Julie John Benefit Golf Tournament

Back in December 2009, we found out that Randy's sister Julie had a tumor in her jaw that needed to be removed. She was pregnant at the time and it was decided by the doctors at MD Anderson of Houston that she could wait until after the baby was born to have her surgery. On July 9th Julie had her surgery which consisted of the removal of 3/4 of her jaw and taking bone out of her leg to make a new jaw. We knew the bills would be outrageous, but once we found out that she had to have $25,000 upfront to ever get teeth back we knew we had to do something. Randy and I decided to put on a golf tournament on her behalf.

We were hoping for 18-24 teams and shooting for the moon with the goal of $10,000. Never did we expect what we were blessed with! We had an outpouring of love from our community, family and friends. People who didn't know Julie but knew members of our family, and even people who didn't know any of us were donating money for our cause. We ended up with 47 teams so we had two shot-gun starts, amazing raffle prizes, silent auction prizes and door prizes from donations and a great lunch which was also donated.

We had a HUGE number of volunteers that we could have never done without. I hate to start naming people because I would forget someone, but I'm so indebted to each of them for their time and efforts into making this a successful event! A lot of volunteers went above and beyond what we could have ever asked for and they have been such great examples to me of service! We had some volunteers who stayed all day at the golf course with us (including Avery who got very comfortable on the golfcart) and we truly appreciate the sacrifice of their Saturday. What we didn't expect was after each round of golf and the winners were announced, we had 3/4 of the golfers return their winnings so it could go back into the money raised for Julie. It was an overwhelming feeling.

I'm so proud of my husband and all his hard work that he put in to this tournament for his sister. The whole John family (and some of my family as well because I couldn't have done this without my mom, Jordan and Jen) came together for a special young woman. Through the help of everyone, we were able to raise $20,000 to help with the bills Julie has and will acquire. We found out just this past week that Julie did have cancer. The doctors feel as if they got it all but she will now be treated as a cancer patient and will be returning to MD Anderson every 2 months for scans of her jaw and lungs. She has a long road ahead of her but I hope she will always know how much she is loved by so many!