Dear Team Zachary,

For a long, long time I have been giving many of you a little peek into the world of Zachary through my eyes. Often I have been asked, "What can I do to help??" It has been my honor and privilege to ask for and receive your love. There is no greater gift than Love that you will give to anyone ever. You have already given to Zachary and to our family the very best you have to share.

Thank you again and again and again.

I have learned so many lessons from this journey. One of them is that the idea that there are people who give and another group of people who receive is just a silly, silly concept. Everybody gives and everybody receives. Life is about circulation. I can assure you that those who are perceived as 'having much' have received the most. Circulation keeps us all healthy, connected and free of the illusion that somehow we have independently created all that we have or are.

Recently I was in Omaha and I had to excuse myself from Zachary's hospital room because I could not contain my tears. 'Teach your parents well' is a great line from a song. There is nothing on him or in him that does not hurt. Nothing. He looks horrible. He has lost a significant amount of weight. He has over a thousand blisters covering his body that make picking up a tissue painful. He will never be able to go out into the sun because of the radiation damage to his skin. And it is not the case that we know if we are winning. Not until the end of May when they test him again will they have any idea if the cancer is dying. If you think that his physical situation was the reason for my tears you would be wrong. It was what he said to me that afternoon.

"Ann," he said, "from this situation I want to find more compassion and help people."

I wanted to hit something and Zachary wants to find compassion and help people!

IF (and believe me this is not a test of your love--you have already passed that test with flying colors!!!) you would like to make a lasting tribute to Zachary and support him in his quest to 'help people' I have a new way for you to help. Please consider joining with our family, through the month of April, in a campaign to further support the extraordinary cancer research being conducted by the team at the University of Nebraska.

Our family will match, dollar for dollar, any donation you choose to share through the end of the month of April. Simply write a tax deductible check to the 'University of Nebraska Foundation' and send it to me:

Ann St. John, 210 East Gilbert Drive, Bloomington, IN, 47408.

Or click on this Team Zachary link and go to the University of Nebraska Foundation website where you can contribute by credit card: www.nufoundation.org/teamzachary.

All of these contributions and a matching check will be presented on May 15th, the one year anniversary of Zachary's jet ambulance ride to the University of Nebraska at a moment when he had a fever of 106 and a quickly fleeting hold on life.

Please only contribute to this effort if this is something you feel compelled to do. We have chosen to support this extraordinary world-class research program because

• We have seen the results first hand.
• 100% of your contribution will go directly to an undesignated cancer research fund (established for Team Zachary) which provides the program maximum opportunity to leverage even larger grants.
• None of this money will benefit Zachary's outcome. His experience has benefited from those who wrote checks to this program 10 and 20 years ago.

We would like to present a check on May 15th to the Foundation. I am audacious enough to believe that between Team Zachary and our family we have the capacity in April to generate as much as $200,000 to directly apply to cancer research. Those of you who can write a big check for us to match (you know who you are) please consider doing so. It is equally important to provide an opportunity for everyone who is compelled to join in this effort to share at a level that is comfortable for them. For example, I am encouraging all of my nieces and nephews and grandchildren to do what they can to earn $5 or $10 or $20 to share and to also recruit their friends to do so. So if you would.....get out your checkbooks and credit cards and forward this e-mail to appropriate destinations and let's see what we can do together to practically address one of the great medical challenges of our time.

Whether you started following Zachary's story with the reading of this message today or have known him all 26 years of his life, what is true is that he has swept us along on this journey. His quest for greater compassion is born from a deep understanding that life is about something bigger than him or even his physical survival. It is this sense of connectedness that after 9-11 and a bike trip to Ground Zero in NYC compelled him to join the army and eventually delivered him to Iraq. It is this sense of connectedness that, even now, yearns to practice greater compassion and invites us to do the same.

If today's message helps to answer for you the question "What can I do?" I am grateful.

The greatest of these really is Love.

I'll update you on our progress with the team Zachary letters in April.

Ann