A friend from my men’s group and I are beginning to plan out a new life opportunity. We’ve been talking about it for two years and haven’t taken action on it as it always seemed like things would get in the way. From our reading of Wild at Heart and subsequent discussions, we’ve come to believe that this was not just coincidental but an attack aimed at keeping us sidelined in the battle (and I do mean battle) for our hearts.
As we build out our idea I’ll share what our plans and dreams are here. We don’t know where this will take us but we want to flesh it out and see where we land.
Our thought is to create an organization whose mission is to find and help people in our community, region and nation who are stuggling with the problems of the world including depression, chronic illness, death, stress, work, raising children and family and many others issues which hold people back from reaching their full potential.
The first branch in our Tree of Life vision is what we are calling The Laughter Club, and it deals with depression. My friend Tony came up with the idea for The Laughter Club after our pastor committed suicide and he was searching for answers. Tony is a depression survivor himself and realized in talking with others that there were many people in our community who also needed help getting through tough times. So he started this group which meets every few weeks to support those dealing with depression and discuss ways to further the groups efforts. So far the comments from those who have joined has been very positive.
One of our first goals once we write our business plan and setup our non-profit, is to raise enough money to buy a building/house for the organization to work out of and operate from. We plAn using this setting to provide counseling and meeting facilities for various small groups in a comfortable and safe setting.
Of course we bought the domain thelaughterclub.org and have a place holder up for now (thanks again to my friend Gobie at Kolusu Networks who is hosting our site). One of the members of the laughter club designed us a quick logo for us which we plan on using until we can decide further on our strategic mission, from there we’ll be work out further details for the brand(s). We hope to have an better site up in a few weeks and our business plan underway for the umbrella organization with further details on the way after that.
If you have any thoughts or comments on our ideas, let me know. I’d welcome them. More on this one soon!
-Brian