Holden's First Birthday and the Run For Water

Saturday, August 28 marks one year from the day that Holden Newell Erwin met Jesus face to face. I get chills just writing that because this perfect, precious boy has spent all of his days in Glory. Holden's mama, Sarah, was 38 weeks and 5 days pregnant when sweet baby's heart stopped beating. Such a blessing for Holden to go straight from his mother's womb to Jesus' arms. So much pain for a mommy and daddy left on earth with empty arms and broken hearts.

In December 2010, Sarah and Chet founded Holden Uganda, a non-profit organization to spread the love of Christ through the gift of clean water. The original goal of HUF was to build 9 wells, one for each month that Holden's heart beat on this earth. By January 8 of this year, the Lord provided funds for the 9 wells, and many more have been funded since then.

This Saturday, on the one year birthday of sweet Holden and the anniversary of his one year in Heaven, there will be several 5K's around the country. One of the 5K's will be run in Searcy. In honor of Holden's first birthday, Sarah and Chet wanted to fund as many more wells as possible.

Will you consider joining us for the Holden Uganda 5K Fun Run for Water? We will meet at Spring Park at 7:00 Saturday morning (cry about it all you want. that's when it's happening. it's a saturday. you can take a nap). Official registration for the race is $25, but I know that that can be a lot of money for a college student. Rather than having everyone officially register, I'm asking that everyone who decides to run makes a donation of however much money they are comfortable with giving. We will send a check to HUF, and our total will be added to the totals of all of the other runs. I'll be sure to post the final amount of money raised after the run :) If you can't run or don't want to run and would be willing to help out with the run anyway (I mainly just need someone to sit at the finish line with a cooler of water bottles), PLEASE let me know. You will be such a blessing to us! Also, several of us will be getting together on Friday afternoon to decorate t-shirts to run in on Saturday morning. If that is something that you would be interested in doing/helping with, let me know. I am looking forward to the run on Saturday morning.

Sweet Holden, you are cherished and loved. We will never forget that you were here, that you had weight in this world. You are so loved, precious boy! I would give anything to know you on this side of Heaven, but I know that eternity will be so much sweeter because I get to snuggle you there :)