28
Nov

Third Strand

Our #IKnowHim story today was submitted by Kyle Joy, who recently had an incredible experience with God in the midst of a family tragedy. God’s tangible presence stood with them in the fire, and when his family emerged, they came out in strength, power, and with a God-given purpose. 

ThirdStrand from Third Strand on Vimeo.

We are so honored to share a brief message from Kyle to the #IKnowHim community. Below you will find links where you can partner with Third Strand in a variety of ways. Please feel free to leave him and his team some encouragement in the comment section as they faithfully take each step forward in obedience, to share the message that God has a plan. As a community of believers, we would love for you to join with us in prayer for their faith to be strengthened and their hearts to be encouraged while they strive to honor Kalee and her sweet baby Cru, with this organization. 

“Our mission is to advocate for Healthy, Nursing babies in need of donor human breast milk, with our primary focus being nursing babies who have tragically lost a mother and nursing mothers who are unable to breastfeed due to a life-threatening illness.

The babies that we serve do not qualify for charitable donor breast milk from NonProfit Milk Banks. 100% of the milk distributed from these Milk Banks goes to premature babies in NICUs and sick babies in outpatient care. This, despite the growing trend of loving and generous mothers rallying together to donate gallons upon gallons of breast milk to these healthy babies.

Until you are thrust into this situation, you do not realize or appreciate the need for this donated milk to be thoroughly screened and pasteurized to ensure the safety and health of the baby. The only safe way to feed any baby donated breast milk is for the milk to be properly screened and pasteurized. Currently, Milk Banks are the only avenue to receive this milk, and healthy babies do not qualify for the milk without a hefty price tag ($1,000 / week to feed a newborn baby).

Our mission is to organize, collect and manage the breast milk donations generated by these horrific events and deliver it to NonProfit Milk Banks in exchange for pasteurized donor milk to feed the healthy baby for up to 8 weeks. This also ensures that the milk that was donated is put to use by feeding babies being served by the Milk Banks. In essence, our model is a continuous model of ‘paying-it-forward.’

Third Strand is about much more than delivering milk and feeding babies, however. Third Strand is a story and a testimony of rising from the ashes and being able to see God’s great plan at work in all our lives. Our tragedy brought feelings of doubt, anger, despair and question in the initial days. However, those feelings quickly turned to a humbling sense of feeling blessed and loved by our friends, our family, our church, our community, and most importantly, God. Kalee’s death has grown our spiritual relationship with God and presented us with the opportunity to pay forward the lessons we learned and the power of God’s unending love.

I hope that you hear our story and can relate to our message. I also hope that our testimony is one of strength and encouragement in that God does have a plan for every single one of us, and even though, sometimes, that plan isn’t what we want, he knows what he’s doing.”

Kyle

For more information on Third Strand, click HERE.

To support them in their campaign to spread the message of Third Strand, click HERE.

Have you experienced God? Do you have a story that reflects God is real, He is here, and He is good? We’d love to hear how God is moving in your life and the things He has done. Click here for more information on how to submit your story! We can’t wait to hear from you!