We did it!

2006-04-30T09:49:00.000-07:00

Packed and ready to go. My Mom took the photo and stayed with the other children. Thanks Mom!

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Okay, so I was cold. Freezing, actually. My core was warm but my feet....Oh my feet! But my heart was warm with the knowledge that my family was making a difference! We stuck it out. Considering I had a weak moment at 11:30 PM, I am honestly surprised we made it until 5:30 AM when we rolled out of bed. Kudos to Blake for figuring how to sandwich us in between two tarps to keep us relatively protected from the dew and cold. Now if I only had remembered an extra blanket and some warm socks, it might have been a more pleasant evening. The two kids, Riley and Rebecca, were warm and toasty all night. Grace from the Almighty, I suppose.

What did we do...Well...We wrote letters to President Bush and Senators Cantwell and Murray. We made scrapbook pages for the kids. We read "Matilda" under the covers before bed. We drank Starbucks in the morning and posed for a film shot that will be in the full length feature movie next year. We thought about the children, each of us sleeping with a photo of one of the children in our pockets. We were so united and so apart of it all and we even made the channel 7 news! Fun stuff. Here are some photos of the night and early morning. Stay tuned for more updates to come on the Paine family adventure with Invisible Children!

Night commuting....Off to Greenlake we go!

Signing in, getting our bracelets and info packs.

In front of one of the seven RVs that are roaming the nation for Invisible Children. Photo credit: Riley Paine

Writing letters to the President and our Senators.

A glimpse of the multitudes who camped out with us.

Global Night Commute

2006-04-29T11:06:00.000-07:00

Tonight really launches our family's relationship with the Invisible Children. We will be participating in an event called the Global Night Commute. We are walking down to GreenLake Park in Seattle to sleep overnight and draw awareness to the kids who do this every night in Uganda to keep safe from the LRA soldiers who try to abduct them from their villages. They are forced, to spare their own lives, to sleep in a neighboring town, where a safe shelter awaits them. Many of these children have been commuting for 9 or 10 years. They sleep on a floor, side by side, sometimes hundreds and thousands one next to the other. They spend every night running for their lives.

We first heard of these children through the Oprah show. She featured the three young men who went to Uganda in 2003 to shoot a documentary. They came back with the plight of these kids branded into their souls. They had to do more. They started invisible children, Inc. A non-profit set up to help these kids, bring attention to their lives ruled by terror, set up an education program to help make their future brighter, and ultimately, to stop the war that is threatening them each and every day.

Check out their site. I will be posting more on our personal efforts towards this cause. You can check back and see what you can do to join us.