In memory of Jenny Faenza
By Brad Lyons, HELM

"Just give me the phone!" Jenny Faenza both laughed and scowled as I handed her my cell phone. Like many college students in November, she wasn't feeling well. Under pressure from academics and the cooling weather, we can count on a few HELM students feeling lousy during our annual conference. A chain drug store was having problems refilling a prescription she needed, and she wasn't going to take no for an answer. She was polite but firm, feisty through it all, and determined to get what she needed. Jenny got tough - and that prescription was in her hands within half an hour. Jenny seemed fine the rest of the weekend, and she was optimistic about her future.

Just three weeks later, Jenny was gone. Word came that the spunky 19-year-old passed away while home in Tennessee for Thanksgiving break. After fighting for two years, she had succumbed to pulmonary hypertension, a condition that reduces blood flow through the lungs, and scleroderma, hardening of organ tissue.

In the eight years I've worked at HELM, we haven't had to address tragedies like a student dying so suddenly, so bear with me as I try to recount the real impact Jenny had on us during the brief year-and-a-half we were blessed with her acquaintence.

One of my favorite assignments here is to call high school seniors who have been selected for the HELM Leadership Fellows Program. I first spoke to Jenny on an April afternoon, and I was so pleased to hear her cheery voice tinged by a charming Tennessee lilt. She was looking forward to connecting with the HELM crew at the Fort Worth General Assembly.

A few weeks later, Jenny called me, and her cheer was gone. She told me about her condition, which had grown worse in recent weeks; she was bound for Johns Hopkins in Baltimore where she was on the short list for a double-lung transplant. No General Assembly, and no college in the fall, and little hope of a long life. Yet her concern was that she would have to leave the Leadership Fellows Program. We assured her we would hold her spot for her, and she was grateful.

Soon we heard from a grateful Jenny - a miracle! Doctors had tweaked her medication, and the lung transplant wasn't urgent anymore. She would be at Georgetown in the fall, and she joined us that November for the Leadership Fellows Conference a short bus ride from her campus in Washington, D.C.

At that conference, Jenny sat down at my table for one of the meals, and she said, "I have great news! God's calling me to be a minister!" The smile on her face, the energy in her voice, her confidence that this was absolutely what she was meant to do - it gives me chills even now to think of it. God had made an excellent call in calling Jenny. She shared this news over and over, all weekend long, and we celebrated with her. Jenny would be a great minister.

As all Leadership Fellows do, she worked on a covenant of her choosing; she intended to work with a child in the D.C. public school system who needed help learning English. As it turned out, the child knew English pretty well, so Jenny ended up serving more as a mentor. When we talked in May for the annual covenant review, already she was thinking about her sophomore-year covenant working with a local UCC congregation. All this time, she had her visits to the hospital, but she kept up with her studies and her passion for Georgetown Hoya hoops.

This year's conference was in St. Louis, and we took care of Jenny, arranging for wheelchairs and rides when appropriate, getting the prescription she needed. Had I been keeping track, I would have lost count of the times she thanked us for our help. "All part of the job," I would say, to which she replied, "thank you anyway."

In mid-November she was back in the hospital, itching to get out. She asked the Leadership Fellows to pray for her health and joked that she was planning her escape. I advised her to ask for a spork because it could be both a pick-axe and a shovel. Based on her love of corny jokes, I think she appreciated my suggestion. Apparently she didn't need it since she was discharged to home for Thanksgiving.

Composing the e-mail to the Leadership Fellows on the Sunday after Thanksgiving informing them Jenny had died was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I could see from Facebook postings some already knew, but that didn't make it any easier. Over the next two days, I traded e-mails and phone calls with mourning Fellows who wanted to know how they could reach out to Jenny's family and when her funeral would be.

On December 2, just three days after Jenny died, I was immersed in Jenny's home community of Springfield, Tennessee. There were so many mourners that two hundred of us stood in an annex, watching the service on closed-circuit television. We were told at least 250 students, staff, and faculty at Georgetown had gathered the previous evening. (Another Georgetown service held a week drew a similar number.) Truly a testament to her spirit, generosity, and love.

A series of vignettes recalled Jenny's her smile, her incredibly positive attitude, her sense of humor, and her tenacity in the face of death. We also learned new stories about Jenny, like the fact that on a boring day during a youth mission trip, she swallowed a roly-poly just so she'd have a story to share that evening. A common thread was Jenny's pervasive sense of gratitude for everything she had in life, and it helped me remember the continual thanks she had offered a few weeks earlier at our conference. All of these serve as the foundation of her new ministry - a ministry of patience, perseverance, hope, joy, and gratitude.

Brad Lyons is HELM's Communications Director and Program Officer.