The Victory
I wanted to write about what happened this weekend.
You may remember a few weeks ago when I wrote about the marathon, and how we were raising money for Operation Underground Railroad. Well, everything climaxed at the Life Leadership Major Convention in Louisville, Kentucky. This is the place where my dad would do one push-up to represent the 26.2 miles run in the Twin Cities Marathon. This was how we were going to represent all of the pledges donated from our generous donors.
We drove to the convention with about $5,500 raised (without our match donor’s match), still hoping to raise our full $10,000 before Saturday at 2 PM Eastern time. With less than 24 hours to go, the team and I wrote emails, texted various people, and talked to everyone we knew during the first day of the convention. Julie Vrieze was there the day before that and got people inspired to keep pushing towards our goal.
I have never been so amazed at the way people can pull together to accomplish something great as I was the moment we received our last donation, just minutes before the deadline. We had done it. We had raised $20,025 with the match!
I cannot even begin to describe how it felt to know how many kids lives will be saved and changed because of the generosity of our seventy some donors.
My dad and I walked into the push-up ring, and got to meet All Grace Outreach’s spokesperson, Chris Swanson – four time Iron Man and amazing speaker. Swanson was so inspired by my dad’s willingness to run a marathon and raise so much money, that he did the push-ups with Terry, right alongside of him. Because we were able to meet our goal, my dad did the push-ups in the green suit (thanks for being a good sport, dad! ;)). And instead of just 1, they did 26.2 push-ups – one for every mile run!
I felt like crying and hugging everybody. I just had such an overwhelming feeling of happiness and gratitude to God for helping us get this far. I had prayed that we would make a difference, and now we were.
I am so proud of all those people who helped us raise money, count money, and cheer us on. The Life Leadership community is so amazing! If you have never experienced a community like this before, you really should find one. It’s truly incredible! The support and love from these people is impossible to describe.
Thank you to Krista and John, who helped us raise more funds and cheered us on!
Thank you to Jeffrey Moulton, for videoing the push-ups live and being our social media guy when I was too busy running other parts of the campaign!
Thank you to our anonymous donor for being so generous and supportive during the entire campaign! I believe it was because of the promise of the match donation of $10,000 that we raised as much as we did!
A HUGE thank you to Lance and Julie Vrieze for really helping us push through in the last 36 hours of the campaign to meet our goal!
Lastly, thank you to my wonderful parents! You have always been there for me no matter what, cheering me on, encouraging me, and helping me through every challenge, victory, and failure. I love you both so much and I am so honored to have you as my parents. You guys are going to continue to change so many lives for the better, and I’m excited to see where you go! 🙂 I love you so much!
Back to the story…
When I saw my dad doing push-ups, it was all I could do not to cry. I didn’t think I could ever have been more proud that I was in that moment!
But there was more.
Once the push-ups were done, we went back into the convention to listen to the talks. Five minutes before 8 PM, my dad got a phone call from the Life office to come backstage at 8, so he grabbed me and we went. I did not go backstage, but I was on the floor in the front when Chris Swanson announced my dad the winner of the prize for most money raised.
This time, the tears came as my dad came out on stage and received the award from Swanson. I can’t believe what an amazing guy my dad is. He is so humble, so servant-hearted, and an amazing leader. So many kids’ lives will be changed now because of him and his willingness to run, do push-ups, and look silly in front of a crowd (see the race outfits people picked when they donated a certain amount).
I was crying and laughing at the same time. At no other time in my life have I felt that way!
(On a more comical note, since I was was the only one from our team on the floor and I felt I had to share my joy with someone, I turned to a random guy in the crowd with tears on my face and said,
“That’s my dad!”
He looked at me kinda funny, smiled, and said “Oh, cool.” But his thoughts were probably more like, “Why is she crying?!” And also probably thinking how weird I was/am 😛 Ha!)
The bottom line is this:
Although people keep giving me most of the credit for this campaign, I know for sure I could not have done it without every one of my friends and my family members supporting me along the way. It meant so much to me to know they were there for me and were cheering me on!
So, thank you ALL from the bottom of my heart! I love you all! Keep making a difference 🙂
Until next time,
Hope Frances
