Meet our volunteer, Josh! Not only is he dedicated to his Wednesday morning kitchen shift, but he’s an incredible brother, too. Here’s his guest blog post on how he, his friends and family, rallied together to support her when she was diagnosed with leukemia. This is one great example of the love and generosity that pours from our God’s Love community and we’re proud and honored to have Josh as an integral (and creative!) part of our God’s Love family.

I’ve been volunteering as a kitchen worker at God’s Love We Deliver, on and off, for the last 4 years on the Wednesday morning crew. While at a God’s Love holiday party, a couple of us were talking about a funny video I made for my sister who was recently diagnosed with leukemia.

My sister’s diagnosis came out of the blue, this past summer, and was a complete shock to her and my family. She was in the hospital for 5 weeks undergoing daily chemotherapy and many blood transfusions to stabilize her grossly off-kilter blood counts. Friends and family showed a tremendous amount of love and support during that time with visits, phone calls, text messages and emails. Her best friend since childhood rewrote and video-recorded herself singing the lyrics of John Cougar Mellencamp’s (their favorite singer as kids) “Jack and Diane,” as a life-affirming survey of my sister growing up throughout the years. I thought it was awesome and moving and it sparked the idea to create a video of my own.

I got some of the creative people I know together to do a rap video that would make my sister laugh whenever she watched it. I was amazed by what people were willing to do when they heard my sister had cancer and I needed some help.

My childhood friend, a competitive hip-hop karaoke singer, helped me smooth out the lyrics and co-stars in the video. Using a greenscreen to film, just the two of us actually play every character, male and female. My tv and commercial producing friend, got me an entire production crew and commercial-grade recording space in Brooklyn. Another friend of mine directed, shot and edited all of the footage in post-production. People really stepped up and showed such love and support to help produce this video that still has my sister laughing. The experience just blew me away.

I know there are many clients of God’s Love living with cancer and other life-altering diseases. Laughter is the best medicine and I thought this video might provide a great dose to those in need.

Catch Josh’s video, “You Can’t Beat Jess!”