We have come to truly love and admire the Hanks family in our ward. I had the privilege of being the secretary in the R.S. presidency when Lynette was R.S. president many years ago. I learned so much about showing Christlike love to others through service from her. She is wonderful and has a heart of gold. She has since spent 5 years as our stake R.S. president. Bishop Hanks is currently our Bishop and it is once again my privilege to serve with and learn from their family as I am the R.S. President. They are gentle giants!
In May their son, Justin, married Jenn (who is the daughter of the first Bishop we had when we moved here). In July Justin had a pain in his chest when he breathed so he went into the health clinic at BYU. To make a long story short, Justin was diagnosed with cancer. He has a softball size mass in his chest. Four rounds of chemotherapy later, he is going into surgery tomorrow. It has been a sobering, yet unifying time for our ward family. It is definitely a scary, hard time, but the Hanks are so quick to see the Lord's hand in their lives that it is also very inspiring.
When his sister who is married and lives out of state heard about all of this, she wanted to do something. So she organized a 'virtual' 5K. The idea was that you would register online and then on Nov. 2 you would run/walk/bike/hike your 5K anywhere you wanted. Some wonderful people in our area ended up "running" with that idea and putting together an actual race location for the people who live in our area. So our family got to run with more than 200 others Saturday morning. The run was followed by a pancake breakfast and silent auction.
We are surrounded by the most wonderful people! The event altogether raised over $10,000. What an amazing number. Unfortunately, BYU's school insurance has a yearly limit of $30,000 which is the cost of each week of chemo. So there is still a great need.
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