Ellie's Run for Africa
Friends and Family... It's year 9. Nearly a decade. We've been up at dawn, eating lunch foods by 9am, and napping by noon for that many third-weekend-in-May Saturdays. Not a single time have we actually run the race... That is, until this Saturday! Pushing the orange stroller, Kristen and I will get to run Ellie's Run for Africa this year. Lainey gets a chariot ride :) We're pumped. Because this is what's hit us this year. There is a very cool "family tree," as we call it, that the story of this race has created. A young girl starts a race. That's only the start....bear with me. We start to volunteer just for one event, the week before. Suddenly Kristen chairs it. For three years. And I make the website (of course!). Ellie convinces a few of us (including my flight-fearing wife) to get on an airplane to go to Kenya. One woman and her husband on the trip fall in love with the nation and continent. They go back the next year, this time leading a trip of random people interested in Africa. Those kids fall in love with a small town, that the Ellie's Run team visited, and start a non-profit to benefit this tiny Kenyan village. The same one where Kristen met a young girl named Cindi when she was there, and now we can support that little girl and her community through this new non-profit. This girl wants to be a doctor. In the meantime, that woman who took the random group now is celebrating a year with her little African adopted daughter. That's just one branch of this "tree." Take a deep breath. Lives changed. It's amazing. If you are in Nashville and want to run/walk/skip, sign up. If you just want to volunteer, sign up for that, too. If you can't physically be there, pray this week that the right amount of money needed from this race's proceeds is raised. Join us in helping make that happen, if you can, by donating. Thank you, friends, for being on this journey with us one more year.