It's a Girl!

Donna had a baby girl on Sunday July 23 at 1:21AM. Her name is Kaylyn Sarah Faye Nelson weighing in at 6 lbs 14 oz. and 20 1/4 inches long. She has reddish brown hair and may have blue eyes. She has the same round face that Donna does. She looks more like Donna but has a similarity of her brother Judah. Judah is not to sure about this tiny little bundle. He will kiss her but when she cries he gets very worried and upset.

Donna is doing very well. She has had her moments of missing Jeremy but otherwise her spirits are very up. Donna started labor about 11 PM but did not recognize it as labor, just a very steady back ache. She finally told her best friend to take her to the hospital at about 12:30 as something was very wrong. When she got there they told her that she was 6cm dilated. Donna was shocked. We were camped at Fort Langely campground so she call us at 12:50 that we needed to come right away. We arrived at the Hospital only to find out that we were 2 min. to late. We had been praying that she would have an easy birth and quick and GOD honored that.

Thankyou all for your prayers.

The meaning of Her name is Crowned Princess(Kaylyn) Beloved(Sarah) Remembered(Faye) the 23 is also significant as Jeremy's birthdate was the 23(Dec)

Tracy's Thoughts

I lost my brother Derek to leukemia in 1988, he was 14 years old and I was 11. Finding out Jeremy had leukemia and then that he had passed away was like losing a brother all over again. When I met Jeremy in 1996 it was like gaining a brother. I remember him and Kendal coming into the music store I worked at and inviting me to watch Star Wars with them. They had gotten a projector and were going to watch it on the big white wall at the church they went to. I was pretty excited because I had lived in Williams Lake for about nine months and hadn't met anyone yet. And that's how it started. I remember thinking of us as the lucky seven, Lynn Anne, Robyn, Kendal, Mark, Karin, Jeremy, and myself. This group of friends had been friends for so long but they just excepted me in like I had always been there. It was awesome. Jeremy did not only become my friend but he also became my roommate. I could tell you so many stories about Jeremy but I won't. I will tell you that we went through a lot of other roommates in the few years we lived together. Brad, Scott, Tamara, Josh. But it was always Jeremy and I. I went through a lot of trying times but Jer was always there to help pick me up and get me back on track.... he was my brother, trying to look out for me. I do remember a necklace he gave me once, He gave one to all of us I believe.... The lucky seven. And it came with a little note "brother to sister, yours in life and death" I still have it today. I know Jeremy is in a better place, a place that he belonged. But I can't help but believe the world lost an angel the day he left. The world was a better place with Jeremy in it, my life was better with Jeremy in it. Jeremy's faith is an inspiration to me. I remember wishing that I could have the faith he had, wanting it so bad. Jeremy was so special, you couldn't knock him down. The last time I saw him was in the hospital in Edmonton. It was right after Josh passed away, I was so nervous going into see him. I hadn't talked to him in awhile and I wasn't sure what it would be like. But it was like we had been all the time. No different. We looked at pictures from when we were in Williams Lake, talked about old times laughed and laughed. I hadn't realized how much I missed him. Jeremy will always be one of those people you never forget in a lifetime. I know that life moves on, people move and life happens but I wish I could have been a better friend to him. Been there for him more. So Jeremy, I miss you and love you. Sister to brother, yours in life and death.

Donna Baby update!

