We don’t live in America any more. In fact, the closest thing to us that that remotely sounds like the name of America is our local grocery store that we lovingly call “Merican Donut.” (The name in Spanish sounds very close and is often mistaken by non-Spanish speakers as what we jokingly call it.) Because of that, we don’t celebrate special holidays like we would in the US of A. This year, for the 4th of July, we invited some very special guests to come celebrate with us, by way of a workshop.

Ladies and Gentlemen our next guests…Dr. Benson Fraser and Dr. William Brown. 

Dr. Brown is a Professor and Research Fellow at Regent University. Dr. Fraser is a Westminster Canterbury Fellow for Religious Studies and Lifelong Learning at Virginia Wesleyan University. Together they co-founded Brown, Fraser & Associates, a communications consulting company.

On the 3rd and 4th of July, these two brilliant communications researchers gave us a two day intensive workshop about “Transformational Media.” We had a group of people, who use media to share hope in some hopeless places. They came to participate and learn how to better use entertainment-education strategies and the indirect story method to shine a brighter light in some of the darkest regions around of the world. (*Note for safety reasons some were not photographed.)

This workshop was absolutely amazing and gave us so much information to process that we can only become better storytellers and artists. After this event, we invited our non-american friends to celebrate the 4th of July with us by sharing an amazing meal… smoked pork loin, grilled chicken, potato salad, baked beans, hot rolls, and cherry cobbler.