Barefoot, Bluegrass, & BBQ Festival, August 4th!

Really quick before I head over to Beaver Ranch to start our day, I wanted to share this article I wrote for the Mountain Neighbor explaining why so many of us are working so hard to help Dr. Brodsky and JOY International. Everyone who comes will have a great time, which is our goal for all of you!; but for us, it means so much more. If you can't make it, please consider sending a donation; it really does go to rescuing a child from a horrific life. Thank you for your generosity!

You betcha Jacque! Give me a week to get it all together (and finish recovering!). It was great to see you there, I'm sorry I didn't have more time to chat with you. Thanks for coming!

I have a lot of people I'd like to thank publicly, if y'all don't mind.

Thank you to all of our volunteers, we definitely couldn't have done it without you helping to park cars, shuttle the bands to and fro, emptying trash during the day, checking people in, and so much more - Thanks! My gratitude to our sponsors and vendors for without them, it's not a success. Hats off to our bands who generously donated their time and provided us with foot-stomping, get-up-and-dance, incredibly good music, and to Greg Blake of Elk Creek Community Church for organizing all of that!

My greatest bow down goes to the BBB Planning Team - you guys worked non-stop with great heart, creative ideas, unique skills, and much enthusiasm. What we lacked in experience, we made up for in sheer determination and will-power to get it done, and done right, putting in hours each week from our busy schedules. To the ladies who coordinated the volunteers and their duties, got the kids activity area all arranged and staffed, and attended Heavenfest all day the weekend before to help spread the word - you rock!!! To Janet, the Executive Director of the Conifer Community Park - thank you for taking care of our vendors, and offering up the facilities, we couldn't have done it without you. To Anytime Fitness and Lance Swearengin of Conifer Community Church who coordinated & sponsored the walk, thank you for putting it all together without any help from the rest of us. To our graphic designer, I am still in awe of the images you created from the JOY logo to the banners. :notworthy: I wish I had a tenth of your creativity!

My special personal thanks especially to the ladies (and gent!) from the Conifer Chamber of Commerce who were invaluable with logistics and finding sponsors - you particularly pulled my butt out of the fire with your generous time, effort, skills, wise advice, resources, moral support, and experience. I thought I could do logistics, now I know better! tongue: It's been a pleasure and honor to work beside you these past few months, and to get to know you all better. This community is going to do so much better quicker thanks to your myriad of efforts, thank you.

To my "right-hand man" of House Call Hearing, I can't say enough good things. You helped keep me on task, picked up what I couldn't get to, or just needed to be done, and all without complaint. You are beyond generous with your time, money, praise, effort, and support and my world is a better place for now having you in it. From the bottom of my heart, my deepest thanks.

Dr. Jeff Brodsky: I don't even know where to begin. You are one of the greatest human beings I have ever met in my life. If we had more like you on this planet, our world would be everything we always say we want it to be. You are our light, our inspiration, our motivation; as there's nothing you wouldn't do for all those girls out there, there's nothing we wouldn't do for you. And that's the sign of a true leader; I am grateful for the chance to learn from you how to become a better person, and for the doors that are now open to me to make a difference in people's lives all around the world. It's the only thing I've ever wanted to do, why I went into science, why I bought 285Bound, it's my driving force for all that I do - and you've given me a huge opportunity. I don't think I'll ever be able to express how deeply indebted to you I am for that, so I will simply say thank you for who you are and all that you do. If there is a God, then He has truly touched you, and I am humbled. Thank you.

To my family, thank you for not holding my absence against me, but understanding my time away from you, helping where you could, and keeping me smiling when that was the last thing I felt like doing. I'm so lucky you're all mine!

Lastly, to the members and guests of 285Bound: I've been neglectful a bit of late and I am deeply grateful that you haven't held it against me. I want you to know that part of my reason for helping was because I'm a little bit selfish and knew this would be good visibility for us so we could continue to grow and succeed and provide more back to you, our community we serve. It's not only important for 285Bound to support our members and our local businesses, but also our local non-profits, as a community is equal parts individuals, businesses, and non-profits: each depends upon the other as we all fill a unique niche of needed skills, services, and products. JOY International holds a special place in my heart for the focus of their work, but it became important to our planning team that we include all of the local non-profits in our efforts to help raise awareness for our community with outside areas, as we want everyone to thrive; thus, we offered a free booth for any local non-profit to share so they could raise awareness and support for themselves as well. It is our hope that as this event grows, that the increased support will spread even more. So while this event took me temporarily away from 285Bound, we've planted seeds that will help us all grow as time goes on (and you guys are going to be amazed by how much, if those of us with plans for this community have anything to say about it!).

I'm sorry if this got a bit long, I realize it kinda sounds like one of those Oscar acceptance speeches that you just hope to the Lord above that it will end already, but I couldn't in good conscience not give thanks to everyone who more than earned it. This was a great learning experience, a hopefully successful fundraiser for a local non-profit, good promotion for many businesses in our area, and an awesome time on Aug 4th. Thank you to everyone who came, I hope you had fun too, and I'll see y'all next year!