On Tuesday,  March, 25 Project CARE hosted The Purpose Tour featuring motivational speaker and radio personality from the Inland Empire’s 99.1 KGGI Diana Wehbe.

Project CARE is a club on campus that spreads awareness about cancer and also donates to different cancer organizations.

The event took place in LC-155 where Project CARE expected to have at least 100 people but ended up with an intimate crowd of 21 people.

Wehbe is a motivational speaker that is touring around Southern California talking to people of all ages about her experience with ovarian cancer and battling type 2 diabetes.

She started by showing an introduction video that consisted of sharing when she found out she had an ovarian cyst that was small as a walnut and in time it grew as big as a grapefruit which measured 10 centimeters.

As time went on it became cancerous, was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, was in a bad two-year relationship with her boyfriend at the time and on top of that, she was verbally abused by her boss at the time.

When she came out in front of the crowd she went in detail of how she was in the doctor’s office with her mother and her doctor gave her the news on her ovarian cyst and insisted to get it removed on the spot because it was a major concern it would get worse.

Wehbe did not know what to do, but was sure that she did not want surgery. After talking to her mother and her mother being a great support to her, she decided she was not going to have surgery and battle it with the faith of God and eating right.

On May of 2012, she became a vegan from one day to another eating organic foods and working out every single day praying she would not be tempted to go back to her bad eating habits.

After 6 months she got on her weighing scale to find out that she had not lost any weight, so, it was deceiving for her and felt like quitting.

Then she found out her weighing scale was broken and had lost 70 pounds in those 6 months and was so excited that it gave her more motivation to keep pushing and ended up losing over 90 pounds in 8 months.

Doing everything she did and overcoming a hard obstacle, she felt she did not have to continue going to the doctor because she felt that her doctor was being negative and the only choice she had was to have surgery and she felt if she had the surgery, she would’ve been dead or been on medication all her life.

“I felt like I was a just transaction to them.”

May 2013 marked the one-year anniversary of her healthy journey and says that she feels great and will not go back to the doctor. She still has her tumor and can feel it, but refuses to get any surgery, and with her faith in God she says she will overcome it.

Wehbe explained that she is not enforcing anyone not to go to the doctor. She does feel that people do need to go and get checked, get surgery or be on medication.

Students were amazed and touched by her story that some students opened up and shared their similar struggle with emotion.

Psycology major, Martha Rodriguez had shared a story of her battle and was very emotional and felt good opening up in front of everyone, “The more you talk about it, the easier it gets.”

Wehbe felt great coming back to this side of town, “I’m excited to be here. It felt like a homecoming.”

She is focusing on touring all over the nation and has her non-profit organization, “Prayer. Patience. Purpose.” that provides planting organic fruit and vegetables to people’s homes that want to be healthy and can’t afford it. On top of that she has t-shirts and her book for sale for her organization.

Psychology, child development major and vice-president of Project CARE, Austin Garrido, was happy about the event but did not expect a small crowd, “I would’ve loved more people, but, it doesn’t matter as long as she shared her story.”

Garrido also said, “I was very inspired. Loved every minute of it.”

His mother and grandmother are battling with cancer and he is focusing to spread the awareness to everyone

“No matter what, we need to be there for one another,” he said.

Project CARE meets every second Thursday of the month from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. in LA-20.