We made it!

Here we are leaving our house in Hilton Head (Bluffton).  We loaded down the van and the Thule on top along with Jon's car.  It was super sad for Jon and I.  We were feeling very depressed.  But the kids on the other hand were super excited!  And we are making this an "adventure" for them.  They have no idea we are sad about this.  I drove the twins in Jon's car and Jon drove the van with Luke.  Luke is the easiest in the car and I wanted Jon to be the least stressed!


I got several text on the ride asking, "how is it going?"  So this is what I sent back.

I hope that gave you a good laugh and a glimpse at our lives.  Sorry mom!  I just had to add that video--too funny!

The ride was actually pretty good.  Our longest drive was Saturday and the kids actually did very well--except for the screaming episode!  We arrived in Indianapolis Sunday afternoon.  A former high school classmate met us with his son and a friend to unload.  What a blessing!  It definitely helped Jon out because he is still so tired from this last chemo round.

The kids are super excited to be in Indianapolis and living in their new "condo."  They are all sleeping in the same room and it is SO cute.  We made their beds with bedding we brought from home and they were very surprised when they walked in the room.  Luke brought his favorite picture to put by his bed.  He totally gets what is going on.  When we were back in Bluffton at home, he came out of his room with a picture of him and Minnie Mouse and said, "Can I take this to Indianapolis?  I like looking at it while I'm in bed and I want to be able to have it in my room in Indianapolis."  He gets that we are going to be here for a while.

We are having a great time figuring out "city" life.  It is SOOO different than what we are used to in our small town.  I always feel very safe where we live.  This is extremely different.  We are living in a safe area but you walk outside and see homeless people walking around.  I wouldn't mind if it were just Jon and I but having 3 small children is a whole different story.  So my mom and I went on an "adventure" today trying to find a grocery store.  We found on our IPhones that there was a Kroger very near the apartments.  We were beyond thrilled until we pulled up and this is what we saw.  For those of you who do not know what a Kroger is, it definitely is NOT this.  It is a nice, huge grocery story.  This gave us a good laugh and we kept driving!  Not the grocery store we were looking for.

 Here are the kids at Spaghetti Factory.  The benefits of city life.  We love the restaurants, shopping and activities that are available!

I wanted to leave you with this.  Jon's favorite basketball team is Duke Men's Basketball.  Coach K is his favorite coach.  He has always wanted to go to a game at Cameron Indoor Stadium.  It is a small arena and very difficult to get tickets for.  Jon actually had tickets for a game 9 years ago but it was the day he asked me to marry him and he gave them up!   So, I hand wrote Coach K a letter explaining Jon's situation with his cancer and chemo/stem cell transplant.  I told him that our friends had told us Jon needed something to look forward to at the end of this.  I mailed the letter on Tuesday.  On Thursday morning I get a phone call from Durham, NC.  It was Coach K's administrative assistant.  She explained that she had just opened up my letter and read it.  She told me to call her at the beginning of December and we could see how Jon was feeling and she would work out getting him tickets!  Coach K is a very famous coach and there is no doubt that he gets lots of letters everyday.  They all go through his administrative assistant and his website also stated that he is not signing autographs right now.  The fact that she read the letter and then took time to call me was amazing.  Jon is SOOO excited and it truly gives him something to look forward to!  God is good even in the small details of life.

Help us get the word out with the GODSTRONG t-shirts.  The support has been amazing.  Jon cannot believe how many people will be supporting him by wearing his t-shirt.  It means more than you could know!  Thank you because it is lifting his spirits.

Click below to buy a T-shirt for Jon.  Again, I don't care about the money.  I want Jon to realize how many people across all the states are supporting him!  It is amazing!

BUY A T-SHIRT

Quick update

We made it to Louisville, KY.  Everything went great.  We will drive 2 more hours in the morning to Indianapolis.  I have a friend that got some college guys to help us unload.  I will write a longer post when we get there.

God has kept us safe and we are thankful!

T-shirt goal!

When Jon found out he had testicular cancer back in 2006, I bought Lance Armstrong's book, "Its not about the Bike."  For those of you who don't know, Lance Armstrong was diagnosed with testicular cancer more than 15 years ago.  In the book, Armstrong goes into detail about his doctors and treatment.  For us, it was a good read because we could relate in a lot of ways.  But the first time, Jon ended up only having surgery followed by surveillance for 6 1/2 years.  Lance Armstrong's cancer had already spread throughout his body and even to his brain.  So his story was a little different at that point.  The one thing that struck a chord with both Jon and I was how he was so open about his lack of faith and belief in God.

When Jon was diagnosed this past time in December 2012, I read the book again.  I gleaned even more information because at this point Jon was getting chemotherapy.  Although different drugs than Armstrong, we could still relate even more to his story.  Again, his unbelief in God struck me.

