{"id":8274,"date":"2013-02-25T02:33:00","date_gmt":"2013-02-25T02:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=8274"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:35:55","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:35:55","slug":"dats-speech-contest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=8274","title":{"rendered":"Dats’ Speech Contest"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Fatherly pride is oozing out of me lately.\u00a0 Dats (age 11) has entered himself in a speech contest.\u00a0 He will be delivering the speech tomorrow evening and I am sure he would appreciate your prayers.\u00a0 Meanwhile, his sister, The Drama Queen (age 10), has a chance tomorrow to speak about the work God has called our whole family to in Haiti.\u00a0 The setting will be\u00a0the homeschool class of her good friend, Anna.\u00a0\u00a0The DQ\u00a0would also relish your prayers.\u00a0 <\/span>Below is the text of Dats’ speech.\u00a0 He mentions baby Sammy, an orphan Dats met in Haiti last week – make sure you see the before and after pictures of Sammy at the bottom of the speech!<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

Why My Voice\nIs Important<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I use my voice to make friends.\u00a0 A week ago, I was sitting outside in the\nsearing sunshine of Haiti, helping my new friend Travis study for a spelling\ntest. The other kids told me he was the worst speller in the school.\u00a0 He once missed 22 out of 25 on a spelling\ntest.\u00a0 As we sat on the sidewalk, I\nexplained how to use the Greek roots to remember how to spell his words. Using\nour voices to communicate is important.\u00a0\nUsing my voice to make friends benefits me and others.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But there\u2019s another use of my voice\nthat benefits others, even if it costs me something.\u00a0 My voice is also used to make\nself-sacrifices.\u00a0 Only two years ago, I\nwas nine and I won an iPod at a church Easter party.\u00a0 My dad bought it from me for forty\ndollars.\u00a0 Around that time my mom was\npreparing for a week long mission trip to Haiti.\u00a0 She explained to my siblings and me that\nHaiti was very poor \u2013 the poorest country in this hemisphere.\u00a0 A place where the average person lives on a\ndollar and twenty five cents a day.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One night, when God\u2019s voice was very\nclear and evident to me, I came down to my parents\u2019 room.\u00a0 I asked my mom if forty dollars would help a\nHaitian.\u00a0 She said yes.\u00a0 I told her to give twenty dollars to one\nHaitian and the other twenty from my iPod to another Haitian.\u00a0 This was when my voice became a part of God\u2019s\nplan.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 About a week later, my mom arrived\nin Haiti. She found two people who could really use the money I had given.\u00a0 The first person was a woman whose spine had\nbeen broken in the massive earthquake of 2010.\u00a0\nShe was still in a hospital bed several months later, but in Haiti when\nyou\u2019re at a hospital, you do not get bathed, clothed or fed unless your family\nprovides it.\u00a0 My voice, that got the\nmoney down there, surely made a positive change in her life.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The second person my voice helped was\na man named Enel.\u00a0 He had just lost his\njob and his cell phone had been stolen.\u00a0\nTwo thirds of adults in Haiti are unemployed or underemployed. He would need\nhis cell phone to get a new job.\u00a0 The\ntwenty dollars that my voice got to him definitely helped him.\u00a0 This use of my voice costs me, but greatly\nbenefits others.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sometimes it takes a lot more help\nto make a difference so I have to motivate others to join the cause.\u00a0 Another use of my voice I have developed\nrecently is to motivate others to help.\u00a0\nI did that two weeks ago by talking to not only my class, but the whole\nsixth grade.\u00a0 I used my voice to tell and\nshow them what Haiti looks like and what my mission is.\u00a0 I was getting ready to head to Haiti for a\none week trip where I hoped to visit an orphanage. Through my voice I shared\nabout one particular orphan named Sammy. \u00a0He had been abandoned by his parents and left\nin a suitcase in a vacant house. When he was discovered, he was nearly a year\nold but only the weight of a newborn.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

\u00a0My classmates saw my\npicture of Samuel and instantly wanted to help. Over only one weekend they\nbrought in a ton of stuff!\u00a0 They brought\nin baby food, formula, bed sheets and $152 for the orphans down in Haiti. While\nI was in Haiti a week ago, I got to deliver everything my classmates had\nbrought in.\u00a0 The orphans were very\nhappy.\u00a0 As I entered the house, the\norphans sang, in English, \u201cWe are happy to see you this evening.\u201d\u00a0 My class and I had just altered the lives of\nthe orphans through our voices.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And I got to see little Samuel in\nperson, hold him and feed him some of the finger food that my classmates had\nsent.\u00a0 A few months ago he had been so\nsmall and shriveled up that nobody would pick him up out of fear of breaking\nhim.\u00a0 He is now healthy and, thanks to my\nclass and me, he will continue being that way.\u00a0\nI had used my voice to multiply the help.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I know that my voice was made for a\nspecial purpose and I will use it for that purpose.\u00a0 Maybe it is to help people in Haiti.\u00a0 I think it can do almost anything! My voice\ncan save lives, inspire others, or change the world!<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"\/
When Sammy was found in the suitcase, he was nearly a year old but weighed only 8 pounds.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n
\"\"\/
And here's what three months of TLC did for Sammy.\u00a0 Without the birthmark on his chest, it might be hard to believe this is the same child.\u00a0 There's no counting the ribs on him now!\u00a0 Sammy's story is still developing – there's a Christian Haitian couple living in the States working hard and praying hard to adopt him.\u00a0 I will keep you posted.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fatherly pride is oozing out of me lately.\u00a0 Dats (age 11) has entered himself in a speech contest.\u00a0 He will be delivering the speech tomorrow evening and I am sure he would appreciate your prayers.\u00a0 Meanwhile, his sister, The Drama Queen (age 10), has a chance tomorrow to speak about the work God has called […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8275,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8274"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8277,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8274\/revisions\/8277"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}