Church member shares faith and kidney

Church member shares faith and kidney

by CHRIS HAWES / WFAA-TV

Posted on January 3, 2010 at 10:34 PM
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CLEBURNE ― This is sometimes called the season of giving, but how far would you go? How much would you give to save a life? It's a question two Cleburne church members recently faced. The result has changed both their lives.

Victoria Trettel didn't really know the fellow church member on the prayer list each Sunday, but she knew Mark Rhodes' kidney was failing, and doctors said he needed a transplant.

“If you don't do dialysis, you're going to drown on your own fluids because you can't get rid of them,” Rhodes said.

One day this spring, Trettel took a few minutes to talk to him and discovered they had the same blood type.

”What was I supposed to do, say ‘Well, good luck with that, see you later?’” she asked.

A week later, at Shepherd's Valley Cowboy Church in Cleburne, the grandmother made a decision that, at first, surprised their pastor.

“In the middle of our service we're having, Victoria comes to us and says ‘I feel like I would like to make a donation of my kidney towards Mark,’” Pastor Russ Weaver said.

“No one made her. No one paid her. No one said, ‘If you want to be a good Christian, this is what you should do,'" Rhodes said. “She just … the spirit led her, and she followed.”

After weeks of tests, Rhodes and Trettel were cleared as a match. On Nov. 3, doctors transplanted one of Trettel's kidneys into Rhodes.

“We're part of one another now, you know?” Rhodes said.

“It's still kind of surreal, even now, knowing that he has a part of me inside of him,” Trettel said.

Now, Rhodes, his wife and two daughters are looking forward to a healthy new year and the renewed knowledge it's one of many more they'll enjoy together.

http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/Church-member-shares-faith-and-kidney-80545042.html