Donna is still very pregnant. We were hoping that she would have had this baby before we went to Abbotsford for our holidays which start this Friday July 21. I know her due date is July 20 but we were hoping before then. Donna is doing good except for the fact that she is tired of being pregnant. The baby dropped about 2 weeks ago and she is having lots of back ache and very uncomfortable. One thing that she told me is that she is now nervous and very sad that Jeremy is not there. She is having many a weepy day (not all day but off and on). That is to be expected. Please pray for her. The baby is now in the right position now for a correct delivery.
Donna now has a apartment that she and the children can move into Aug 1. It is just down the hall from Jeremy's cousin Yvonne. The apartment has laundry outlets right in the apartment so that she doesn't have to go anywhere to do laundry and you don't have to wait for someone to finish their's before you can do yours. With a new baby this is ideal. She has a washer and dryer in High Level that can be moved down. She will be going to High Level in Sept. to pack her belongings and move them to Abbotsford. That is going to be another very hard week on her. Rose and Leroy are going to join her up there so they can see where Jeremy enjoyed living and meet some of the people he worked with and to also help Donna sort through all his stuff. She will then come here and use this as a base until Oct. 21 weekend when her best friend from Bible School gets married. After that Donna and the kids will head back to Abbotsford to set up home.

If this baby doesn't come before we start our holidays Friday evening I will try and get to a computer and email of the blessed event somewhere from Abbotsford. It might be just a short note to say it's a GIRL (I am hoping) or it's a BOY.
Email you all later. Just keep praying for Donna and thankyou for those prayers.

Love
Colleen

Thoughts from Sandi Jessee

I met Jeremy when he was doing security at Boitanio Mall almost 10 years ago. I had just returned from Maternity leave and we both worked Sundays at the mall. Back then, Sundays were very boring to work, so Jeremy would come to SAAN where I worked and we would chat. Most of our conversations were about what God was doing in our lives. I was going to the Anglican Church and he invited me to his bible study group. I said, "Are you sure they'll let me come because I don't go to their church." He said of course. So that night I went and met the Jones' and had a spiritual encounter with God and new that I would never be happy just going to the Anglican Church. This one invitation from Jeremy changed my life forever. I became really good friends with Robyn and Kendal Jones. I decided to start attending the Full Gospel Church in Williams Lake and became friends with everyone there including April Dell and Shirley Jessee. I am now married to Sean Jessee (Shirley's son) and would have never met him if it had not been for Jeremy.

We had many great times at the mall. After work we would have water balloon fights out back of the mall. Jeremy and Dave would end up getting soaked. I guess I had it made because I had an endless supply of balloons from SAAN and we would fill them up and store them in a shopping cart. Jeremy and I had lunch together almost every work day. Of course that was before Donna came along. I remember meeting Kendal and Robyn for Coffee at McDonalds and Jeremy would come. I spent a lot of time with Jeremy and people would ask if he was my husband. One time Rebecca's mom said that my son looked like Jeremy. Jeremy and I both laughed. (This was before Rebecca and Ron were together and before she really knew Jeremy.) Jeremy and I were good buddies. He started early morning prayer at the Church and then we brought it to the mall. We had our own prayer room and we prayed for people that worked at the mall and the troubled youth that we knew about. Jeremy would bring his guitar and we would sing some of our favorite chorus' out back of the mall. I would sometimes play my flute. I remember him telling me about his fear of spiders, so one time I went to the dollar store and bought some fake spiders and put them inside the wrapper on his favorite chocolate bar, Nestle Crunch. It was so funny to watch him when he found those spiders because he would try to shake them off as he did not want to throw out his chocolate bar. I think I pranked him a couple of times and then after that he would always check the wrapper before he ate a Nestle Crunch.

Donna started working at SAAN, and shortly after that Jeremy and her were engaged. He decided to go to the Pentecostal Church with her and that was sad for all of us at Full Gospel, but we understood. Later on, I took a job at the Tribune and was no longer a mall employee. Jeremy and I still kept in touch. Then our Church closed and I attended Calvary Church for a while, but decided that was not to be my home Church. I was able to see Jeremy , Donna and Judah before they left for Alberta. Then when I heard the news about Jeremy having Leukemia, I was very sad. We kept in touch over the email and on his blog site. He was always encouraging everyone even when he was feeling his worst. His faith in God was so amazing. He left a big mark in a bunch of peoples' hearts and changed a lot of peoples' lives through his prayers and encouragement. I miss him very much, but know that he is in Heaven with the Lord and has no more pain and suffering!!

