Please daven for Rivka Bas Devorah a mother of 5 small children who will IYH be undergoing a stem cell transplant today . The donor became a member of the Registry via a recent Ezer Mizion drive. May he be the right shaliach to save her life.
They’re on the way from here to there and suddenly receive a request to detour. “Can you pick up something, or perhaps someone, from ‘not too far from here’ and bring it to ‘not too far from there’? Let’s be honest. What is the reaction of the average person? Annoyance? Resentment? But our Linked to Life volunteers are special. Some of them do this every day. And some of them, whenever possible, make the trip even when they had not intended to go. Just to help out another person. It may be a family member of a cancer patient who needs a ride to the hospital. Or perhaps some specialized medical equipment urgently needed or test tubes that must reach the lab asap.
Linked to Life is a whatsapp network run by Ezer Mizion where those dealing with illness can always call for help. Just like they would call a family member. Because we’re all family. Often a response arrives within seconds and our volunteers will bend over backwards to do it right…with kindness, with creativity and with a warm smile.
Yoni is just one of the Linked to Life members. He and his wife originally planned a vacation for this summer but when they weighed the enjoyment they would have touring vacation sites against the deep joy and satisfaction of their Linked to Life activities, the latter won by a mile. During the year, their time is limited but vacation days are completely free. And so the Linked to Life vacation became a reality. Each morning, Yoni used his vacation money to purchase gas and then it was Ready, Set, Go. Their days were filled with driving family members to and from hospitals, picking up urgently needed meds. Requests kept pouring in and Yoni with his wife were there to fill them smiling at each other, their hearts filled with joy. Yoni is just one of our devoted Linked to Life members.
And that is why we at Ezer Mizion decided that an Evening of Recognition is so well deserved. It was a fantastic evening that included swimming, games and great food. The camaraderie was tangible as hundreds shared an evening of fun.
And the highlight? The icing on the cake of this very special evening was the opportunity to join the Ezer Mizion Bone Marrow Registry and someday hear those electrifying words: You have saved a life!
Remember doing Connect the Dots when you were a kid? If you did it correctly, you were rewarded with a picture. As adults, we sometimes are also called on to connect the dots but the reward is so much greater. Sometime it can be saving a life!
More than one life per day is saved by the Ezer Mizion Bone Marrow Registry. Many of these are young parents who had been terrified at leaving their children to grow up as orphans. Others are small children who will now mature and raise families of their own. Genetic testing is expensive and it is your generosity that has enabled Ezer Mizion to save so many lives around the globe.
It’s called ‘making a difference’. Making a difference in the lives of courageous people who are faced with life’s crises. And sometimes it is making a difference by actually saving lives.
A long-time Queens resident together with his family have truly made a difference in the lives of so many with their recent donation of a Command Center- an office on wheels- to Ezer Mizion. Dedicated by Allan Kinches, Reuvaine and Joyce Kinches and Elliott and Nicole Kinches in loving memory of Marilyn Kinches, Morris and Ann Kinches, Norman and Geraldine Katz, Norman Kinches, the Command Center has already begun helping Jews worldwide.
The new Command Center had made its debut on Lag B’Omer. The logistics in coordinating the myriad of details involved in facilitating transports for the elderly, the disabled and the ill by Ezer Mizion’s Ambulance Service are complex indeed. The Kinches Command Center trailer played a major role in facilitating ambulance transport for mobility impaired people up and down the mountain. It has a full IT setup, with computerized map displays of the entire Meron area. The trailer has its own AC and generator and was set up with its own land-line phone system for coordinating the trips to and from the ziyon of Rabbi Shimon and the entire team. (Land-lines are used for greater reliability. Last year the cell phones at Meron all crashed, and Ezer Mizion was the only communication source, via land lines. Ezer Mizion land-lines were then shared with Hatzalah for their vital work.)
Continue reading The Kinches Family Command Center
“Absolutely not!” he said. Again and again. Each time the subject was brought up. “No! A thousand percent NO, NO, NO!”
That’s my son. Stubborn as they come. I can’t say I blame him. After all, he’s a teenager and just wants to be like everyone else. He went through a lot, that son of mine. For a while it was touch and go and, at his age, there was no way to hide the situation from him. That’s a pretty scary package for a young boy of eleven to handle. Now he just wanted to be normal. Like his friends. He didn’t want anyone to google his name and suddenly be confronted with a bald replica of his younger self. He wanted to erase that nightmare from his history. Click ‘delete’ and it never happened. A meeting with his donor? Absolutely not! And there’d be cameras. He’d make it on the internet. There for everyone to see. There for him to see. A massive to-do in technicolor, highlighting what he would only want to expunge from his psyche. And so the answer was NO!
A stem cell transplant had been his last chance to survive and, for a long time, there was no matching donor on the horizon. It was only through Ezer Mizion that a DNA match was finally found. As parents, we wanted the opportunity to say thank you to this amazing person who gave his all to help someone he didn’t even know.
Continue reading Absolutely Not!
