Today we launched this fundraising memorial campaign for Gabriel on Social Spark. If you are a blogger or freelance writer, please accept this blog u back campaign to drive people to this blog and to help raise awareness about our need to raise funds for a name plaque for Gabriel's grave. We will write a reciprocal blog post about you or your site or your cause at http://themidnightwriter.squarespace.com.

The Midnight Writer will write a review on her blogs for a $25.00 donation to the Angels for Gabriel Memorial Foundation. You will receive a 200 word review with a maximum of 3 links and one photo. Please send donations through paypal and requests for reviews to angelsforgabriel@gmail.com. Allow 2 days for review to be posted once confirmed.

Please place the above blog u back campaign link on your blog, your website, your My Space, facebook, and twitter accounts to drive people to write for this campaign on Social Spark.

Help us spread this campaign from coast to coast and around the world. If we raise enough funds, we can immediately begin helping other families who suffer the tragic loss of a child.

Please donate to this cause so we can place a name plaque on Gabriel Jaden Coates grave within the week. That is our hope and our goal. We need to raise $1500.00 for this so please help share the word. Give what you can by emailing to this paypal account angelsforgabriel@gmail.com. Your will receive a confirmation email for your donation and a receipt will be mailed to you upon request.


Other ways to donate are listed on this blog.

How to Make a Donation

Direct bank deposits can be sent to the account we established for this fund. Here are the instructions:

Bank Branch: Wells Fargo
Person managing account: Cheryl Lynn Gardner
Savings Account No: 5763972659
Routing Number: 121000248

Money orders and checks should be mailed to our ministry address :

Angels of The Light Interfaith Ministry
c/o Rick and Cheryl Gardner
360 South 4th Avenue PMB 234
Pocatello, Idaho 83201

Make payable to Rick or Cheryl Gardner and put in the memo "Angels for Gabriel Memorial Foundation".




Angels for Gabriel Memorial Foundation is a subsidiary of Angels of the Light Interfaith Ministry, which was established in 1997. We are a licensed not for profit ministerial organization. When our dear mother Suzanne passed away in 2002, we began the Angels for Suzanne campaign to raise funds for her treatements for leukemia and to raise awareness about this ravaging illness. We traveled the nation with angels praying for miracles with people who visited our tables. It was the most enriching spiritual experience of our lives for my husband Cephas and me.

Please help us to share this legacy of hope and faith and miracles for Gabriel.

Angels for Gabriel.

Angels for Gabriel Memorial Foundation launched today on facebook. Please visit this site for further details. Our campaign to raise funds for little Gabriel's cemetery name plaque is top priority. We will run an online campaign to raise the $1500.00 needed to cover the cost. Afterwards, we will announce the full launch of this organization to help other families who suffer the loss of a child who cannot afford burial or funeral costs. We will be taking names for each campaign as funds are raised to cover each little one's funeral. Please visit often and help us spread hope and compassionate love to families in times of extreme grief in honor of Gabriel Jaden Coates.

Angels for Gabriel Memorial Foundation has a twitter account and we would all like to invite you to follow us at @angels4gabriel.

Watch for announcements about upcoming fund drives, spiritual blessings and insights and stories of Gabriel's life. Follow us as we take his life and the hope he gives to others through the foundation named in Gabriel Jaden Coates honor to help other families in times of grief who face this same sorrow. Losing a small child is probably one of the most grievous things that can happen to anyone. In honor of Gabriel, this foundation will offer the same moral and monetary support to other families who need an angel and cannot afford a child's funeral. This will be one purpose. Other ways the foundation can serve will be decided and noted on this blog as well as twitter.

Angels for Gabriel Memorial Foundation will carry this little boys blessings and prayers of hope to others around the nation. Please walk with us and support this effort in memory of Gabriel.

In beloved memory of Gabriel Jaden Coates, we celebrate the memories of his life while resting in the assurance that he is in God's hands as a bright immortal spirit. We have hope in knowing that we shall be together in eternity with Gabriel some day. Life is eternal and all things work according to God's will. We need only trust in Him and peace will come within.

