Join the Movement

The first way of being inspired during our journey came directly in the hospital. At one point in the process Joanna treatment required an escalation in intensity. This meant plasma infusion over 5 rounds spread out over a week and half. Long story short, my limited understanding of plasma is a process that an individual (most likely a stranger or someone nonrelated) must donate or contribute their blood or plasma. This blood or plasma then can be process and developed so that Joanna in April of 2024 could receive this healthy plasma and make probably the greatest improvement in her 2-week medical journey as a direct result of this plasma infusion. None of this would be possible if someone previous in a Pay-It-Forward method contributed their blood or plasma so Joanna down the road could be healed.

This inspired me to start being intentional and start looking into blood or plasma donations as an individual. Not so I could donate directly to Joanna for her treatment, this process takes weeks and quite complicated to donate directly to an intended recipient. Rather I am inspired to start doing this as a Pay-It-Forward approach so that some other family with a child or other individuals in need of a medical procedure involving blood or plasma can receive the same lifesaving option that Joanna was blessed in helping her healing journey. I don’t just want to do this as an individual, but I am also am organizing and helping to relaunch our we care health fair at Kingsway Christian Center for the spring of 2025 most likely May 3rd 2025. During this spring festival and health fair I am striving to help organize a blood donation drive so others can join me in this Pay-It-Forward Movement in honor of Joanna’s journey.

 The second inspiration came a few weeks after getting out of the hospital. You see we as a family we’re blessed just by our location. Living outside of Baltimore we were only about 17 miles away from this world class hospital. After nearly 24 hours of a sleepless journey from home to pedestrian to hospital ER transfer to another hospital ER we finally were admitted on Good Friday morning in the PICU at UMMC. At this time the nurse gave us the general instructions and expectations now we have been admitted. Unlike the ER departments at GBMC or UMMC once a pediatric patient was admitted into the PICU they are only allowed 1 adult to remain in room at hospital overnight while receiving treatment in intensive care. The Nurse recommended the Ronald McDonald house if we needed a place to stay for the other spouse.

We never needed to take advantage of this option of the Ronald McDonald house charities for lodging during our daughters medical treatments. We were able to create and organize a detailed spreadsheet in-order to coordinate how we each could be at the hospital for our daughter as well as be home for our boys and make life as normal as possible for them while they missed their sister being home. A few weeks after returning home from the hospital I was connected to an opportunity to compete in an endurance challenge and raise funds for Ronald McDonald. In a Pay-it-Forward approach i committed to the challenge of this 4 day endurance race as well as committed to join the RMHCC to raise funds to help support families in need of housing during their children’s medical treatment.

As part of the registration process, I covered the race cost and fees and then that allows for 100% of the donations to go directly to the particular Ronald McDonald house charity that has a connection to this race. My minimum goal is $1,400 but personally I have a goal of $2000 I want to raise by the fall 2024. I even have a stretch goal of $6,000 that I believe if my sphere of influence can come together, we can reach this goal to have an even greater impact on families that I can attest are at rock bottom just trying to make it through the day while their child is in pain, in the hospital, trying to recover. If we can help contribute some funds to allow for a Ronald McDonald house to provide a safe and free room for families to give them a peace of mind to allow them to rest during this difficult time I believe it is a well cause to Pay-it-Forward.

I have competed in 25 endurance marathon plus events in my time as a father. I signed up for my first marathon 1 month after my son was born in November 2016 and have not look backed. In 2019 as some of you may remember I signed up for a brand new 24 hour endurance event called Pemberton 24 and decided this would be a launch point for me to start to raise funds to start a domestic mission trip for our youth ministry I was pastor for. We had the aim to going to Ohio in the summer of 2020 to serve the underprivileged and elderly in the community and the funds we raised were destined to help in this process. Obviously Covid hit but because we raised funds already we were able to pivot to allow us to focus on our local community, the underprivileged needy and several widows around Baltimore and other parts of Maryland. That running event and fundraiser campaign has transformed my life and the mission effort I believe help stabilize and motivate our youth ministry in those early Months and first two years of the pandemic and helped to provide one of the most fruity and fulfilling youth groups I have served with in over a decade in ministry. That fundraising and mission effort from 2019-2021 raise thousands of dollars and was a great success. I am grateful for all who contributed financially to allow that to happen because none of the impact on our local youth ministry or the widows we were able to serve for free at no cost to them would have been possible without us partnering together. First with Me to commit to an extreme endurance event and then all of you to contribute to our missions effort. That was my first major running fundraising effort and now Run4Joanna and coordinating with the Ronald McDonald house charities is my second launch into running some crazy endurance event with the hopes of individuals being inspired and paying it forward to help reach and exceed my fundraiser goals. I am aiming at making this running fundraiser an annual campaign to allow me to continue to run with purpose as long as God provides the strength and health to do so and as a result continue to raise funds for charity in the process.

