Van speaking: It was such a wonderful blessing to be home with the saints in Stake Conference and be able to fulfill the mandate that I had received from President Lawrence. It was such a wonderful thing to have our family all here this weekend. I’m home from the hospital and getting stronger day by day until I report back to the Hospital a week from Tuesday, March 9th for round two of Chemo. We probably won’t write another blog until then and just spend time enjoying our family while we can and take advantage of every second.
Wendy speaking: It was a very emotional day seeing the Lords hand in our lives helping Van be strong enough to speak in Stake Conference. He did such a good job talking on the service of missionary work. For the longest time I didn’t even think I could do service on the Sabbath but boy was I wrong. Heavenly Father’s children have needs seven days a week not just six. Service is the actual application of our religion. We can sit around and talk about helping people, or sit around and talk about programs or activities but it isn’t until we actually serve and minister one on one that the gospel actually comes alive. Van used an example in his talk today about a brother that was on his way to Church with his family and saw a less-active neighbor working on his shed. So he stopped the car, sent his family on to church and went to help his neighbor with his shed. As a consequence of this act of service and others like it, both of these men are now serving as Bishops in our Stake. We have been the recipient of this kind of service for the last couple of months. Wonderful people have put the gospel in action on our behalf and we are grateful.
President and Sister Heder....the conference was wonderful and your courage and grace filled the hearts of everyone at conference. You both are such blessings in our lives and to see you, Pres. Heder, standing there and delivering such a powerful message was so heartfelt and beautiful. I know a bit about serving on the Sabbath those that you love with a devastating illness. There are blessings on both sides, those that give and those that receive. We truly are the hands of the Lord and we cannot do it without Him and He needs us to help Him.
ReplyDeleteThank you for a wonderful talk today Pres. Heder. Sister Heder, you are strong and beautiful. You are greatly admired by many in the Stake. We love you both deeply and sincerely. Our prayers are with you today and always.
Alana Tompkins
Do you still need people to be tested for compatable bone marrow? How do you go about being tested?
ReplyDeleteWe should know within the week if he has a matched donor or not. If he doesn't then I will ask everyone to go to www.marrow.org to have a packet sent to them with four cheek swabs. It costs $52 but many times they have promotional codes to pay for it, depending on how many people donate money. But this way takes 8-10 weeks to get it in the system and probably won't affect Van but will potentially help others. There is another way to donate quickly by going to www.bonemarrowtest.com It costs $175 but the results are back in 7-10 days. This is a lot to ask of anyone. So we are just waiting to see if he has a match or not. If not I will post this again and ask for help.
ReplyDeleteI forgot a very important part. If someone walks off the street and gets tested it is a 1 in 100,000 chance of being a match. He has a unique tissue cells and only 3 out of 12,000,000 people were a possible match. But two of those aren't a 10 out of 10 match (which is a perfect match). We are just waiting to hear about the last possible donor. We'll let you know. Thanks everyone for being so concerned and wanting to help.
ReplyDeleteI did the bone marrow registry and it was easy and FREE when I did it.Sadly it sat on my desk for a few weeks before I opened it and did it. I felt pretty guilty when I realized I'd been putting off something so easy! Maybe it could have helped someone if I'd done it a week sooner!
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