Who Says We're Too Old to Play with Puppets?

Another CF Education day in Des Moines, Iowa came and went and another year with a fabulous guest speaker! Josh Mogren of Welcome to Joshland had the crowd's full attention. He brought his buddy, Moganko too!

Talk about hearing a man speak from his heart. Josh is someone who will tell it like it is and if it happens to be something you may not like, he'll let you know up front that it may be something you don't like and that he means no disrespect.

RESPECT, that actually should be Josh's middle name.

Josh will respectfully let you know what he likes and dislikes. He will respectfully tell you about his parents -- their ups and downs -- and with a heavy heart respectfully tell you how he honors and remembers his sister Angie who died from CF complications at the tender age of 16. He respectfully broached on the new 6 foot rule infectious control policy and honored it that day, and we honored it as well. But that hasn't always been the case...

You see, Andrea was so looking forward to going to our CF Ed day to see and hear Josh. But because of the new CFF guidelines Andrea was asked not to attend. Boy was she not happy about that. We actually were headed to Minnesota the week the new policy guidelines were released and what did we do? We met with Josh while we were in his home State and had lunch together. I brought a tape measure to make sure they sat 6 feet apart, but it fell short by 1-foot. Oh well, as Andrea put it…YOLO!

Shhh! Don't tell anyone they sat only 5 feet away from each other. :)

So what did we do come conference day? Well, we couldn't break the rule so we improvised. I brought my iPad to the conference and Skyped Andrea so she could see/hear Josh that way and it worked out perfectly.

Andrea is clapping after listening to Josh sing a CF tune. 

Where there's a will, there's a way and we made sure Andrea got to hear Josh despite the new CF guidelines. She learned a lot. While Josh spoke Andrea would text me me things like, "I can relate to a lot of things." She even asked him a question, which he respectfully answered. It was a great way to have my CFer "there" to listen and learn from another CFer.

If you're a parent with a child that has CF and your CF clinic center offers family education days, I urge you to recommend Josh to be a guest speaker. Trust me, you will not be disappointed!

Later that same evening, Josh and I were able to hang out. We hoped more CF parents would join us, but alas it was just him and I and we had a blast. I took him to a karaoke lounge and was entertained by his amazing singing. I personally wimped out and did not sing!

The most awesome thing about Josh is his beautiful, kind heart. Even Andrea told me, "Josh really loves us CF kids." I reassured her that she was absolutely correct! I'm honored to call him my friend!

Love ya Joshy! :)