ND Pastor Gives A “Gift Of Life” – Donates His Own Kidney.

A pastor is so many things to so many people - those that flock to him look for advice on life - a spiritual leader - teaching the word of God. A pastor is also a human being that lives each day like the rest of us. A pastor gives his or her love to all that belong to the congregation - and in some cases, a pastor will literally give up a piece of themself to bring someone a "second chance in life".

According to KXNET a Crosby, North Dakota man grew up experiencing off and on kidney issues. When in high school 23-year old Noah Knudson went to the doctor  “Got some blood work. Something looked weird, so they sent me down to Minot to a different doctor there and they drew blood and some bloodwork came back showing kidney involvement,”   This is when the sea of medications took over - after months of this, he was officially diagnosed. Knudson had a research doctor tell him that he thought he had a dual diagnosis, of IGA nephropathy and vasculitis. After hearing this, it allowed him to back off on the medication for several years, trying to get his life back to semi-normal.

In his sophomore year of college, things drastically changed - “I went to get bloodwork and they said something looks like we’ll need to get a biopsy and after the biopsy, my doctor calls me up and he says you should come down to the office and I was like that’s not good,”  

Noah Knudson now needed a kidney transplant - So the search was on - He was immediately put on the donor list. A Caring Bridge account was set up for him. His whole family put up Facebook posts, looking desperately for a match - a donor.

Miracles happen every day and after months of hope, Noah's pastor from his old church - Zachariah Shipman - reached out. Knudson and Shipman now share an amazing bond - a gift from God.

Knudson shared his message last week during a virtual event that the National Kidney Foundation and Sanford Health put on to teach people about being a living donor and the importance of it. 

Lastly, check out this staggering statistic from organdonor.gov, 17 people die each day waiting on an organ transplant, and every nine minutes another person is added to the waitlist -   which makes donors extremely important.