Our Season of Service

Inspired by some friends of our family, the Marshall family has decided to try a new way of exchanging Christmas gifts in 2012. We hope it will become a wonderful family tradition.
For years, the four Marshall children, their spouses, and their parents exchanged gifts every Christmas, but in 2011, we decided the gift-giving tradition may need a change since we are all so blessed and in need of truly nothing. We decided we needed to find a better way to celebrate the true Christmas spirit.

We suggested that we each perform acts of service in the name of the sibling whose name we were assigned at random. Our service will be kept a secret until Christmas Day.

Our friend drew the names for us and notified each of us privately of the person who should inspire our service. On Christmas Day, we reveal who we were given and how we chose to serve by posting our stories on The Marshall Family Season of Service blog.

We hope this tradition will help us focus on serving our communities and each other during the annual celebration of the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

We invite you to come back to our blog on Christmas morning to read this year's service.

Thursday, December 25, 2014

Dear Craig

This year for my service to you I decided to donate blood. I know that you do not appreciate needles so I took one for the team. I timed my donations so that I could donate the maximum amount of times per year and I donated doubles (which only takes red cells instead of whole blood) so that it counted twice.  My donation is equivalent to a gallon of blood this year!!!  In the spirit of service Haylee even jumped on board and donated in December with me for her first time and possibly last time!!! GO HAYLEE

  • Every two seconds someone in the U.S. needs blood.
  • More than 41,000 blood donations are needed every day.
  • A total of 30 million blood components are transfused each year in the U.S.
  • The average red blood cell transfusion is approximately 3 pints.
  • The blood type most often requested by hospitals is Type O.
  • The blood used in an emergency is already on the shelves before the event occurs.
  • Sickle cell disease affects more than 70,000 people in the U.S. About 1,000 babies are born with the disease each year. Sickle cell patients can require frequent blood transfusions throughout their lives.
  • More than 1.6 million people were diagnosed with cancer last year. Many of them will need blood, sometimes daily, during their chemotherapy treatment.
  • A single car accident victim can require as many as 100 pints of blood.
                             


Posted by at

1 comment:

  1. Craig marshallDecember 26, 2014 at 8:20 PM

    Thanks for taking one for the team. Yes I hate needles and looking at anyone's blood but my own, which I see often enough. I feel for haylee.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)