I MET OTHER FREE HUGGERS!!

Yesterday I was able to receive and give out 1000 hugs!!!!!!! It was totally crazy!!  This is my total hug count for the day, not my free hug count, there is a difference between the two which I am still really trying to understand fully myself but the gist is a free hug comes mostly from strangers and doesn't count friend hugs too much whereas the daily hug count is the number of times hugged in one day so friend hugs qualify for that count.  I am trying to explore this more and it will probably be written about in a future book... But speaking of books, I have a book that is coming out and I need your help in order to make sure it gets published!!! You can learn more about that here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/duckductdave/free-hugs-its-more-than-a-campaign-its-a-lifesyle?ref=live 
Yesterday morning after bible study in America's Center I encountered another person who was planning to give away free hugs at the conference!! It was amazing and exciting and fantastic and fantabulastic, there are no words to describe my joy at having the opportunity to hug with Jacqueline yesterday.  So I Free Hugged with Jacqueline yesterday in the morning before the morning session and then after the morning session I went and bought some supplies to be able to make a couple more free hugs signs for other huggers that would want to free hug with me.  There was also a group from North Carolina that hugged with me for a good amount of time in the afternoon and evening and Jacqueline joined for a little bit of time before heading over to the evening session in the dome.  All in all yesterday was one of the most inspiring and crazy amazing and awesome days in my whole life with receiving 1000 hugs... 1000 hugs!!!! That's a lot of hugs..  and meeting others who were excited about giving away free hugs and joined me in my mission to hug strangers and brighten their days one hug at a time.  I am very blessed that I met them and I hope that this is just the start of something bigger, the creation of a more intimate and caring worldwide community brought together though the simple action of a hug from a person to a stranger. 
I wish you all lots of hugs!!!
Hugs,
David

Urbana Update!

So I am really excited to say that yesterday I received 312 hugs at the Urbana Missions Conference!! I have also been able to take part in some of the Launch Lab where I got some advice about my Free Hugs Tour project that I am working on.  I have a lot of stuff to work on getting my team together for my free hugs tour and working out all of the details of how my team and I are going to go about getting all of the necessary preparation for the tour and coming up with a plan of how the tour might actually look and other opportunities to work with others to make Free Hugs Tour 2013 the greatest experience that it could be.  As I walk around Urbana Free Hugging I am meeting a lot of really cool and interesting people that I am blessed to come into contact with.  It's really exciting and amazingly fun.  So far at the conference I have gotten 378 hugs and my goal for Urbana is to get 1000 hugs.  If you are at the Urbana conference I hope to be able to hug you soon.  :)
Hugs!
David

News

So I just got to Urbana in St. Louis.  I'm all checked in and ready to go.  So these past couple months I haven't been updating my blog very much at all...  Well like not really at all because there have not been any new blog posts.  I was really busy with school from September 1 until November 20 and then I started writing a book about free hugs.  I have completed most of the book and am now in the final editing stages working on getting it ready to publish.  Since I am going to self publish it I started a Kickstarter.com campaign where you can order a copy of the Free Hugs book so that I will have the money in order to get it published.  This only happens if I raise my goal of 3000 dollars in order to have the money to get it published so if your interested in getting a copy pre-order a copy here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/duckductdave/free-hugs-its-more-than-a-campaign-its-a-lifesyle?ref=live  :)
I also have changed up my itenerary for Free Hugs Tour 2013 a little bit which I will share shortly as well. 
Anyway I am really excited for the Urbana Conference and hope to bring more updates shortly and more consistently. 
Hugs!
David