My tribute to Jeremy

This is the tribute I gave at Jeremy's memorial service in Abbotsford. Please remember that it was written as a public speech and it reads that way. It is slightly fixed up though, as I wrote it about an hour before the service. Donna, I just want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to say goodbye to Jeremy that day. It was a real honor to be a part of his service.

Kendal


May 8, 2006

The first time I heard of Jeremy, I was jealous. I was probably only 11 years old, and my best friend was Josh Wolbers. We were both students at Full Gospel Christian School in Williams Lake. There wasn't many other people in our age range, and Josh and I became great friends. So I was not too happy when Josh told me his cousin "Jeremy" was coming to the school. Every time Josh would talk about Jeremy, his eyes would light up.

"Jeremy and I both play hockey, Jeremy and I do this, Jeremy and I do that..."

I was sure that this "Jeremy" guy was going to take up all of Josh's time and I'd be stuck in the corner by myself (come on, I was only 11).

Well the three of us didn't do much apart for the rest of our school years. There were so many pizza and movie overnighters, and I think we walked every inch of Williams Lake together. The three of us acted, dressed, and talked the same. We even chased the same girls occasionally.

Jeremy was the first one of us to get his driver's license. Josh and I thought that meant our lives could finally begin. We thought that the way to meet girls was to cruise around town in a vehicle. Looking back now, I'm not sure what we thought would happen; maybe we thought the girls would see us driving by and jump out in front of the truck and fall madly in love with us.

One fine Saturday night in summer, we talked Jer into borrowing Leroy's(his dad) gray Blazer. By the time he picked us up and we all thought we looked cool enough to go out in public it was almost 8:00 pm. What Jeremy didn't tell us, was that Leroy told Jer he could stay out until midnight but he wanted the truck off the streets by 9:00 pm. So after cruising for about 45 minutes(and not seeing any girls) Jeremy says to me, "Well it's getting late, why don't we go back to your house and watch a movie." Josh and I were so mad. We weren't going home until at least one of us had met the love of our life. Then Jeremy told us about the truck's curfew, and the debate began. We insisted that Leroy would never know if we drove around for a while, Jeremy insisted he wouldn't disobey his dad. So after 20 minutes of us refusing to go home, Jeremy pulled the truck into the Overwaitea parking lot facing Oliver Street. He wouldn't budge for about 2 and a half hours. Jeremy was our conscience. Years later when we talked about it we all remembered how much fun that night was, even though we just sat there and argued for a couple of hours.

Jeremy was so at home over at our place that he usually walked in without knocking. He actually developed a bit of a routine. We always had a few cupboard doors open, which drove Jer nuts. As soon as he came over he would head straight for the kitchen and start closing doors. Next, because of his love for cake(for more on Jeremy's love of cake see Mary's story) he would go straight to our pantry and steal my Mom's box of Duncan Hines chocolate cake mix. He would always try to be really sneaky about it, and slip it into his jacket like a shoplifter. Then he wouldn't take it out until someone "caught" him with it. He would walk around the house with this big square bulge under his jacket, making it really obvious that it was there. I took to just ignoring him, and my Mom would usually take pity on him and say, "Jeremy Nelson you put my cake mix back this minute!"

One day while I was waiting for him to come over, my Mom and I were talking about his routine, and I had a flash of inspiration. I ran to the kitchen and opened every cupboard door in the room. Then I took the box of cake mix and carefully cut away the bottom of the box and removed the pouch of mix. I replaced it with every fork, knife, and spoon we owned. I placed the box back in it's usual spot so it looked like it always did. We knew he'd never make a grab for the cake mix if we were watching, so my mom and I just waited in the next room for him to arrive. When he finally got there, he predictably headed for the kitchen. We could hear Jeremy muttering while he closed all the cupboard doors. Then after a moment of silence, he tried to sneakily slip the box into his jacket. As the box came away from the shelf all the cutlery came crashing to Jeremy's feet. After a startled yell, he just said "whatever!"

