Faith Hospice Fund

Wow, where does the time go? It was a beautiful weekend with the sun shining although breezy, it was nice. Eric's brother Jary and Erica and their girls came over on Saturday and he got our grill working again (we had a small fire problem with the control knobs last time we used it) so we grilled steaks. It was fun hanging out at home with them and the Hetricks. Sunday eve was the AWANA awards night for the kids so we are done with AWANA this year. It will be nice being able to go to the evening services again. We have showed our house 3 times in the last four days with no real interest yet. Keep praying. We are looking at some quick touchups like painting the porch and trim and stretching and cleaning the carpet. We had our home health respite care start last week and a young man from Grand Valley named Eric came to help Eric with any needs while I am able to leave the house. After going over things for a few hours, I went to work at my brothers and didn't have to worry about anything. This will be such a blessing for us. The night before, I left for Costco for an hour and things did not go well at home. It's hard for all of us when this happens. It's frustrating for Eric because he can not do things on his own, upsetting for Zach because he doesn't always know how to help his dad and other kids in the neighborhood just want him to play and don't understand always and Maddie just wants to play all the time and doesn't think about much else as most five year olds do. I feel bad because I need to leave for things like groceries, etc, but feel like I shouldn't leave even for a short time. Needless to say, this couldn't have come at a better time. This will be a huge relief for me and I can rest easy when I leave during respite care.
This morning Eric was honored by a ceremony at Faith Hospice Trillium Woods where they named a fund the Eric Fox ALS fund which will be used for people with ALS who need hospice care that can't afford it. The way this came about is kind of a long story so I will try to summarize it. Back in November, Eric and Linda Cnossen of the ALS Association were asked to come to a Hudsonville High classroom along with 8 other organizations where Kerkstra Precast had set up a fund to teach the students about philanthrapy and giving to a cause. They had each of these organizations speak and invited Eric and Linda back along with Faith Hospice and Youth for Christ. After hearing them all speak again, they chose ALS association to award $10,000 (this will go to respite care for ALSA). Then Kerkstra Precast surprised everyone and also awarded Faith Hospice and Youth for Christ with $5,000 as well. Faith Hospice decided to create a fund for people with ALS and named the fund after Eric because they were touched by meeting Eric through this school project. I have to say, I was so proud of Eric today. His name will be on a plaque with his picture with the students and teacher and Kerkstra Precast. It just reminds me how God has continued to give Eric purpose despite this disease. We took the kids with us to share the day with us. The facility is abolutely amazing. The rooms are not like hospital rooms and are very home like and spacious. They gave us a tour when we arrived and when we were done with the ceremony, Maddie said OK lets go to our room now. She thought it was like a hotel and we were staying there. She is so innocently cute sometimes! We went shopping for a lift chair for Eric today too and want to check a few more places. He just sinks into the couch we have and a nice big lift chair would be very helpful to have. They don't make them very big and he needs a big chair cuz he is a big guy! Not to mention, his kids are going to want to cuddle up with him on it. Hopefully we can find the right one.
Tomorrow morning, we have a followup visit at the ALS clinic at Mary Freebed on his BiPAP machine and we plan to ask about the surgery for the diaphraghm pacemeker.
Hope you all are well!
Grace for the day! ( I stole this from a dear teacher , Mrs. Weaver)

Lori and Eric

P.S. If you want to view the pictures my dad took in DC, you can go to www.ezsite.com/ericwashington and view them all by clicking on pictures and then choosing slideshow. They turned out really great!