January 8, 2012: Home Stretch...

Heaveno!

Well, again, my apologies for not writing on my Sun/Tue/Thur schedule.  We are CRANKING over here in Wings Of Hope Central HQ.  Things are going good for the luncheon.  We are just about sold out for the luncheon... we have 2 open seats left and about 3 people who have said they're coming but haven't registered yet.



To even be able to say - given that we had just over 4 months to plan this thing, with a website re-launch, an EB Awareness Campaign, and the Holidays in between - that we have 5 seats left is AMAZING.  Overall, Ang and I are just so pleased - like pleased beyond our expectation - as to how well PUCK is doing right now.  We are just so grateful for allllllll the people who are reaching out and supporting this organization.  Life is good, and the world is FULL of really, really good people (It's full of some not-so-good people to, but I just focus on the good ones and being a good one, and that seems to magnify and multiple goodness around me).



Wow, there are so many details to manage!  Tomorrow, I will be sitting down with a fellow church member to iron out the A/V situation.  I have really been suffering over this.  I really should have hired an A/V company to do the sound, video, and slide show, but I didn't.  It's one of those things that is glamour-less.  People expect it to work, and when it doesn't, people frown.  Ang and I also are around organizations that put a lot of time and resources into pro A/V at their events, so we might have an artificially inflated expectation bar, but we really want to make a good impression since roughly 60% of the attendees coming have never met us, our organization, or heard our story.



This morning at church, I snuck up into the choir loft while they were setting up today's A/V to see how they did it.  I know there is a way to control things on your own monitor without people seeing what you are doing on the projection screen, I just don't know how to do it.  So, I started picking the brain of the guy, Dean, who was at the computer, and he showed me some things I didn't even know my mac could do!  Then we had to split up, and just before church began, I heard 'that voice.'  You know, my 'Providence Voice.'  I've written about it before.  It's that still small whisper that comes from deep within my heart.

It said, "Do it."

I knew exactly what it meant.

I walked up to Dean, and summoning my courage said, "Alright, I'm just gonna ask ya.  What are you doing Wednesday?  We are having a luncheon to raise money for a cure for the disease that took our daughter last year, and I could really use help on the A/V."

"Can I be out of there by 1pm?" was his reply.

"Yes!"  I said.

"Sure.  No problem."

At which point I started to cry.  No joke.  This has been weighing so heavily on me that it was like all that weight just went away.  He saw that I was crying, and said, "Aw man, it's okay!  Wow, happy I can help!"  It was such a cool moment.

Then, I walked up, joined our "Nitty Gritty Church Band," and we hopped through "the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's" version of "We Three Kings."  Man, THAT was a HOOT!  Great day at church!



P.S.  We'll get back to more weekly episodes of Ali's Art World after the luncheon ends and we figure out what we're actually doing with her site.  We shot one more episode, it just needs to be edited.  Keep you posted!

God night.