December 15, 2013

Favorite New Christmas Tradition

A little over a year ago, our family received the shocking news that my sister Hanna's cancer was back.
My cousins immediately went to work putting on a fundraiser selling our homemade bread to help out with Hanna's medical bills and the whole family and community got involved.
We raised $14,000 for Hanna and it was incredible to see the support and love pour in from those donating money for ingredients, those eager to buy bread, those who volunteered their time to help bake, those who babysat our kids while we baked, and those who helped to organize and carry out the big task of baking, packaging, and distributing over 1,000 loaves of bread.

Here's our Hanna today:

cancer-free, back to work as a medical assistant at the Huntsman Cancer Institute, and feeling nearly 100% again (and rocking the pixie cut like a supermodel!).
What a blessing!

Our family had so much fun doing this fundraiser (which we've called "Loaves of Love"), that we decided to do it every year for someone in the community going through a hard time.
This year it seemed a no-brainer to help out our friends the Swanson and Norton families after Adam Norton and his brother-in-law/best friend Derrik Swanson were killed in a small plane crash this summer.

A quick announcement and set-up of a "Loaves of Love" page on Facebook gathered immediate support, and when we opened up the page to pre-orders, we were sold out of bread within 3 days.  That's over 1,000 loaves and 45 pans of sticky buns pre-sold in 72 hours!

When the baking days arrived this December, we had more volunteers than we knew what to do with!  How amazingly blessed I feel to say that I live in a place where people rally together whenever someone is in need, whether they know them personally or not.
It was hard to keep emotions in check as I felt such Christ-like love pouring out from our community to these two families.
 Of course the money raised in no way makes up for the tremendous loss the two families feel, especially during this holiday season, but I hope that the love and support from so many will help make this season just a little more bearable for them.
Thank you everyone who helped out with this year's Loaves of Love.
Thanks to my awesome cousins, aunts, Grannie, Mom, friends, volunteers, babysitters, and bread consumers for such a great and successful event.

Forget advent calendars and Elf on a Shelf;
Loaves of Love is definitely the most worthwhile of Christmas traditions and I'm already looking forward to next year. 

1 comment:

tdyhtrfyhrt;hjr said...

What a wonderful thing to do!! And So happy for your sister! :)

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