.hats, hats, hats.

“Bless the Lord, and forget not all his benefits.” Psalm 103

(the hats Jack has been given so far)

There are certain ages that are optimal if someone is going to get cancer and undergo chemo, and Jack’s age is one of those. We are very grateful for this, and thank God that if he was to get cancer during his life that he got cancer when he did.

Since he is so young, he also has the added benefit of most likely not remembering the early and most intense phases of his treatment, and will hopefully be able to look back on his childhood without having needle pokes, chemotherapy rounds and no hair in the forefront of his mind! We are so grateful for this. I am consistently amazed at all he endures with little to no complaint.

However, we do want him to remember some things about this trial we are walking through. One of the things we do want him to remember though is the faithfulness of God to him through this time. I wouldn’t want him to be unaware of how people prayed for him, supported him, and how God sustained him throughout. It has truly been amazing and humbling to be carried by so many. We want him to see this multitude as an extension of the love of God for him and God's church in action. One of our friends suggested an idea to achieve this that Tali and I loved and wanted to do.

So here it is: we want people to send Jack hats. That’s right, hats.

This idea has a threefold purpose. One, is so that Jack can have a collection of hats to choose from once he loses his hair (which will probably happen in the next few months). Two, and most importantly, we want to have a physical reminder of God’s love for him, specifically through people that have prayed for him. We figured a tangible thing like a hat would be a great way for him to see the love of God in a very real way. Finally, we figured down the road we could donate these hats to leukemic societies for other little boys with cancer so they can benefit to (we will probably keep the teams we actually like though!).

You must know that there is absolutely not pressure to do this; we are overwhelmed simply to have people praying for us at all! We could not ask for a better gift from anyone than this. Your love and prayers for us will not be lessened in value in any way if you do not send a hat. We hope you hear that and know we are grateful beyond words for the lavish outpouring already demonstrated on our little family.

If you would like to participate, here are a couple ideas we had:

- The hats could be from whatever sport team you want (college teams would be ideal because they’re generally state schools and easily represent a location, but seriously, we’re not picky!), and we were thinking it would be great to be a team in your area so that Jack can see people are praying for him all over country.

- Feel free to send one on behalf of multiple families or people, this would also help in not getting 10 hats from the same team, and save money!

- You could write on the underside of the bill who it’s from, but it would probably good to not make this too obvious (ie. small letters in a corner), because we’ll eventually give them to other kids.

If this is something you’d like to do, email Tali (tkauflin@gmail.com) or me (jkauflin@gmail.com) and we’ll send you our address.

Thank you to everyone who is praying for our little boy, God is definitely hearing and blessing our prayers in so many ways!

Gratefully,

Jordan