Empowered to Connect Conference- Denver

For the last 3 days, I have been in Denver, Colorado for the Empowered to Connect Conference 

which is an amazing 2 day conference discussing the dynamics of children who come from hard places. It is a conference that every adoption worker, foster care worker, or foster/adoptive parent should attend. I could not recommend it more!  This conference is sponsored by Show Hope, which was founded by Steven Curtis and Mary Beth Chapman, following the adoption of their first daughter from China.

This organization has a passion to share the vision or orphan care and adoption and is a wonderful ministry that has given thousands of families adoption grants in order to make adoption more affordable to Christian families. What they have created for orphans and families both the U.S. and around the world is remarkable. I could talk about their ministry for far longer than this post will allow, so we'll save more for later.

Today, we were in day two of the conference and though I have had years in adoption work and sat through numerous trainings for my job, this conference opened my eyes in new ways to what children who have been in foster care or who have been adopted domestically or internationally may have faced or may still face ever after they are home. Though some of the principles discussed were not new concepts, they were expounded on  in new ways and many new concepts were taught this week in such a tangible and practical way.  Dr. Karen Purvis, Director of the Institute of Child Development at Texas Christian University, has written so much on this topic and has spent the last decade developing research-based interventions for adopted, foster and other at-risk children. She provided wonderful insight into numerous topics, provided practical application, and reminded everyone that no matter what you may face- there is always hope, don't give up on a child.

I will certainly expound more on this conference, but if I can say anything at all, I would encourage families to check out her book "The Connected Child" as well as numerous resources that are available on her website. It will be time and money VERY well spent in learning strategies and successful ways to help  your foster child, adopted child, or other at-risk children.  You can look out for more on this topic and conference in the upcoming days-- it's just far too late here in Denver with an early 4:30am wake up call to type more on this subject tonight.

After the conference was over, my co-worker and I took a short drive to see the agency that Nate and I were adopting through. Obviously, I couldn't be this close without seeing where it was. (if you recall, Nate and I couldn't adopt through the agency where I work, due to state laws as well as conflict of interest, so we had to chose another agency to work with) It was somewhat surreal to be here in Denver this week as the last time Nate and I were here in July of 2011, we began praying intensely about considering adoption.  In the end it is truly a God-thing that we ended up going with an agency based in the same area.

Since we had some down time this evening, we headed to the Red Rocks Park and Amphitheater around sunset which was absolutely beautiful tonight.

This is the largest outdoor concert venue in the U.S. and is absolutely breathtaking to look at. As we climbed the stairs of the venue, I was reminded how out of shape I apparently am how much the altitude in Denver affects your oxygen levels when you do anything to exert a little energy as well as how thirsty the altitude makes you.

It was a great ending to a few days here and, as always, Colorado doesn't disappoint when it comes to beautiful scenery, friendly people, and incredible sunsets.

I am truly thankful for the opportunity to come to this conference. I look forward to being able to share with others all of the valuable information and resources I took from this conference, not only as an adoption worker, but as a soon to be adoptive parent.