Today we continued our fund raising efforts in a different way. We (Raven & Summer Breeze) set up an angels display using the same display method we used for our mother who died from leukemia. This display of angels with flyers and prayer books and a ledger to sign opens up dialogue with people who want to share compassion and stories.

Angels for Gabriel will inspire, console, uplift, assist in mourning and give hope to thousands across the nation as this Memorial Foundation travels the nation in honor of Gabriel Jaden Coates. May he shine brighter than the brightest stars in eternity. We love you Gabriel.

Photo Credit: Summer Breeze, a/k/a The Midnight Writer
The Spiritual Essence of Gabriel captured at the drowning site.

We wish to express our sincerest heartfelt thanks to all who gave compassionately in this cause to pay for precious Gabriel's coffin. Thank God for providing the compassionate moving on your hearts. Today, we celebrate for a few moments. Then we begin the race to complete the fund raising for the cemetery so little Gabriel can be laid to rest and his family can begin their healing process.

The Coffin is completely paid. We still need over $1500.00 for the cemetery to cover the plot and the burial. Please stay with us until this is finished. Spread the word far and wide family and friends. We need you now as much as we needed you last week.

Send paypal donations to angelsforgabriel@gmail.com and mark them Angels for Gabriel Memorial Fund.

Today is the deadline to pay for the coffin. We still need a total of $650.00 so please keep on with your fund raising efforts. Donations can be made over the phone by credit card directly to the funeral home today. After this evening, please send all donations by paypal or direct bank deposit. The remaining funds raised will go to the cemetery for plot and burial services.

The funeral services take place Wednesday, June 3, 2009 at 4:20 pm at :

Girdner Funeral Chapel
202 South Oregon Street
Yreka, California 96067
(530) 842-3434

The cemetery needs $1593.00 to cover the plot and the burial. The service in Arcata takes place on Thursday between 4-4:30pm.

Greenwood Cemetery
1757 J Street, Arcata, CA. 95901
(707) 822-1664.

Donations can be made directly to the cemetery over the phone by credit card, but the manager Charles Howard, would rather have all funds go to the Angels for Gabriel Memorial Fund for record keeping purposes. He prefers it that way although we won't discourage other donations.

HOW TO MAKE A DONATION

Hello everyone. We have good news and some news that is a little disquieting. Today is the deadline to pay for the coffin. Angels for Gabriel Memorial Fund just made a payment by paypal card to Girdner Funeral Parlor in the amount of $550.00. Thank you all for your donations and especially for your compassionate love.

Here is the breakdown on the coffin charges, as we understand them right now.

$460.00 was paid by credit card telephone payments by other benefactors who responded to our plea for help on the Angels for Gabriel Memorial Fund drive. Thank you's will be sent to all who gave and we are thinking of creating a memorial wall with names on the wall when we create the facebook account. I think that would be fitting to place the love associated with all who answered the call for young Gabriel to be laid to rest. Watch for announcement about that site. It will happen when we have a little breathing time.

That is a total paid on the coffin of $1,010.00 as of a half hour ago. It is 12:05 pm Tuesday, June 2, 2009.

That is the good news.

What is the disheartening news?

We still need $250.00 paid today by 5 pm Pacific Time. If you can, call the Girdner Funeral Home and do what you can by that deadline.

The funeral parlor gave us a little leeway on the balance still owed of $400.00. We are sweating this a little but we have not given up hope in the good graces and compassion of the people. Raven and I are still fund raising in Yreka to see what can happen. The folks at the funeral parlor are giving us a few days to pay the remaining but we want to pay it so the efforts can move to covering the burial plot and other funeral expenses. That is another $1500.00 rounded off.

Good morning all you special people who have shown your various expressions of love and compassion through words, comfort by being there or by donations for this most special cause. Gabriel is indeed a beautiful soul.