Paying it forward can be accomplished using our time, talents and our treasures. There are many ways to be inspired and to adopt a Pay-it-Forward mindset. For us and our purpose I hope you are inspired to join us in one of these donation options and help Pay-it-Forward to bless a future individual or generation of individuals.

Ronald McDonald run Disney fundraiser is the official organization I registered with the fundraiser goal of $1400. Paying it forward allows these funds to go directly to Ronald McDonald house charities to help cover the lodging & housing expenses that families with children receiving medical treatment in a children’s hospital would have owed if RMHC was not established and funded by donations like yours.

https://apps.rmhccga.org/2025-walt-disney-world-marathon?tfpf=1016

Paying-it-Forward is exactly the foundation of Blood or plasma donation drives. The Red Cross seems to be the best and most known organization to providing opportunities to donate blood throughout the country. I am attempting to connect with them to organize a blood drive for our we care health fair / Spring festival at Kingsway planned for May 3rd 2025. Donating blood is a Pay-it-Forward method that allows something we did not purchased, our blood, but rather provided for us by God and we can give it away. By donating blood or plasma it makes those in medical need like Joanna to be able to receive the clean donation to help progress and continue the healing journey. Joanna during the second major step in treatment was giving an unusual treatment for a pediatric patient especially at Joanna’s age, plasma Infusion. Joanna would have been unable to receive this treatment if it was not for 2 major sacrifices. 

First there was only 1 medical professional in the entire hospital that was comfortable attempting this process on children, and the only other time she did was once 2.5 years ago. Second if someone previous did not donate their plasma which comes from our blood then Joanna would not have had that plasma to even attempt this medical a treatment. And this treatment I believe outside of prayer itself I believe made the most major improvement during this process. On Easter Morning she opened her eyes for the first time in three days. The next day I think we began the plasma treatments and by day three she started speaking. After 5 sessions and about 10 days that treatment was complete and was able to transfer off the PICU floor to regular pediatrics to a few days later discharge on the evening of her 5th birthday. None of that would have been possible if someone first did not donate their blood or plasma in a Pay-it-Forward way.

During our stay in the hospital the organization outside of the medical hospital itself, that may have had the greatest impact on our physical journey was Kingsway Christian center. Our home church where we have served together now for over 12 years as Youth Pastor and Jessie in a significant way with the Children especially recently our kids camp director for our entire conference. Our church family provided for so many of our needs during this time like organizing food trains to make sure our family had meals as most of our time was spend shuffling around the boys and exchanging which parent could spend the night in the hospital each day. They provided meals for both home and meals in the hospital for Jessie just to walk down the hallway to the family lounge to heat up and not leave Joanna too long. Kingsway and the families involved also provided so many gift cards to help cover additional food, gas and other expenses. The first three days of this journey I had originally planned to work three hard days with our small lawn care business. With taking Joanna to the hospital that Thursday none of these plans were even possible. With a small business since I could not run my team those days the revenue was undeveloped and thus my wages could not be gained. I thought this income possibility and goals associated with that time were lost but we had higher priorities with Joannas life on the line and an unexpected timeframe of how long our hospital journey will be. However, through these donations from Kingsway and all the families involved we were almost able to replace that lose of income for those days and the 2 weeks in the hospital.

We are very grateful for Kingsway and as usual we are inspired by their generosity as an organization and general congregation. If you are inspired and would like to Pay-it-Forward financially and want to join us in partnering with Kingsway there are three main ways you can give. The first and recommend option is through Zelle, which is a bank transfer that most major banking apps use. It’s safe, secure and efficient and most importantly there are no fees. To send money via Zelle Kingsways contact information is admin@kingswaycc.org and is enrolled as Pentecostal holiness church in Baltimore. You can also Join us for our regular Sunday services at 1030am 7403 Gum Spring road Baltimore, MD 21237 and can contribute into the offering box cash or checks in the more traditional giving options. If you choose to mail your donation, please don’t send cash but checks are best via the mail. The third option can be found at give.kingswaycc.org though the Tithely program however there are some transaction fees associated with this method so not the best option. It was essential back when we were transitioned into a digital giving method at the start of the pandemic however it’s current the third best Option.