Saturday, May 9, 2009

Korto Momolu Runway Show


Katherine, Korto Momolu, & Kalin


Katherine & Kalin decided to get in to modeling. They went and auditioned at NcK Talent Management and got picked up. They were suppose to start by taking some modeling classes that would help them with their walk and turns, etc. Then they would hopefully start auditioning for some runways and get picked for a few. Well, it just so happened that before they had their first class - they had a chance to audition for a show. They auditioned and met the designer and she liked their "look" and picked them to be in the show knowing they had no experience. So off to the races we went. The show was for designer, Korto Momolu (pronounced cut-toe mo-mo-lu), she was on season 5 of Project Runway on the Bravo channel, she didn't win, but she came in second and her career took off from there. Anyway she was doing a runway show at East Meets West here in Fayetteville. I think it was to celebrate her being on the cover of Celebrate magazine, since she is from Little Rock. This is a picture of the girls with Korto after the show wearing the dresses she designed. The girls had a blast, they had people doing their hair and makeup for them before the show. Kalin said, "...they shaped my eyebrows!", I told her a lot of women actually pay to have that done and you got it done for free! The girls got their first modeling paycheck ($50.00 each) - it was more about the experience. So someday I'm hoping that I can retire from my current job and be their manager.....I think I would be able to manage them from the golf course via cell phone....what do think?

Walk Good!!!

dan

Monday, April 6, 2009

Unconditional Love

This is the one phrase that keeps popping in to my crazy brain every time I think about the week we spent at Casa (the orphanage) in Guatemala over spring break. I always thought I knew what unconditional love meant. It means loving someone unconditionally right? Regardless of what they might say or do to you, but do we really practice unconditional love? I know for a fact I don't, just cross me a little bit and see how unconditional I get. If your a christian then the phrase may have a whole larger meaning, God's unconditional love for us, regardless of what we say or do.......I still didn't get the true meaning of that either.....until we went to Casa. The kids there show you just exactly what unconditional love really is. As soon as we pulled up to the orphanage and got off the bus, literally as soon as we stepped off the bus the kids were coming up to us with big smiles on their faces and climbing up in to our arms and then giving us the strongest hugs they could possibly give. Here's where the unconditional part comes in. You see the majority of the 400+ kids at Casa have been abandoned and physically abused by none other than.........you guessed it, adults! You would think that they would shy away from adults, after all their nightmare stories all involve adults. But they didn't, they just loved on us to the 10th degree and continued to do so for the entire week that we were there. One little boy touched our hearts in a very special way while we were there, as a matter of fact if we could have snuck him in to our luggage, he be here in with us today. Here's the story of Jon Jon.



Jon Jon is 6 years old now. They brought him to Casa when I think they said he was around 2. They said that he was one of the worst cases of abandonment that they had encountered. You see they found Jon Jon living in a trash dumpster alone. He was surviving by literally eating garbage. And to top it all off, both his legs had been broken (boy would I like to have 5 minutes with the person that did that.....wait I'm suppose to be talking about unconditional love). Jon Jon now walks (and runs) with a pretty severe limp because I think his legs were past the point of healing normally. But this little boy has the most sweetest spirit and bubbly personality, anytime you see him he has the biggest smile on his face. One of his favorite things to do is the Hokey Pokey dance. I snuck him in to our dorm kitchen area the last 2 nights that we were there and feed him anything and everything I could think of that he would enjoy. The list includes pancakes (with tons of syrup), pizza, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, fruit, cookies, milk, orange juice, and 7-Up (he had never had a carbonated drink, or so he said..ha!).



Little Jon Jon would just run up to us every time he saw us, climb up into ours arms, and give us the strongest hugs he could muster up. And this was on a daily basis, irregardless of the fact that it was one of us "adults" that treated him so terribly. And that's when the true meaning of unconditional love hit me like a ton of bricks! We've been back almost two weeks now and I can still not see a picture of Jon Jon without getting a tear in my eye and a knot in my throat. We all thought that we were going to Guatemala to help the kids, but in reality I think they are the ones that really helped us.




And as Paul Harvey always said, now for the rest of the story. The day we were leaving, Ofelia asked Mike (the orphanage founder/director) if Jon Jon could be adopted, because we seriously would have jumped at the chance to bring him home with us. Mike said no, and this is why - a family in Washington state is already trying to adopt him, and the cool part is that they supposedly already have a team of doctors waiting to try and fix his legs as soon as they can get him to the states. But believe this, we will be checking in on Jon Jon and praying for him to have the life that someone as special as him deserves!

Walk Good!!!

dan

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Guatemala slideshow

If anyone would like to view an awesome slide show of our groups' Guatemala trip go to "The Queen B's" blog at www.thequeenb.typepad.com. She put together a great slide show from our trip. She posted it on 3/29/09 so you may have to scroll down the page a little bit to get to it, but it will be worth your time. I can hardly watch it without getting choked up!

I will try to over the next few days post some of my random thoughts from the trip each day on our blog, so stay tuned.

Walk Good!!!

dan

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Guatemala 2009

Well like I said we made it back safe (for the most part) and sound from Guatemala. It was a totally awesome week! For those that do not know what we were doing there, I'll give a brief overview. We went on a short-term mission trip with a group from our church (33 people, 13 of them were children) to work in an orphanage. A family from our church is moving there in June to be full-time missionaries. We worked on doing a total tear-out and rebuild of what will become their living quarters for part of each day and then we spent the rest of each day just playing and loving on all the children in the orphanage (there are over 400 kids there). We took one day and went in to the old capital city of Guatemala, Antigua. I think every single person in the group cried the day we left, it was so easy to get attached to the children in the orphanage. The kids all have a nickname of "Velcro Kids". From the minute you get to the orphanage the kids will just run up to you and jump up in your arms and hug you as tight as they can.












We're back from Guatemala!!!

Just wanted to let everyone know that we all made it back from Guatemala safe and sound last night. What an awesome, life changing trip!!! I'll post more later w/ some photos.

Dan

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

3 days and counting...

Well we have three days until we leave for Guatemala. For those of you that haven't heard about this, here's the scoop. We (Ofelia, Katherine, Kalin, and I) are going on a short-term mission trip with our church to Guatemala over spring break. We will be working at the Casa Para Ninos Aleluya orphange. Our flight leaves Friday (3/20) morning at 6:00 am and we'll return the following Friday (3/27) evening around 9:30 pm. We'll be working on rehabbing some living quarters for a family from our church that will be moving down to Guatemala in June to become full-time missionaries. We'll be working on their housing in the mornings and then in the afternoons we'll be working with all the kids. This orphanage has around 400 kids (it's set up almost like a small town). Many of the kids have come from very abusive families. If you would like to see more about the orphanage, visit their website at www.casaparaninos.com. We'll take plenty of pictures and I'll post some of them once we return. Please pray for us to have a safe and meaningful trip.

Dan

Saturday, February 14, 2009

We're Back..............for now!

We (I) are going to try and start updating this blog again.....stay tuned