Monday, October 29, 2007

The Breakthrough Benefit

We had an incredible evening Friday. We had more than 1800 people registered for a sit down dinner event at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare. The Breakthrough staff and volunteers did such a great job pulling off the best benefit ever! I was very proud of each of them. The whole event was incredibly well organized and everyone worked with such great attitudes. God blessed us beyond our wildest expectations!

The Chicago Tabernacle Choir sang beautifully and we were mesmerized by an interesting dramatization called a shadow show. It was a unique medium of art performed live with vocalists singing an original score as six people manipulated hundreds of images on six overhead projectors onto the large screens. It was directed by Frank Maugeri, and his crew from Red Moon Theater.

Photographer, Jimi Allen, put together a video with the pictures and voice overs of our kids and guests. It was amazing. It was a great tribute to the work our staff do every day to impact the lives of so many people.

Our speaker, Tony Evans hit a home run, the best speaker ever for our cause. And of course, our kids choir was a huge hit as always.

We have been overwhelmed with the love and support of the donors who gave and pledged at the event. Right now our count is $705,251 and we will most likely get some checks in the mail in the next week. Praise God!! We are still hoping and praying to reach our goal of $750,000. God is so good!!

Special thanks to all of you who helped and who came out and supported us. We are blessed.

I was especially delighted that both of my daughters were able to attend. Here's a picture of us. Monica is on the left and Teri on the right.

2 comments:

PrincessMax said...

I agree with your assessment, Arloa. The video was especially impressive and moving. I wrote down the words of one of the women: "I gotsta move. I'm 57 years old and there's a life out there waiting for me."

Thank you and your staff for a fantastic experience.

Rebecca

Paul said...

I thought it was really great. My parents and my in laws thought so too. They were really moved.