Kidney transplant surgery is common in the United States. Unfortunately, in November of this year, Kelly VanVleet, a member of LifePoint Baptist Church, was in dire need of this surgery. That is where LifePoint Baptist Church Pastor Sam Marasco comes into play.
Marasco has been a pastor at LifePoint for around four years now. Growing up in Southern California, it’s a whole different world for Marasco here in Indiana.
“I moved out here in 2005 when Kelly and Don, the VanVleet’s, got married. We have been in and out of the church a couple of different times. We have helped churches get started in the continental United States, and then we have helped start some in Hawaii as well,” said Marasco.
As a child, Marasco was raised by his step-father. He knows the importance of family and the importance of having parents in your life. This ultimately helped him make one of the biggest decisions of his life.
“Kelly and Don have two kids, Jacob and Johanna. They were members of the church before we got here. They have been members of our church for over 10 years and are a great family,” said Marasco.
While most transplants are thanks to kidneys donated from family members, there are some outliers on that list.
“Kelly started to have kidney failure about three or four years ago. It got to the point where her kidneys had weakened so much that she was put on dialysis two years ago. I learned that when somebody gets on dialysis and does not get a kidney, typically the life expectancy is anywhere from five to 10 years after that,” said Marasco.
Life expectancy is always a huge concern in these types of situations, and Marasco determined that something needed to be done.
“When we learned about her life expectancy, we put Kelly on our prayer list. We had been praying for the healing of her kidneys long before that. The whole church was praying for her, and she ended up on a kidney donor list in search of a living donor,” Marasco said.
In the Baptist Church, prayer is everything. In Marasco’s case, this was how he got on the path to find a donor, little did he know what the outcome would be.
“It can be a scary thing, obviously. The further I looked into it, the more I believed the Lord was working on my heart to be that donor. The woman I talked to mentioned that maybe the Lord gave us two kidneys so we could give one away,” said Marasco.
It was only a matter of time until a decision needed to be made, and Marasco decided to be the donor. Although his decision was final, it did not go exactly the way he imagined it would.
“I passed all the tests last April. It became a matter of me not being a direct match for Kelly. We have different blood types, so we were entered into a paired program. When somebody with my matching blood type comes along that needs a kidney, I donate to that person, and then somebody else with Kelly's blood type donates to her,” said Marasco.
“It ended up working out that we are able to help four people,” he continued. “Somebody else helped Kelly, and then two people dropped off of the donation list. That puts two other people at the top of the list, but ultimately, I helped somebody.”