Why I decided to do it…
Sometime in the middle of March of 2018, a man by the name of Pastor Steve Spear came to our church (Heartland Community of Rockford) and invited us on an incredible journey. Mr. Spear himself explained that he had done a “Forrest Gump” a few years earlier. That is to say, he ran from coast-to-coast, from L.A. to N.Y. over a period of about 4 months. In the process, he raised over half a million dollars in sponsorship funds for Team World Vision, a humanitarian organization dedicated to bringing relief to the beleaguered communities of the world. He asked us to join them by agreeing to run in the Chicago Marathon in October. Clearly, if I had had some time Our principal goal would be to raise money for clean drinking water for Africa. Despite my reservations and fears, I was moved to agree to become a part of this vision. I spent the ensuing 6 and 1/2 months training for the Big Run. I ran four times per week over the span of nearly 30 weeks and put approximately 500 miles on these feet which had never done more than 2-3 miles at once in a lifetime of 36 + years. By God’s grace everything held together. It was extremely trying to have a fairly rigorous training schedule to follow, along with a wife who had just made the decision to stay at home with our infant son, Henry. Even now, he has not yet reached the age of 5 months. But we were faithful and nearly all of the Team World Vision runners made it to the finish line. I was in terrible pain for about the last 8 miles of the journey. My running mate and I could no longer even jog without great discomfort past about mile 18. So we walked for the majority of those last miles, saving our strength for the final push to the finish line. Although the experience was far from glamorous, I’m very glad that I set the goal and completed it. Not just for myself (and hopefully a few boosts in health and wellness) but for all those folks overseas whose lives may be touched by our efforts. I even decided to take on a sponsor child named Never. Well Never say “Never,” because I believe God can use even the most unlikely of us to do valuable things in His name. That was the reason why I agreed to run: I wanted to make sure that the children in Africa had a better chance to grow up drinking clean water like our little Henry.