Matt Tietjen(SEWELL, New Jersey) — When a New Jersey family found out their 4-year-old daughter had brain cancer with months to live, they channeled her strength and found a unique way to bring her happiness during her difficult battle: they asked for donations of books for “Lena’s library.”
“Lena’s strength inspires me to be stronger for her,” the four-year-old’s mother Erin Tietjen told ABC News. “Seeing her beat the odds on a daily basis gives us faith that she will be our miracle.”
Lena loves being read to more than “almost anything,” so her parents said they wanted to do something nice for their daughter and came up with the idea of a book drive called Lena’s Library.
“She loves to be read to,” her dad said. “She was always the one who would grab a book and take it to the corner to try and read it herself.”
After mentioning her passion for books on the family’s GoFundMe page setup by Erin’s sister, droves of deliveries started pouring in for the brave young girl.
“Saturday we got the first delivery with about somewhere close to 150 boxes,” Matt said, adding that they received hundreds more since. “Some of these packages were full with more than one book. This one box alone had 17 books in it,” he said, overwhelmed by the kindness of strangers who had heard his daughter’s story.
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