When we were just about finished school, Jer and I met our good friend, Scott. I was already dating my wife, Robyn at the time. Jeremy, Scott, Robyn, and I spent a lot of time together. Aside from hours of, "going for coffee," we would also go out hiking a lot as well. We used to get groups of people together and go out in the woods with water guns and have water fights. All four of us used to go out to Likely Bible Camp to be camp counselors. We also went to Likely many times just for fun. With Jeremy's love for bad cheesy puns he'd always end up saying, "Now that's a likely story."

Once, the four of us went hiking out in the Likely area. We had seen a mountain on an earlier trip and decided we would camp at the top. We looked at a topographical map of the area and decided it must be"Three Ladies Mountain" although in reality we had no idea which mountain it actually was. The next weekend we piled into my '85 Ford Tempo and headed out. The first couple of hours were alright, until Robyn got stuck on a glacier about half way up. Then it was all down-hill from there(pun intended). When we reached the top, we started to enjoy one of the best views I've ever seen.
Within seconds it started to rain, and it never quit for 24 hours. By the time we had camp set up everything was soaked and there was no chance of a fire. We went to bed cold and wet. We were sleeping alright, until 5:00am when Jeremy decided that if he couldn't sleep, no one was going to sleep. He started doing his Forrest Gump impersonation; the scene where Gump was talking about the rain in Vietnam. "Little tiny rain, big fat rain, stinging rain, rain that comes in from the side, etc..." I thought Robyn was going to kill him. Jer always loved doing impersonations from movies, but sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between his John Wayne and his Arnold Swartzenegger.
The trip down the mountain was an experience as well. It rained the whole way down. We tried coming down a different way than we came up. There was no footing and the only way to keep from sliding down the mountain and off a cliff was to hang onto these slippery vines that were coming out of the ground. Which of course got Robyn and Jer singing, "George of the Jungle." When we finally got to the car, not one but two of my tires were flat! By then Robyn was very ill so Jeremy and Scott hitchhiked back to Likely to get Gerry Stanley to come rescue us. A good time was had by all...

I also have very good memories from the weekend that Robyn and I went away for the weekend with Jeremy and Donna, back when they were just engaged. The four of us went to with Jer's sister Lisa and her husband Shawn. Aside from having a great time, it was our chance to really get to know Donna. Over the years it was a real blessing to see how happy Donna made Jeremy.

There are thousands of stories I could tell about Jeremy...

I could talk about the time he and I almost got kicked out of the Smitty's in 100 mile house for giggling like schoolgirls.

Or when our graduating class(Jeremy, my cousin Chris, and I) went out to Farwell Canyon for our grad pictures.

Or when we choreographed "Clearly Canadian" and "Tender Talking Time" with my brother Mark.

Or when Jer lived in the loft of the church, or when he lived in Nellie Stanley's shed, or when he lived in a warehouse with Donna.

Or how he couldn't put on a tuxedo without turning into James Bond.

Or I could tell a million stories about Jer's Blazer or his Camaro.

Or I could talk about trying to help Jer set up his website recently.

Or I could tell you about his juicing parties, or him videotaping himself eating breakfast(and then making everyone watch it), or the time Josh shot a hole in the wall of Jeremy's bedroom, or Jeremy showing me all of his childhood haunts in Chase.


Or I could talk about Jeremy and I trying to help each other through the loss of Josh.

Everyone who knew Jeremy could tell lots of great stories.

Today's service is a celebration of Jeremy's life. There is a lot to celebrate. I can celebrate him as the best man at my wedding, and as a great friend. My daughters celebrate him as an uncle. Leroy and Rose can celebrate him as a terrific son. Donna can celebrate him as an amazing husband and father.

We all respect Jeremy for his incredible depth of faith and courage.

Jeremy, thank you for everything, we will all miss you very much.