Marne's blog

The staff here at River of Hope Ranch would like to thank the Noon Optimist Club of Centerville for providing us with a donation to help with the construction of our new office building. The building is now complete and in full operation! This building provides a safe, welcoming, and private environment for children and their families to meet with our counselor. It also serves as the office space for our Clinical Counselor and Executive Director. We sincerely appreciate the support of this wonderful organization. For more information on the Noon Optimist Club of Centerville, please visit their website at - www.centervillenoonoptimist.com.

River of Hope Ranch is pleased the announce the wonderful support we have and continue to receive from the Exchange Club of Dayton. On April 2, 2009, the Club presented a scholarship in the amount $150 in support of the KIND group (www.kinddayton.org).

With this donation, 10 wonderful kids from the KIND group visited the ranch for a day camp on Friday, July 10th. What a fun and amazing experience we all had! The day included trail rides and fun horse activities that focused on communication, team building, and conflict resolution.

We also had a guest speaker - Pastor Dale McCloud and his horse Spirit talk to us about dealing with anger in our lives and to follow the verse - James 1:19 “Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. Your anger can never make things right in God’s sight.”

We look forward to more times with the KIND group. We also look forward to having the members of the Exchange Club of Dayton visit us for a tour on Thursday, September 24th!

Please see link below for more information:
http://exchangeclubdayton.googlepages.com/riverofhoperanch

We are excited to announce that a new office has been built for River of Hope. This 12'x16' log cabin style building provides a quant, private environment for our clinical counselor to meet with parents and clients during their intake sessions. We are putting the finishing touches on it now and it will be open by the end of the week!

We are extremely grateful to Builders for Christ for volunteering their time and skills to build our office for FREE! Builders for Christ is a volunteer organization of men, women and children building the Body of Christ through Volunteer Church Construction.

On March 17th, a great group of kids from the Mary Haven Youth Center of Warren County came to River of Hope Ranch for a day camp.

The day was full of adventure, fun, and learning. Equine-related activities that focused on building problem-solving and communication skills, self-confidence, and trust were a key element of the day. Taking a relaxing trail ride over beautiful hills and stream crossings made the day complete.

"Sometimes, as I deal with most of the kids in a courtroom setting, I have enjoyed seeing them as normal kids." said one supervisor of the group. It was an overall success and a great time for all.

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I wanted to share with you a true success story. This is what we strive for here at the Ranch. We pray that each and every participant finds hope and healing in their own personal way, like this wonderful little boy.

Please read this testimonial from his mom regarding the program here at River of Hope:

"From the time our son was small he exhibited very aggressive behavior. It was not uncommon for him to have his older sister, by seven years, in tears from hitting, kicking or throwing something at her. While she was the most common target, my husband and I were not immune to his attacks. Needless to say, we were very frustrated. We had tried numerous methods of correcting him, all to no avail. I had read several books on strong-willed children and the most common theme was to be consistent. Well we had done that for weeks and months and finally years and his behavior did not change.