When the Freshmen class finished the movie,
The Boys Next Door, I invited folks into the classroom who have family members that have special needs. Jon and Kauline Groskreutz spoke about their adoption of their three special needs children, Juliana Tien spoke about having a brother with special needs and Lori Poppema spoke about her son with special needs. A common thread through all their stories was that they wanted their loved one to simply be viewed as a regular person, and that they never really were invited to do things like normal teenagers. So we decided to have an evening at Unity for them. How to do that was the tricky part. About a dozen students from Unity were excited to help along with five other staff members. We sent invitations to the public school folks, put the invite on Facebook, and personally invited others. Our initial date was for December, but due to horribly cold temperatures, we instead went with January 19. We lost some Unity students to other curricular activities, and we lost a few other folks who were going to attend due to the flu. Even though we had only five special needs folks, it was a great night. The Unity students had a great time with the guests. The staff members had a fun time doing something with each other beyond school things. And I think there were blessings all around. After our guests left, the Unity students wanted to try this again at a later date. We are plotting how to get the invitations out better.
Having Unity students take charge of this would be a goal. They have great hearts. There is great need to see folks as simply folks. We did accomplish that goal last night. Servant workers, community builders and beauty creators were busy last night. It was a joy to watch.