Recently I picked up the book again.  I skimmed through the parts that relate to right where we are.  This time we connected with the book perfectly.  When Armstrong describes his journey, we are right there with him!  It gave me the chills to read because he talks about meeting with the doctors at IU Cancer Center.  He describes the day he walked in, and how he felt.  And then how stressed out he was when he left because he had to make a decision on which doctor he would choose.  Again, we could totally relate to his story.  But as I continued reading, again, the way he describes his view of God really stood out to me.  I do not want to bore you but I want to share part of his story.  I am sharing this with you because since the first day I read the book, I told Jon he needed to write him a letter.  I wanted Jon to share his story, his experience, and his belief and trust in God through it all.  Well, of course time went by and we never did it.  When Jon was diagnosed this 2nd time, again, I wanted Jon to write Lance Armstrong a letter but it's been a little crazy since.  Since Jon is now dealing with this recurrence, he IS going to write him a letter this week before we leave.  Jon is going to share his story with Armstrong and the relationship he has with a God that cares so much about every detail of our lives.  A God that can change us!   Please pray as Jon writes and sends this letter.  We have no idea what kind of people Armstrong surrounds himself with.  Maybe he has never heard the TRUTH.  Pray that it will get in the right hands and ultimately that Lance Armstrong will read it.

Here is an excerpt from "It's not about the Bike"  Lance Armstrong:

     I asked myself what I believed.  I had never prayed a lot.  I hoped hard, I wished hard, but I didn't pray.  I had developed a certain distrust of organized religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs.  Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking, and honorable.  If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a theif, then I believed that should be enough.  At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptized.  If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he didn't say, "But you were never a Christian, so you're going the other way from heaven."  If so, I was going to reply, "You know what? You're right.  Fine."
     I believed, too in the doctors and the medicine and the surgeries--I believed in that, I believed in them.  A person like Dr. Einhorn, that's someone to believe in.  I thought, a person with the mind to develop an experimental treatment 20 years ago that now could save my life.  I believed in the hard currency of his intelligence and his research.
     Beyond that, I had no idea where to draw the line between spiritual belief and science.  But I knew this much:  I believed in belief, for its own shining sake.  To believe in the face of utter hopelessness, every article of evidence to the contrary, to ignore apparent catastrophe -- what other choice was there?  We do it every day, I realized.  We are so much stronger than we imagine, and belief is one of the most valiant and long-lived human characteristics.  To believe, when all along we humans know that nothing can cure the briefness of this life, that there is no remedy for our basic mortality, that is a form of bravery.
     To continue believing in yourself, believing in the doctors, believing in the treatment, believing in whatever I chose to believe in, that was the most important thing, I decided.  It had to be.
     Without belief, we would be left with nothing but an overwhelming doom, every single day.  And it will beat you.  I didn't fully see, until the cancer, how we fight every day against the creeping negatives of the world, how we struggle daily against the slow lapping of  cynicism.  Dispiritedness millennium doomsday.  I knew now why people fear cancer:  because it is a slow and inevitable death, it is the very definition of cynicism and loss of spirit.
     So, I believed.

Let me close with this.  I have a personal goal and it has NOTHING to do with money.  I could care less about the money.  I would love to see 1,000 GODSTRONG shirts sold.  Jon already is blown away at the people supporting and praying for him.  I would love to tell him that 1,000 people around the country are standing with him in prayer for healing in his body.  I need your help to get the word out!  Please post on your Facebook, send email, send it out on twitter, however you can help me.  I know I'm setting my goals high but how awesome for that many people to be standing GODSTRONG with Jon!  Thanks so much for your support already!

ORDER A T-SHIRT

Favor

I am not usually one to ask for favors.  But I need your help!  I would like for you all to shower Jon with cards, letters, and care packages (that include something he can DO).

His address will be (beginning September 1st until mid November)

Canal Square Apartments
359 N. West Street
Apt. #282
Indianapolis, IN 46202

Here is the story behind this idea:

I posted something on Craigslist one day selling stuff for boy/girl twins being born this summer.  I wanted all my cute stuff to go to someone special and not just to the Goodwill pile.  A girl emailed me back and said she was interested in buying them.  I was to text her or email her back.  So being the person I am who doesn't think through things before I do them,  I emailed and texted her.  About 15 minutes after I did that, I started freaking out.  I was thinking O My Gosh, what if this is not a girl named Brittany, what if it's the Craigslist killer.  This is of course after I invited her to my house.  So immediately I started stalking her on line.  I was checking all social media outlets, googling her, any route I could find.  When I googled her name, up came an article from Hilton Head that had been written a couple of years before.  It was about a guy named Ben (her husband) was battling cancer for the 3rd time.  A foundation was raising money for this couple because he had already been treated at MD Anderson, and was undergoing a stem cell transplant at Emory University in Atlanta.  I was thinking OMG, if this is the same girl this is just crazy.  Well, to make a long story longer (HAHA) it was the same craigslist girl!  She was now pregnant with twins, due in early fall and her husband was a 3 time cancer survivor.

