'

As many of you know, my youngest brother, Andrew, who is now serving a mission for our church in Houston, Texas, was diagnosed with Type I diabetes when he was 12. It affects his everyday life with monitoring his blood sugar level and complicates even the simplest activities like sitting down to a meal or eating a snack. JDRF is the leading global organization dedicated to Type I diabetes research. The goal of JDRF is to improve the lives of every person affected by T1D by accelerating progress on the most promising opportunities for curing, better treating, and preventing T1D.

My parents have been heavily involved in raising funds in Cincinnati, and they were the top individual fundraising team for 5 years. In recognition of their dedication to the organization, my parents are being honored this year at a formal gala, to be attended by over 750 people, as "Cincinnatians of the Year" by JDRF. All of my siblings and I are looking forward to joining them for the event in a few weeks.

My parents will be making a generous personal donation that evening, as will Dani and I and each of my siblings. We will also be presenting a "friends and family" donation the night of the gala, and we wanted to ask each of you to consider making a donation as part of this effort. Any amount helps, as JDRF contributes more than 80% of all donations directly to research. It would mean a lot to me and my family if our close friends would consider donating to JDRF to fund research for Type I diabetes.

You can contribute by going online at jdrf-cincinnati.ejoinme.org/Jensen. We look forward to presenting this friends and family contribution at the Gala on May 11th, so we need to have all contributions by May 6th.

The theme of the Gala is “Oz, Journey to the Cure”. Like Dorothy’s three intrepid companions, we seek to touch your heart to support those who have a brain doing the research to give Andrew and others the courage to deal with this disease.

Thank you for your love and support!

Jared and Dani