LEGOS...PART THREE!!

LEGOS.. Well, last time I left you with the promise of Part three in our Lego adventure!!! I found out from a mom in my Amazing Moms Group, (we all have kids with special needs and meet together once a week for support and God time) that there was an on-line class available for kids with Asperger's Syndrome. It is a Lego Engineering Class. After some checking around on the internet, I found the class, its description and the price. UGH.
It was $199.00. That may not be alot to some, but to us, it is HUGE. So, my husband and I added it to our prayer list and we stuck it on the back burner in our hearts. I shared our dream with a couple of the Amazing Moms...this group of ladies is awesome. We are all about how can help our special ones excel? If they show an interest in ANYTHING how can we best use that to fan it into something they can USE in their lives??? Anyway, they began praying too for the funds.

That was before the Heart-y Party I had for the Amazing Moms...please see my older posts to find out what the Heart-y Party was. The leader left a coffee carafe at my home from that event, and so she stopped by the next day. As she was talking with me, she said, "the group and I discussed Tyler's intense interest in LEGOs and we think he should have the chance to try out this engineering course to see if it will spark something more in him. He deserves a chance to be successful." She then took two one hundred dollar bills from her purse and gave them to me. God is SO GOOD. I cried.

He had provided the money for the course through these sweet women and their hard work. You see, our group has a fund established. We do fundraisers throughout the year (our biggest one is a HUGE yard sale in September) to "fund" this fund. We use that money to help people with disabilities throughout the community. We've built wheelchair ramps, put in a kitchen floor for someone, sent kids to special camps...and other things. Those moms decided to help my Tyler...and I'll not forget it!

Well, I signed him up and we received a 1,000 piece LEGO kit to complete the class with!!! These are not regular legos...many specialty pieces..it's AWESOME! The pictures here are Tyler with his first completed project... a CHAINSAW! You turn the handle, which turns the gears, which turns the "chain". Amazing!!! Honestly, the reading and understanding of the booklet about LEgo is a bit beyond him. But his Dad and I are helping him through it. Also, his Dad had to help with interpreting the illustrations...but Tyler built the chainsaw.

It IS success. Success in self-esteem, success in learning a new thing...success in accomplishment!!! Not to mention the God lesson about provision that we got to share with Tyler about how we got to sign up in the first place!!! It's all priceless. It's all God. And I wanted to share it with you all!!!

He IS in the small stuff. And HE cares.

LEGOS...PART TWO!

Alright, so I feel the need to keep going with the Lego adventure we've been on!!!

Tyler has, since the creation of the first planet probe, added to his fleet. He now has 15 planet probes...he calls them rovers. They each have a name, I can't keep them straight...with different details on each one...no two rovers are alike. Anyway, after the first probe was completed, my DIL was over and mentioned to Tyler, "you should write to NASA and tell them about it." She left to go home, and I didn't think anymore about it. Tyler however, stayed in the office. For about another hour. When he emerged, he had three letters in his hands. One to NASA, one to Kennedy Space Center and one to Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He had used the same letter for each, but had changed the salutation to each one. As he handed them to me, I was well, STUNNED. Tyler has Asperberger's syndrome, obsessive compulsive disorder, and some wacky sensory issues. He has a one on one aide in school to keep him on task and to help smooth over transitions. This young man, emerged from the home office with a DETAILED paragraph about his creation. There was humor. There was information. There was description. Sure, there were typos, sure some thoughts weren't followed through to completion totally. BUT, the point here, and amazing MIRACLE here, is that he's NEVER before been able to but down on paper two thoughts that flow together. Yet I held in my hands an entire single spaced paragraph!!!! I cried.

Well, I took that letter and wrote a cover letter for it...explaining about Tyler, about his limitations and challenges. About how they were part of a miracle from God. We took pictures of the probe to include with the letter. And then, I mailed it all...to NASA, Kennedy Space Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Here's the last paragraph I wrote in my cover letter...

"If there is any way that you can acknowledge receipt of his letter back to him, that would be so exciting for him! Thank you for your time and for sharing in this MIRACLE with me!"

We heard back from all three places. With posters, pictures of space shuttles, of crews, of planets, and myriads of facts about space, missions there, and these three centers. He loves to receive mail!! And it all meant so much to him...and me and his dad.

What an absolute treasured gift this has all been from God above!!! Just for us! To add to that, at Christmas time, our oldest son and his family flew home...he is in the Air Force. And he had a gift for Tyler. It was a patch that was exactly like the ones the astronauts wore on their sleeves in space aboard the Endeavour. Zach had received it for working on some of the details concerning that shuttle launch!! That was great too!

Then....yes, this IS the never ending miracle from God to my son...

We heard about a LEGO class that was on-line...a class geared specifically to Asperger's children...about LEGO and engineering... TO BE CONTINUED.....PART THREE TOMORROW!!

LEGOS.....

LEGOS.... Tyler discovered them about six months ago. He's had them forever, but his newfound love for space, stars, planets, their names and their sizes...and the space program...prompted him to begin building his very own planet probe. Taking ideas from all the facts his brain holds and adding that to pictures he has seen on the NASA website of the Spirit and the Opportunity (for those of you who don't know, these are rovers actually on Mars at this very moment!!) he created an original probe. From LEGOS. I was stunned when I saw it all those months ago, he had NEVER done anything like that before. And the detail on this thing...well, to give you an idea...there are 11, yes, eleven cameras on this probe that turn 360 degrees ...there are detectors of all sorts, filters for one thing and the other... it's quite amazing. Here's a picture....

There is much more to this story...and tomorrow I'll write about NASA, and the letter we sent. Then the next day, I'll write about the on-line class he is taking and how that came to be!!! God is amazing and I am eager to share it all with you!!