2013 Black and White Event

YAYYYY! The Black and White Event is undergo! Here's whats up! I like to make simple things complicated and complicated things simple. So I'm going to tell you what my mind told my brain about how and why the Black and White Event was invented. The Simple version: The goal of the Black and White event is 1) Have fun and do Life TOGETHER and 2) to raise money and then GO out and spread some love in pretty radical ways. If you are boring you can stop reading hear because I am about to take you inside my mind talking to my brain here...

Complicated version:
Mission 108 is the charity Rob and I created. All of the money raised from the Black and White Event will go towards Mission 108. We started it about two years ago in the off season. We went to a town close to the city we live in and knocked on peoples doors and said, How can we help? Its a small drug infested town. Of course, my love and interest in drugs and people was the driving force to spend time here. We were welcomed with wide open arms by some and threatened by others. We were offered drugs and the shortening of our lives if we stepped one step closer to some people's private apartment property door step! What a rush! I saw disease and heart break. It was challenging but thrilling. We found that the main need was TOGETHERNESS. This was a tough concept to some people helping us serve. Some questioned what my goal was. Why were we there? But to these people three hours once a week where they didn't have to worry about what drug they would do next or what they would eat for dinner was the best thing for them. When we were with them we listened. We talked. We cried. We ate. We cooked. We served. We were together. We met people I will always hold in my heart.

The need was growing but the finances weren't. People were hungry and needed medications. They needed financial, mental and emotional counseling. There was too much for my husband and I to do. And this is why the Black and White Event happens! Life Together and raise money. Mission 108 was created to meet needs and love people. It has never been and will never be focused on one particular group of people. We will never give to only the homeless or only the people in Nicholasville. Robbie and I decide every year where God leads our hearts and we give in that area. Sometimes that means dropping off Christmas presents to a single mom. Sometimes that will mean care packages for the homeless. Sometimes that means buying balloons for children in the hospital. Who knows!? Y'all know I don't like labels so I felt like if I chose a certain group to always give to I'm choosing certain Labels of people over others. Forget the Labels and give me the people. There's nothing wrong with giving to a certain charity or group all the time! I love that my friends have a strong emotional connection to childhood cancer and they devote all there time to that. It just ain't me. I like the thrill of a new year. New people. I like NEW. And I might have a tad bit of ADD.

The best advice ever given to me was this. "When you feel lost, find someone who is lost too. We you feel needy find someone who is in need. When you feel lonely find someone who is alone. When you feel, then feel together". It is all about Together. The world we live in is all about titles and stereotypes and choosing sides. We don't realize how much this tears us apart. You either have to be Republican or Democrat. Pro abortion or Pro Life. Pro Obama or Anti Obama. Love gays or Hate Gays. Tri Delt or Alpha Gamma Whatever. Dog Person or Cat Person. UK or Louisville (Go CATS)! Rangers or Angels (DUH! RANGERS>>). We are manipulated into this thinking at a young age.  I think when you start only (key word) liking and loving people who are the SAME one day you realize you are DIFFERENT and then you feel lost. Lost being the absence of together. And when you start identifying with the SAME people you forget to think for yourself. Each people group ( Republican, Christian, Athlete or whatever it might be) is to follow certain rules in order to stay accepted in that group. I think rules and guidelines are a great and wonderful tool to help us find our identities. But when these rules and guidelines start to put up walls between people and tear down our togetherness we have got a problem. We are programmed to 1) Find people who are similar 2) Cling. But then we add a step 3) STOP. We find the similarity and cling and then STOP.  The STOP is bad! We have to find the peace and similarities in all people and cling. Not just to the people who are apparently similar. Never EVER STOP. True beauty in life is finding the similarities in the most different of ways.
 I named this event the Black and White event because 1) the pictures will turn out amaze balls with everyone dressed in either black or white. 2) These two colors are completely different from each other.  I actually think I learned at one point that one is not a color at all. You couldn't get further in the spectrum of colors from each other than black and white do. Yet somehow they find a way to compliment each other. DIFFERENT but the SAME.
The black and White event is to bring together people who are different but the same. We are all Different and sometimes forget to respect each other for our differences. All of us different people will come together at the Black and White Event for Different reason paying different amounts of money wearing different variations of black or white having different meaningful and meaningless conversations. All of these differences are bringing us together and then we will find out how similar we are. and we wont STOP!!!!
AND THEN we can GO  radically love more people who are more different than us financially, spiritually, and mentally so that those people will one day do the same. Bringing the world together one day at a time.
And there's how my ADD/OCD mind works. There is how I created the Black and White Event.
I will be posting videos here of the amazing things that come from all of your donations!! I will also be posting dates here for all the Lexington people who want to serve with us.
I don't know a lot but I do know this. Each of us is different in every way and science tells me that makes us the same. DIFFERNT but the SAME.
 Break the walls. Be free. Be you.  Free to be you. Black and White. Figurative.

P.S. I think that calls for a big fat "REBELS FOR LIFE"! in your best singing voice. 
P.S.S. I forgot to tell you somewhere up there when I was rambling that as always you can email me or comment in the blog or find me on twitter to tell me about a family or friend or situation that needs some radically love. We are always looking for ways to be rad and will prayerfully consider every nomination.

HE>i
xoxo
b