Dance on..and on...and on...and on

This weekend was a big weekend at Penn State. A weekend students wait for all year - the annual dance marathon...better known as THON. It's the largest student-run philanthropy in the world! THON is a year-long effort that raises funds and awareness for the fight against pediatric cancer and the culmination is this weekend. This year they raised a record-breaking $7.49 million!! 700 student "dancers" stand on their feet for 46 hours straight...no sitting, no sleeping (needless to say, people go a little delerious). It's a remarkable thing to see..I don't think words can even do it justice. I remember being a student and wanting to dance (I even tried to climb under the fence to get onto the floor...only to be immediately caught and sent back under!!). Ten years later I wonder how I could have even entertained the thought..I need my sleep!
This year Navs had 4 of our own dancers (two of them are pictured here in green...the girls are in the middle of one of the dances!). They were champs! We even made the front page of the student newspaper. We also had the priviledge of having a THON family this year. The family has a 12-year-old son, Mac, who was diangosed with a brain tumor last January. Our students got to know the family pretty well over the past few months and they were here the entire weekend. It's been an incredible opportunity for the students to love on the family and show them Christ during this difficult time. There are hundreds of families who are like Mac's family who are impacted by THON (they receive money from the funds raised that help to cover medical bills that insurance doesn't cover). It is heart wrenching to look out on the dance floor and see children with little hats on, to cover the fact that they have lost their hair. And yet at the same time, it's heart warming because they are having a blast running around the floor playing with the students. I'm so proud of our students and the ways they have loved Mac and his parents. And by doing that they have shown them Jesus. They kept Christ at the center of everything they did this weekend. Did I mention how proud I am of them?!