Grace United Protestant Church Helps Children with Cancer

Grace United Protestant Church in Park Forest celebrated the spirit of giving during their eleventh annual holiday toy drive to benefit the Pediatric Oncology Treasure Chest Foundation. Parishioners collected toys and $20 in gift cards to help children and teens fighting cancer. The toy drive was in memory of Treasure Chest Foundation weekly volunteer and parishioner Nan Beard’s two daughters, Cathy and Alison who died of cancer.

Grace United Parishioner Chris Long said, “Our church is a caring and loving congregation. We love kids and we love Nan.” Nan Beard replied, “My church saved my life after I lost my two daughters and husband to cancer. Grace United Church became my family.”

Treasure Chest Foundation CEO and Founder Colleen Kisel expressed her gratitude for the generous support shown by the Grace United Protestant Church in Park Forest. “The Treasure Chest Foundation is especially grateful for eleven years of enormous donations of toys, gifts and gift cards,” said an appreciative Ms. Kisel. “It is wonderful to see the giving members of this church come together to help little ones whose lives have become filled with doctors, nurses, surgeries, pills, chemotherapy, radiation and mostly painful, painful procedures.”

The POTCF is a unique organization whose services impact more than 15,300 young cancer patients in 64 cancer treatment centers in 21 states across the nation and in the District of Columbia. Nowhere else in the nation does such a program exist. Colleen Kisel founded the organization in 1996 after her then seven-year-old son Martin had been diagnosed with leukemia in 1993. Ms. Kisel discovered that giving her son a toy after each procedure provided a calming distraction from his pain, noting that when children are diagnosed with cancer their world soon becomes filled with doctors, nurses, chemotherapy drugs, surgeries and seemingly endless painful procedures. Martin celebrated his 28th anniversary of remission from the disease in March of 2021.

If you would like further information about the Treasure Chest Foundation, please contact Colleen Kisel at 1-708-687-TOYS (8697) or visit the Foundation’s website at www.treasurechest.org.