Brad,

Thanks for sharing this news.  I remember Vic and am happy for him and his 
family.  Just goes to show God can use anything to provide for his kids, 
even reality TV!



JulieMelton
visit me at
www.heart-and-music.com
Keep smiling!





>From: MV <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Electronic Church <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Awesome sharing of news
>Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2006 07:23:57 -0500
>
>Hello all,
>
>Some of you may remember a brother from the list some time ago, Vic Llanes. 
>Aside from his wife battling and winning the fight with Thyroid cancer 
>fairly recently. They were up for candidates of a TV show called Extreme 
>Makeover, where they take someone's house and either update or just 
>completely tear it down and rebuild... no less. I don't think Vic would 
>mind me sharing the below note...
>
>Hello Brad,
>I'm finally back online after a long time of being sequestered, I mean my 
>family and myself. We have indeed been through the extreme makeover that I 
>was
>telling you that might happen and it did. We were sent to Disney world. I 
>cannot talk about any details for now until our show has been aired so 
>please
>excuse me if I'm a little vague.  All I can say right now is that God is 
>good, no matter what.
>There are lots and lots of articles about us but this was one of the first 
>to come out from a google search. If you care to try at google, just use 
>these
>as your keywords:
>"bergenfield llanes extreme makeover"
>Thanks so much for everything Brad.
>always, Vic.
>begin article
>NJ.com's Printer-Friendly Page
>Home makeover a welcome reality for blind, deaf family
>Thursday, May 25, 2006
>By KEVIN COUGHLIN
>NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE
>Cell-cams and iPods make life more fun. Every now and then, gadgets also 
>make life better. A house in Bergenfield should be a prime example.
>Yes, this involves reality TV. Still, it's a pretty safe bet that about 
>$100,000 of donated technology that was installed for free earlier this 
>month -
>from talking thermostats to pulsating smoke alarms to specialized 
>communications gear - will make a real difference for the home's blind and 
>deaf occupants
>once the camera crews vanish.
>"The family was not disabled. The house was disabled. We're enabling the 
>house," actress Marlee Matlin said May 8, as jackhammers jackhammered, 
>tractors
>tractored and a swarm of construction volunteers voluntarily constructed a 
>new home for the Llanes family of Bergen County.
>Matlin, who is deaf, will host a two-hour episode of "Extreme Makeover: 
>Home Edition" to air on ABC in July.
>The Llanes 50-year-old split- level house was small, dark, noisy and hard 
>to navigate before volunteers demolished it over the weekend.
>But obstacles are nothing new for this clan.
>Blind from a hereditary disease, Vicente Llanes, 42, came from the 
>Philippines in 1997 seeking medical treatment. His mother, Isabel, is 
>blind. His wife,
>Maria, a physical therapist, is battling thyroid cancer. Daughters Guenivir 
>and Carrie are going blind from the same disease their father has, and 
>teenage
>son Zeb is deaf because his mother contracted German measles during 
>pregnancy.
>Recently, the show's producers told family members they were chosen from 
>thousands of applicants and sent them to Walt Disney World while the house 
>was
>being rebuilt. On May 11, they returned to a home nearly twice as large as 
>the 1,300-square-foot original, now dubbed a "Z Home" for its A- to-Z 
>technology,
>by Brian Stolar of the Pinnacle Companies, the Chatham builders overseeing 
>the project.
>There will be smoke sensors that give spoken warnings, a Braille printer 
>that can be controlled wirelessly by computers throughout the house, and 
>"iCommunicator"
>software to convert speech into sign-language video clips - in real time.
>A Hackensack company called GoAmerica is supplying BlackBerrys and a relay 
>service, so Zeb Llanes (pronounced "Lee-ann-is") can communicate by phone 
>with
>his mom by sending text messages to an operator.
>The handheld "Colorino" can scan and say the colors of clothes and other 
>objects. Stevie Wonder used the device to tease visitors about their 
>ethnicity
>at a trade show, said Fran Hennelly of Independent Living Aids, a Long 
>Island company on hand for a media preview.
>Jon Gabry, a Kearny teen who is blind and deaf, showed off the BrailleNote, 
>a keyboard that lets him type Web queries and then read the results in 
>Braille.
>Paired with a GPS satellite tracking device and mapping software, the 
>BrailleNote can tell blind users exactly where they are, with directions to 
>nearby
>restaurants.
>Home Automated Living has software called - what else? - HAL, to let the 
>Llanes family program lighting, heating and security systems via 
>microphones, telephones,
>the TV or the Web. About the only thing HAL won't do, company President Tim 
>Shriver said, is work with Apple computers. (Microsoft is among the 
>project's
>donors.)
>Many people with disabilities "don't even know all this exists," said 
>Joanne Castellano of Shrewsbury's Family Resources Associates, a training 
>agency.
>Some can't afford such technology, which doesn't benefit from the same 
>cost-shrinking economies of scale as many consumer gadgets. Government aid 
>often
>is tied to employment, experts said.
>Blind since birth, Richard Fox remembers typing school papers, only to be 
>told later that the typewriter ribbon was shot.
>"Some of this can make life tremendously easier," said Fox, who coaches the 
>disabled for DeWitt & Associates of Midland Park. "But if you don't have a 
>positive
>attitude and confidence, (technology) won't help you, whether it's a 
>typewriter or this other stuff."
>The Llanes family should catch on fast. Vicente, a naturalized citizen, has 
>designed software for the blind and digitized books for a nonprofit called 
>BookShare.
>Zeb also is computer savvy, and other family members are active with church 
>and civic groups, according to publicists for the show.
>"The most important thing is the Llaneses were a happy family before we got 
>here, and they will be happier after we leave," said Matlin, an Oscar 
>winner
>for "Children of a Lesser God" in 1986.
>© 2006  The Jersey Journal
>© 2006 NJ.com All Rights Reserved.
>