A day of HOPE

Hope Ranch had our first day camp with HopeKids on Saturday, June 16^th.

Hope Kids is For children fighting life-threatening illnesses, rare are the days when they

can laugh and play like other kids. HopeKids believes that by bringing joy to these remarkable children via an ongoing schedule of special events and activities we can help cultivate hope,

acceptance, and most importantly the will to live.

Hope Ranch volunteers arrived at 9:00am to gather up the horses and get them ready. We groomed, saddled, and played the Parelli  7 games with them. The 7 games helps us get the horses calm and lets them get their excitement out before any rider gets aboard for a ride. This keeps the riders and horses safe. After we played the 7 games with our individual horses, we went into the arena. The only problem was the doors to the arena had been changed recently to metal doors and it was windy so they were making some loud noises. Some of the horses got excited, so we continued to play the 7 games with our individual horses in the arena.

I had Trinity and she was nervous and so was I, so it was a little hard to get her to calm down. I am one of the newest volunteers, so I was worried that Trinity would be a little jumpy for the HopeKids families that were arriving at 10:00am.

Well Trinity was still a little nervous, so I handed her off to one of the more experienced volunteers, Annie, and was able to talk with the families and help the kids on and off the horses.

The day was full of fun, smiles, and lasting memories. The two kids I remember the most are Abigail and Natasha. They didn’t want to get on the horses at first, but once they were riding they didn’t want to get off. These two girls are twin sisters and are 4 years old, but I thought they were only about 1. Well, I was surprised after talking to their mom. They are the only identical twins in the world with Down syndrome and leukemia. On July 2^nd, they were featured on KSL.com in a story “Strangers come to the aid of special needs twins stricken with cancer”. It was interesting that I already knew about them and had told others too.

We had food, horse back riding, roping, and smiles all around. 

This event was very rewarding and I can’t wait for the next 4 day camps over the summer.