Reflecting on Fundraising for our 2023 Stem Cell Journey!

This season has been interesting for us as a family. We’ve seen our daughter grow into a rambunctious toddler, pushing boundaries, and learning/growing so incredibly fast. Harrison has also been growing like a weed and has been a good, stabilizing force for the family. We’ve been working hard during the Winter/Spring acquiring and flipping items to give us a head start on our fundraising goals for Harrison’s annual stem cell treatment. We were able to source free grills, patio sets, and camping gear and stored them until late Spring/Summer to sell for maximum profits. This led us to having a healthy cushion allowing us to meet our fundraising goals way earlier than in previous years. As I’m writing this, we are in the LA area (El Monte) waiting for his treatment tomorrow. This will be his 4th treatment in 3 years and the changes we’re seeing in him after each session is incredible. It takes a bit of time to figure out the “theme” that the treatment effects within him but we’ve isolated the three sessions into the following categories:

• 1st treatment = gross motor improvement post C2 injury (lower extremity in particular)

• 2nd treatment = improved awareness of surroundings in context of developmental delay

• 3rd treatment = explosive communication skills with his Tobii Dynavox eye-gaze computer (expressive communication!)

We have no idea what this 4th treatment will result in but we’re excited and trusting our faith that it will do something for him to improve his overall quality of life. There are no guarantees with this technology and we really are pushing the boundaries of science. We are so grateful to the clinic and staff for their willingness to comp their time and efforts to eliminate barriers to access to effective stem cell technology. There is a lot of ineffective and outright fraud in this industry so finding something relatively close by that is affordable is truly a gift from God.

Finally – I just wanted to reflect on this fundraising season. Not only were we able to find the time and energy to seize reselling opportunities as they appeared, our community showed up in BIG ways AGAIN! We were able to run 3 sales and had so many generous contributions from family, friends, community members, and even strangers! We were able to reconnect with friends from previous sales, help a LOT of people going through difficult situations with items donated to us and were able to go to a new home quickly to be used (and not trashed like I fear would happen if donated to Goodwill or Value Village). Some of the amazing things donated included a marble patio table set in like new condition, a authentic katana, an amazing collection of CDs/8-tracks/audio cassettes that were super appreciated by our customers, a grandfather clock with the original purchase paperwork from the 1970s, and even a wood chipper!

The generosity that has been shown to us is so humbling and appreciated. We were able to not only move tons of donations to new homes to minimize waste, but we were able to help dozens of families who had limited funds and needed certain items to get by. We really view that the donations that are made to us require us to be good stewards and to ensure that we help our neighbors and community neighbors when we can. This belief has resulted in us being overpaid by those who could to offset the “losses” we were taking in other areas. Over the course of 3 weekends, we successfully raised the full amount needed to pay for the procedure, travel to Los Angeles, and be able to cover the cost of meals/related costs encountered along the way.

It takes an immense amount of physical and mental energy to prepare, set up, and facilitate these sales but the amount of people we are able to touch and help replenishes our hearts/energy. It also is freaking impossible to do with just MariClaire and I…it takes a village to do this work and our people always show up in amazing ways when we need it! From selfless family, friends, and even strangers, we are supported by amazing people who continue to love on our family in remarkable ways (we even had a customer go and buy us coffee!). I really think there is something to the idea that if you are trying to do the right thing and trust that God will meet you in your struggle, that doors will open to help you get what you need (or didn’t realize you needed!).

We’ll have more updates on Harrison but I wanted to just share what we’ve seen this year

since it’s been so awe-inspiring and reminds us how Harrison and his story inspire countless individuals. He’s amazing and I’m honored to be his Dad.