From the Pastors Desk - September 30, 2024
As you can tell by the front page, we are excited to make Joe Lopick’s charity run in the New York City Marathon our October Concern of the Month. Joe has had a personal encounter with melanoma. His treatment and cure experience led him to go back to school to become a nurse at age 42 (no small task!). Joe’s fundraising effort to find a cure has become a very personal endeavor.
Joe’s fundraising page states “I’m taking on the 2024 TCS New York City Marathon with Fred’s Team, the official running program of Memorial Sloan Ketering Cancer Center (MSK). My goal is to raise as much as I can to support groundbreaking cancer research at MSK, and your donation will give me a boost as I train for my race.”
Named in honor of New York City Marathon co-founder and MSK patient Fred Lebow, Fred’s team brings together passionate runners and supporters to make progress against cancer. Since 1995, Fred’s Team participants have raised over $110 million. 100% of funds raised go directly into MSK labs, where doctors and scientists have expertise in more than 400 types of cancer and work every day to find new cures.
Cancer is a terrible disease that, unfortunately, touches all of us at some point or another. Whether we have personally had cancer or known someone who has, we have witnessed the evil it brings upon its victims. Helping Joe reach his goal, and thereby collecting more funding for research, seemed like a great October Concern of the Month, and, as an added bonus, we are able to help the son of our very own Rod & Lorelei!
Good Shepherd’s Council has also been looking for additional ways to be more charitable, so I convinced council that we should match the donations up to a certain point. We agreed on $1500! I’m very excited to see what we are able to raise for Joe. Can’t wait to hear the final tally!!!
Unrelated to Joe, we have also assisted a few other people this summer. We have paid two folks’ rent which kept them both from being evicted. We also paid a community member’s electric bill to keep the electric from being disconnected due to non-payment. This non member had collected part of the amount in cash which he proceeded to try to hand to me. Pat Hoffman and I both told him “No”, he should keep what he had collected and we would pay the bill to which he started crying. After I arranged for the bill to be paid, this individual met with HEAP (the utilities assistance program) to get all his bills handled.
So thank you Good Shepherd for being an amazing force of positivity and good in this world! Let us always remember John 1: 5 “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” We are called to be the light!
Faithfully,
Lei Fahrner
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