'The Personhood Imperative'
June 29, 2010
After a successful summer, the PersonhoodNow! project has finally come to a close. In this final blog update, the team would like to catch you up on what's gone on since our last blog update and fill you in on what we're looking toward in the future.
Our last weeks of the project we're spent traveling throughout the state (literally, we reached every part of the state) working with local contacts.
After leaving Sarasota and Ft. Myers, we hit the road to Naples. We started off the trip by petitioning at Sonrise Christian Church which is pastored by our good friend, Mr. Tom Harris. The church family is actively involved in engaging culture. They wholeheartedly signed the petition and took thousands more for others to sign. We scooted out the door in order to visit a Grace Bible Church potluck where we spoke with the pastor of several satellite churches about getting his congregation involved.
Our hospitable hosts in Naples were the Scofield family who entertained us with exciting games of Balderdash and filled us up with lots of healthy food! We spent a day dropping off information packets to local churches and taught a training workshop for a large group of volunteers. Members and leaders of a local chapter of the Institute for Cultural Communicators attended our training event. They took thousands of petitions and decided to take on petition circulation as a group project over this next year. The church that hosted the training workshop, New Hope Ministries, rolled out the red carpet for us: They provided audio and video recording of our workshop. These recordings can be used by PersonhoodUSA to train people across the country.
The cherry on the sundae was when we were invited to an event with keynote speaker and pro-life leader, Dr. Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She herself has been involved with personhood efforts in her home state of Georgia, so she was delighted to hear about all of our progress when spoke to her before the program. During her presentation, she asked us to tell the audience about ourselves and what we are doing. Plus she thought our iPerson shirts were pretty rockin' and had one of our PersonhoodNow! volunteers come to the front to model one for the rest of the group. (What more reason do you need to order one for yourself? Visit PersonhoodUSA's online store to get your very own!). The PersonhoodNow! team was also interviewed by the Naples Daily Times during the event.
On our way from Naples to to the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area, we stopped at the Everglades National Park and Biscayne National Park in order to stamp our National Parks Passports. We went a little further south of our destination by going to Key Largo and stretching out on beaches of the Keys.
Our friends, the Forman Family put us up (put up with us?) in Fort Lauderdale. They were such a blessing! In Fort Lauderdale, we contacted churches, met with pastors, conducted a training workshop and circulated the petition at a sunday church service at the First Christian Church of Fort Lauderdale. On Saturday afternoon, we petitioned outside a gun show. The response was mixed, but positive overall. We got into several great conversations and were able to challenge others opinions on the issue.
Our last stop of our tour of the state was the city of Jacksonville. Sarah Brooke is an all amazing PersonhoodNow! youth volunteer. In addition to finishing up courses and preparing to travel abroad for a scholastic competition, she set up several events for us to petition at, got us in contact with several churches, and wrangled a sizable crowd into coming to our training workshop. Our hosts, the Baker family, deserve an honorable mention as well. They were a very hospitable and fun family. While in Jacksonville, we met with local pastor and trained excited petitioners.
After bidding our farewell to the people of Jacksonville, we hit the road. Austin, dropped off the rest of the team in Atlanta, GA on his way back to Texas to start summer college courses. The rest of the team traveled to the Institute for Cultural Communicators' National Convention in Maryland in order to staff the event and share the Personhood message, before returning to their respective home states.
While the PersonhoodNow! Team is no longer barnstorming the state of Florida, PersonhoodFL is continuing to gain momentum. A major focus of our project was to train others and help build a statewide network of pro-life leaders. Our group was also a "guinea pig" project to see what a PersonhoodFL action team might look like. To our great satisfaction, action teams are sprouting up around the state! To find out how you can be involved, visit PersonhoodFL.com and sign up as a volunteer.
Goodbye for now from the PersonhoodNow! team. Thank you all for your prayers and support. Now go, be encouraged, and keep up the good fight for the Lord's precious children!
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