Donate Life California

This is a post started in April......

If you know me at all, you know my life was changed forever on July 17, 2009 when I received the gift of life from an amazing friend who donated his kidney to me. It's really hard to go through something like that and not be immensely impacted. Since then, I kept seeing people talking about training for Donate Life and being a Donate Life Ambassador. I would always think to myself it would be a great thing to get involved with, but then never would follow through.

Fast forward to earlier this week and I get a call from an amazing lady (she is passionately involved in organ donation and Hepatitis awareness) asking if I would be interested in attending a CTDN training. First I had to find out what CTDN stood for (California Transplant Donor Network) and after a little research I realized it was the training I kept meaning to get plugged into. How crazy is that? I attended the training on Saturday and was blown away by the stories people shared as to why they feel passionate about promoting awareness for organ donation.

There were two fellow kidney transplant recipients, a woman that was transplanted over 20 years ago (amazing!) and a man that was transplanted just one week before I was, also at UCSF. It was really special to talk to two people who have gone through the same surgery and especially to talk with the woman that was transplanted over two decades ago and still going strong on the graft.

Ultimately the training was to give a little more knowledge about organ donors, what can be donated, how people register, etc. CTDN goes to many festivals, health fairs, college campuses and high schools to promote awareness and encourage people to register as donors. I'm looking forward to getting plugged in!

Amazed

I'm always (and I hope I will always be) amazed at the little flourishes in life that God find the time to display for specifically for us.

Volunteering with Donate Life California as a Donate Life Ambassador has been something that's been on my heart for a while now. I'm going to deviate for a second and say as a side note, if you read my blog and you are not registered as an organ donor, you seriously need to click on that link and get that remedied. The rest of us will wait for you.......

Ok, ready? So it's been on my heart for a while but I was just lazy and kept thinking that I'd send them an email the next day. Last Thursday I finally sent them an email. A while later I got a text from a friend asking if he could give my phone number to a mutual acquaintance. This mutual acquaintance is heavily involved in Hepatitis awareness, liver transplant awareness, and organ transplantation/donation awareness in general. She wanted to let me know that she would be attending a training on the 21st and wanted to see if I was interested. I looked up the training and no joke, it was the training I've been meaning to get info on for the past month or so. She has absolutely no affiliation with the organization other than she does her own form of sharing about donation.

Isn't it amazing how God just shows up and says "hey, I know you want to do this and you are on the right track for me and my plan so get going!" It'll be such an awesome opportunity to be an Ambassador and share my story which goes hand and hand with my faith and sign others up to be organ donors! So stoked about it.

Also seriously stoked about a door that I've wedged my toe into. It's something that I can't share about but God knows what's up and I just ask that you be praying for His guidance and protection while we peek inside the proverbial door.