I think that the first half of 2012 has been the most stressful but most rewarding ever since 2009, when I first started to work on Beyond the Wall. While I was in Colombia working on the 2011 Christmas distribution, my Father had to take all of the donations to a storage unit in east Orlando. The storage unit was to be paid by me every month, which I did. The donations that were stored in the unit were the ones that would be used for future distributions. In March 2012, all of the donations suddenly "disappeared" and were considered stolen. I asked for footage of recent activity, but the storage company employees informed me that the cameras had been "disabled." After filing a police report, nobody gave me hopes on recovering the donations. I was very disappointed with everything, but I realized that I couldn't let this be a reason for me to not continue helping El Talon.
I decided to recover the donations as fast as possible; I began to inform everyone through Facebook and Twitter about the problems that I was going through, and to my surprise, everyone began to help. I received support from people that I didn't even know, and it went great! I drove all around central Florida picking up donations from awesome people that simply want to make a difference in El Talon. I flew to Los Angeles to pick up donations, my family went to Chicago to get some more donations, and all in all, just through Facebook/Twitter, one interview on La Grande 1030 AM with Fernando Negron and El Guajiro, and one video of support from Miss Colombia 2010, I managed to collect and pack all of the donations...in two months!
On June 7th, 2012, I was informed that all of the "stolen" donations appeared! When I found out, I couldn't believe it and I was excited, but at the same time, I was very puzzled. According to the storage manager, the donations were "transferred" to another unit and I was shown the empty one back in March; however, they wanted me to pay four months worth of rent! In the long run, we made a deal and I only paid for one month worth of storage rent, and I was allowed to take the donations. I know very well that there is more behind this whole situation and that I can perfectly file a lawsuit, but I am not interested in fighting against that storage company; the important thing is that the donations have been recovered. I then had the difficult task of transferring the recovered donations into a new storage unit with my family, which was difficult because of the heat.
Throughout this whole mess with the storage company, I've come to the conclusion that things must happen for a reason. I've learned that I have to "go with the flow" when it comes to my campaign and that I shouldn't stress out as much as I did when the donations were "stolen." I feel very happy to know that I can count on the community for support and on my family for anything. I now look at this experience like this: the donations were taken from me, I worked very hard to recover them, the "stolen donations" appeared, and I now have double the amount of donations for El Talon. Again, things happen for a reason. Thank you very much to everyone who supported me when I really needed it!
I invite you to follow me on Facebook (Beyond the Wall Campaign-Colombia) and through Twitter (@BeyondTheWallCO).
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