Artist of the Month

Let’s get to know one of our awesome kid artists!!!

Each month at Connor’s Creative Art Center, I will be highlighting one of our amazing and talented artists.  Now that the Art Center is finished, we have an awesome gallery to display all the beautiful artwork the children create.  When the children entered the Art Center for the first time to see the huge transformation, the art gallery wall was one of their favorites!

Artist of the Month

Humphrey Parker

Getting to know the artist:

Favorite Color:  Red

Favorite Medium:  Sculpture

Favorite Subject Matter:  Animals

What art means to me:  “Art is when we put our emotions and thoughts on a 

                                          paper.  Art helps us forget all our sorrows and bad

                                          thoughts.”

Humphrey is 13 years old and in class 6.  When he grows up he would like to be an architect.  He said, “I want to be an architect in future.  I want to design and draw buildings for people to build.  I will be very happy when I achieve my goals one day.  And by the grace of God I know I will achieve in Jesus name. Amen.”

Connor’s Creative Art Center is a safe and creative environment where kids like Humphrey have the opportunity to express their thoughts and feelings through art.  Art helps the children find their voice through a creative outlet and provides them with the opportunity to respond creatively and heal from the trauma they endured as child slaves.

Take a look at Humphrey's artwork!!!

Immeasurably More..

Doris

Just when I thought I was ready to go back to Ghana in 2011 for full time missions, God said WAIT.  He did not tell me why or give me any details of His plan.  He simply said TRUST Me with that desire and ache in your heart for the children in Ghana and wait.  After all, He is the one who put that desire there in the first place.  So when God revealed His plan for my return to Ghana with Touch A Life last September, I was overwhelmed with joy and rejoiced over this verse: Ephesians 3:20.  “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us.” 

After waiting for almost 2 years for God’s perfect timing and sovereign plan, I was headed back to the children I have loved and God has forever placed in my heart since 2008.  The scripture that has been at the heart of my ministry in Ghana is James 1:27: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress.” 

However, returning to Ghana now for the 4^th time, God placed a very specific purpose and passion on my heart…Freedom in Christ through finding your identity Him.  Galatians 5:1: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.  Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”  This passion was birthed out of my own painful struggle with past brokenness involving a broken identity.  God’s wait allowed me the time to uncover these broken areas of my heart and find healing in Him through the therapeutic process of an art journal where I would learn to draw the TRUTH that would set me free.  This process of claiming and drawing the Truth of who we are in Christ is a significant part of the therapeutic art program at Connor’s Creative Art Center.

Our Amazing Design Team: Heather, Jason, Christian, Kim, and Veronica

Again, I am overwhelmed with joy and rejoicing over Ephesians 3:20 with the amazing blessing of a completed art center that is immeasurably more than I could have ever asked for or imagined!  God is so good and His faithfulness reaches the skies!!!  He has richly and abundantly provided all the resources and people to orchestrate His plan to create beauty from ashes and redeem tremendous loss.  Our incredible design team along with Connor’s Song have worked hard these past 2 weeks to design a fun, creative, and therapeutic space for the children to grow, heal, and dream big about the hopeful future God has for each of them.  

I absolutely LOVE my new office!!!

The Art room where I will have all my classes!!!

Kim and I by the Lego wall

Zion's Road

Check out our awesome new sign for the Touch A Life Care Center!  The Care Center is located on Zion’s Road in honor of Garret and Kelly’s four-year-old grandson Zion who has Spinal Muscular Atrophy.  Our founder Pam Cope said, “This new home is about all the families who through their loss and suffering have made dreams come true for the least of these.  Zion is walking a road that not many are called to.  He is walking through the fire with courage and joy.  What a beautiful example of a mighty oak in a broken body accepting his cup”.  We are truly honored to have our Care Center on Zion’s Road.  Zion is a special little boy!

Garret and Kelly are our amazing in-county directors for TAL, and we are so blessed by the tremendous love, dedication, and care they give each and every day for our precious children!  We love them dearly!

Wax Resist Paintings

Gameli

March has finally arrived and the huge Touch A Life team will be here this weekend!!!  This is going to be an amazing and busy month with the finishing of the Art Center and the TAL dedication.  All of the families who have built the dorms and buildings at the TAL Care Center in honor of their child who pasted away will be joining us for the dedication.  We are all so thankful for the Deal family (Connor’s Song), Art Feeds, and the design team who envisioned this Art Center and who are working so hard to make such a special place for the children.  Over the past several months, the children and I have been in an empty Legos building with only the bare necessities like plastic tables, chairs and some art supplies.  But in just a couple weeks we will have a fully supplied and creatively designed Art Center with many resources. 

The Art Center is a place where the children can have a therapeutic environment to express themselves and continue to heal through the process of creating art.  For children who have been trafficked and have been through the trauma of abuse and abandonment, art can be a creative outlet where kids, like Gameli and Jacob, can experience healing.  Through drawing, painting, sculpture, and many other mediums, the children are able to find their voice through art and express themselves in pictures when words may be difficult to find.  As the children get lost in the process of creating, many of them become still and quiet; thus, allowing their pictures and the images they create communicate their thoughts and feelings.

Benjamin

Each child is unique with a different story to tell.  That story may have started out ok but it took a dark turn when they were abandoned and sold into slavery.  Now free, each child has the opportunity to dream big because the God of the universe has chosen him or her before the creation of the world for a specific purpose.  The kids now are free to discover that purpose and know that they have a hopeful future.

Take a look at the beautiful wax resist paintings the children did last month.  They chose to draw their favorite creature with crayons and got creative with various patterns on their creature.  Afterwards, they did a watercolor wash over the crayons, which resisted the paint, and voila…a colorful masterpiece just waiting to be framed and hung up in the Art Center gallery once it is finished!

Wisdom

Moses

Jacob

Bernard

William

Benedicta