Sunday, November 09, 2008

Birthright's "Bid and Buy"

Saturday night we attended a fundraiser for Birthright of Lexington. Birthright is a national organization dedicated to helping women who find themselves in crisis pregnancies. I had visited their office back in August to bring them a donation of items to help them out. At the time they were in need of baby toiletries, so I bought about $100 worth of baby lotion, diaper rash ointment, wipes, diapers, baby shampoo, and more. It was so great to go by their office and meet the director and get a chance to find out more about what Birthright does. It is such a wonderful organization!! At that visit is also when I learned about the annual baby shower they hold for their clients, and about the Bid and Buy fundraiser every November.

So Chris and I decided that we would attend in support of their cause. So the event was Saturday night and what a great time we had!!

It was held downtown at the convention center. The dinner was very good and the auctions they had were various and numerous. We ended up bidding on a couple items and winning one. So that was fun!

More importantly was the number of people there. I saw many people I knew or recognized from around town or my church. There were about 4-5 Catholic priests in attendance, including one from my parish. It was really an amazing amount of people: roughly 49 tables of 10 people each, so about 490 people or so were there. That's a lot of people just in Lexington who are willing to come out and support a wonderful pro-life cause.

Also, when we sat down for dinner and introduced ourselves to people at our table I was stunned to meet the chairperson of the Kentucky Memorial for the Unborn. So we talked a little about our experiences. She told me about attending a post-abortive conference after she had gone through an abortion, she also had a miscarriage before getting pregnant again with her son. I told her about my miscarriage and we talked a bit about the healing of naming our children and honoring their lives. She also told me about the power of healing she experienced after attending a Rachel's Vinyard Retreat. It was amazing to talk to her. I also got her card and now have the website for the Kentucky Memorial for the Unborn.

The Memorial will be in Frankfort at the Cemetary there. The Memorial features a statue of Rachel, one of Jacob's wives from the book of Genesis, and a large wall surrounding it with places to sit. It'll be in a quiet place, perfect for reflection and meditation. If you'd like to see more about this check it out here: Kentucky Memorial for the Unborn. The best part of the Memorial (and I haven't actually seen the site myself yet) is that it is apparently very visible from the State House. What a great thing for our legislatures to see from their offices: the unborn matter!!

The Bid and Buy night was a great time and I believe we'll try to make this an annual event (i.e. date night) for us as well. I hope we can get others to attend too!!

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