site for a story about our trip and the work in Liberia.

We have another fund raiser in Mansfield tomorrow night and I hope to see a lot of you there. If you need information about the the event give me or Tricia a call.

Thanks for reading and I will try to post more regularly in the future.

Fundraisers

Hello:

I haven't posted anything in a while, but I just wanted to give everyone an update on our fundraising events. The Valentine banquet in Hudson (Just north of Bloomington/Norma) has been changed from its original date to February 16th at 5:3o PM.

We also finalized the plans for the Mansfield dinner which will be March 2nd at 5:00 PM. This flyer has some more information about that.

We are going to have a dinner or something in Mattoon, but we are still finalizing the details, I will keep you posted.

Thanks everyone.