My name is Jeremie Minani, and I was born in Rwanda, in a refugee camp called Kigeme; Born into a family broken by war and poverty. I remember as a five year old, building our home from mud...gathering dirt and water to make the walls, using a tarp as a roof and hay as a mattress; At seven witnessing the loss of my best friend to tribalism.

My siblings and I would wake at 5am to walk a 2 hour trip to fetch water for the house before heading to school.
And my mother, a woman orphaned at 14, leaving the house in the early mornings and coming home late at night with enough to feed us for the day. …..

The world as is, has been full of pain and suffering; however, though I do not know who you are, or what storms you’ve faced or will face, what I can confidently tell you, is what I’ve also found to be just as true if not truer; that You are carefully created and designed with greatness for greatness, your strength and potential is surely more than you could ever realize.

These last 3 months have been the worst time of my life.

Things got worse when we found out Johanna’s melanoma staging went up to stage 3 last month when one lymph node removed tested positive for melanoma.

When we found out more about the cutting edge breakthroughs in melanoma treatment called immunotherapy, specifically a drug called Nivolumab. And it’s expensive at a cost of $180,000 for a year of treatment.

To just wait and see and let Johanna get worse to stage 4 to have the treatment funded is simply not an option (nor is another treatment offered that would have little effect and awful side affects) and so we are left with no real choice but to pay for the treatments, however way we can (loans, selling house, fundraising). So we wanted to initially raise $60,000 to cover 4 months worth of treatment, in hopes by then that health Canada will have approved it for stage 3.

We were planning to launch a Go Fund Me campaign but…

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