Well, in the last few months, they have become great friends to us!  It ends up they are strong believers and actually go to our church.  Our paths would have never probably crossed at church or the community so God had it for us to meet them on craigslist!  Now, please understand that at the time we met them in April, Jon had NO idea he was faced with stem cell transplant.  We do not personally know anyone who has undergone this type of treatment.  The fact that God put them in our lives at this very time is completely amazing and a total God thing!  Because they now have twins (a boy and a girl) and Jon is going through high dose.  They are such Godly people and I love hearing what God has done in their lives through Ben's cancer.  And he is such an encouragement for Jon and someone Jon can talk with and he knows EXACTLY where Jon is!  It's truly amazing.

So, in talking to them recently this is some advice that they gave to us as Jon faces some very intense months of treatment.  One thing is they said for Jon to have something to look forward to at the end of this journey.  I'm working on that piece.  And another piece of advice is just for Jon to feel loved and encouraged during this time. Also, to keep his mind active and alert.  So this is the favor:

I am asking that if God lays it on your heart, to shower Jon with cards, letters, care packages, etc. Get creative in what to send him.  I would love to see him receive something everyday for the 2 - 3 months he is there.  Unfortunately, the reality of his situation is that it is easy to get stale mentally, to get depressed, and just in general to deterioate.  I would love for him to have something everyday to read or do.  Jon will start out as outpatient.  He will be admitted if the doctors feel it is necessary.  Otherwise, he will come home for dinner and to sleep.  This will help because when his counts are ok, he will be able to see the kids.   All in all he will not be feeling well so any encouragement will be appreciated!

Again, here is his address:

Jon Strebe
Canal Square Apartments
359 N. West Street
Apt. #282
Indianapolis, IN 46202

GODSTRONG

A couple of my friends came up with this idea for t-shirts for Jon and ran with it.  Duke is Jon's favorite team, hence the color:o)

Please NO pressure just thought it was something fun for Jon!

You can click on the link and buy a T-shirt for $15 and Jon will get $10 back to fund his Nike fetish. Haha. i'm TOTALLY kidding!  But really, if you buy one, please take a picture of yourself in it and send it to us!

SHIRTS FOR JON

Now I'm going to let Jon tell you all why he chose GODSTRONG!

Take it away, honey!

Well......obviously GODSTRONG is a play on the Cancer foundation created by Lance Armstrong, and partnered with Nike, LIVESTRONG.  Donna was reading excerpts from Armstong's book "Its Not About the Bike".  In it, Armstrong gives credit of his cure to himself, his will power, the medicine, the nurses, and the doctors.  Basically, everyone but God received credit.  I want everyone that sees this t-shirt to know that we are battling cancer, and will beat it by the grace of God.  I want people to know that God is working through the medicine, through the nurses, and through the doctors that He has provided for us.  It is only by the grace of God that I will be healed, bottom line.  Each person that wears this shirt will now have an obligation to tell others that Jesus is the Great Healer, and the Great I Am.  Thank you for joining us in this battle, and on this journey.

HOME SWEET HOME!

We are back home!  We drove home immediately after Jon's treatment on Tuesday.  He did well until about 30 minutes before we got to our house.  He started shaking and shivering.  By the time we got home he was in sweat pants, sweatshirt, covered in a blanket with his fever rising even after taking advil.  Thank goodness I can text his PA.  She said it was most likely a reaction to the bleomycin, the chemo drug he received Tuesday.  She said it can cause chills and fever.  The ordeal lasted about 5 hours and then by 1030PM the fever was gone and Jon was eating spaghetti and meatballs.  It was a crazy experience.  Again, so glad I could reach the PA or we would probably would have headed to the ER.

Since Tuesday night Jon has been feeling good.  He is still weak and feels fatigue.  But he is eating normal and able to be up and participating in our crazy lives!  His goal is to be back to work Friday.

Please pray that Jon will gain some weight back before he starts his high dose in less than 2 weeks.  Pray also God will protect him from germs as he works and that he will continue to gain strength.

Again, thanks for joining us on the journey!

We are GODSTRONG!

This isn't the greatest picture but it shows all the kids--including my nieces--praying for Jon.  We lay hands on him every night and pray for him.  It is a precious time!

Jon is better!

His fever has been normal since about 2pm today.  He is feeling a little better and has a tiny bit more energy.  He was also able to eat today!  And we both took naps today!!

We really appreciate your prayers and your encouragement!