(White) Raven and I (Summer Breeze) are sitting in Yreka figuring how much needs manifested for tomorrow by the deadline quoted by the funeral home to pay the balance on the coffin. Rounded off figures without calculating any donations not in hand we estimate that we still need $800.00 just for the coffin, give or take a few dollars. We'll tabulate exact amounts in the morning because it's hard to hold my laptop while sitting in the van's front seat with it on my lap. It makes me wonder why they call it a laptop. ha ha ha

HOW TO MAKE A DONATION

The burial plot is approximately $1584.00 by the last estimate. At this time, there are no donations toward this part of the service for Gabriel because we are focusing on part one, get the coffin paid so Gabriel can be transported from Yreka to Arcata. The burial will take place on Thursday, June 4th in the Greenwood Cemetery in Arcata at 4:20 pm. I'll post address and directions tomorrow.

More photos of Gabriel arrived in my email inbox from Melissa, a friend of Woodstock's who is helping out at his house. I'll post those soon.

We're very busy running this fundraiser online and in person placing flyers all over Mount Shasta and Yreka and talking to people one on one. I spend many hours online updating, tweeting, plurking and announcing this cause on facebook and groups.

UPDATE: We are taking this Angels for Gabriel Memorial Foundation to new heights. All details will be posted after dear Gabriel is laid to rest. For now, all attention needs to be on him.

Watch for new twitter account to be announced, a facebook account, a myspace, a website, and other group links for Angels for Gabriel.

As of this morning at 10:40 am the donations total for the coffin have reached the sum of $410.00. That is still far from our goal of the needed total to pay for it by tomorrow at 5pm. The balance for the casket is at $1177.00.

NEW UPDATE: A donation of $200.00 was received this morning at the Girdner Funeral Chapel. Thank God and bless all these compassionate givers. Total needed for casket is $977.00 by tomorrow at 5pm.

We still need $1602.00 for the burial plot and cemetery fees once the coffin is paid in full. Please stay with us.

HOW TO MAKE A DONATION

We'll be handing out flyers in Yreka today so please help us reach this goal so we can concentrate on funeral arrangements. God bless you and many heartfelt thanks to all of you who have so generously given.

We'll be updating the blog later with other news.

Angels for Gabriel

Gabriel Jaden Coates, 2 1/2 after a bath.

For the love of Gabriel.

We are striving to lay him in his final resting place. Please help make that happen soon.

HOW TO MAKE A DONATION

Our efforts are going full force and we are hoping with all hope that the funds will start to roll in much faster. The total needed for the coffin at this point in time is $1417.87. We have raised $170.00 in three days so you can probably feel our anxiousness in seeing this total in donations climb.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

The amount listed above is only for the coffin. To cover the burial plot and funeral services, we have been quoted $1602. 00 to cover that part of the service. It would also be nice to have some funds for the wake so we can cover some food and flowers for the grave. There is also some printing of memorial brochures that needs to be done.

If someone wants to help us with the posters and flyers and signs that Raven and I are printing tomorrow or with the Memorial brochures, please send a donation with that notation on it. It all goes to Angels for Gabriel Memorial Fund though.

We are printing flyers to circulate around Siskiyou county in hopes to inspire some local folks here to contribute to this effort of love and compassion for Gabriel and his family. That covers Weed, Mount Shasta and Yreka, California.

Gabriel is resting at the funeral parlor in Yreka so we will be staying close to him for this effort until the service on Wednesday. Afterwards, he will be transported by his father Woodstock to McKinleyville where the burial and wake will take place. We are waiting on final date, location and instructions from Woodstock (Loren) regarding those details. As soon as we know anything, it will be posted here.

We'll continue to post updates on the fundraiser so you will know where the help is needed.

If you want to send flowers, I would suggest sending them to the final resting place so I'll post that information soon. Cards should be mailed to :

Loren David O'Connor
1829 Cliff Avenue,
McKinleyville, California 95519.

Please leave your comments on this blog to let the family know you are thinking of them. Share your loving and compassionate words for them to read because they check this blog regularly.

As always, thank you for caring.

Angels for Gabriel