A case of help when times are tough
Julie once had a wonderful family: Her husband Greg, their three children and Greg's parents. Then there were two dogs and the livestock of their cattle farm in Montana. Julie had a wonderful life until Dec 23, 2014, when Greg and his parents died in a car accident. A truckdriver suffered a heart attack, the head-on collision killed all four people involved.
The kids were very young. Greg jun. was a baby, Mary was a toddler, and Georgie had just started going to school a few months before the accident. It took Julie many months to come to terms with the fact that Greg would never return.
Thankfully, there were the neighbours who jumped in to give a hand with the farm. But it was heartbreaking for them to see how Julie was getting thinner and paler by the day. Eventually, half a year after the accident, her best friend Sandra took the kids into her own house and brought Julie to a doctor. After a medical examination she was sent to a clinic in Billings, Julie had breast cancer. The diagnosis almost ended her will to live. But by the time Julie got her first chemo therapy, Sandra had an idea. She had been a Global Native for a year by then and had already sent off her son Timothy to Germany for a year, hosting young Thomas from Cologne in his place. |
Sandra started to look for families who had some experience with breeding cattle. Within ten days she was drinking tea with Bill and Joan, who had just lost their only son to cancer and had consequently sold their own farm. They had planned to move to California with their ten year old daughter Jenny. Together they visited Julie and got to like each other straight away.
For six months Bill, Joan and Jenny lived with Julie on her farm, looked after the cattle and took loving care of the kids. |
When Julie's therapy was finished, and she started to feel stronger, they held council to decide how to proceed from now on. Bill and Joan decided to pool their resources with Julie's and stay. They had turned into a close-knit family by then.