IOWA FALLS, Ia. — Kyle and Pam Christensen reacted to seeing a presidential candidate at their front door on Sunday morning with muted surprise.

“Oh my gosh, there’s Andrew Yang himself,” Kyle Christensen, 41, said quietly from his mom’s living room couch.

“Oh, yes,” his mother, Pam Christensen, 63, said as she reached for her coffee cup.

Yang had come to deliver good news: He and his campaign had chosen Kyle to receive $1,000 a month for the next 12 months.

The payments are part of Yang’s attempt to demonstrate how his campaign’s central theme — that the federal government should guarantee every American adult a "Universal Basic Income" of $1,000 a month — would change lives.

“Oh, thank you,” Pam said, clapping and grabbing Yang’s hands to slowly stand for a hug with one of dozens of Democrats hoping to challenge Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

“Thank you for letting us have a chance to help,” Yang responded.

The Christensen family is the second family Yang has chosen to sponsor. Yang started a similar relationship with the Fassi family of Goffstown, New Hampshire, back in January. And he hopes to find families in South Carolina and Nevada to award similar gifts to, too.

► More: Andrew Yang's presidential campaign neglected to disclose his $1,000 gifts to a New Hampshire family

Kyle Christensen had originally applied for the gift, which Yang announced last month he would be awarding, on behalf of his mother. But Yang and his team decided that Kyle, who moved home two years ago when his mother was diagnosed with cancer, should receive it instead.

In 2016, Kyle Christensen, a musician and IT professional, received the call that his mother was in an ambulance as he was about to work a Slipknot and Marilyn Manson concert at Wells Fargo Arena in downtown Des Moines.

Not long after, Pam Christensen was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer in her white blood cells that accumulates in bone marrow. Thanks to a stem cell transplant, she’s now in remission. But she’s in need of a kidney transplant and a hip replacement because of the toll the cancer and her treatments have taken on her body.

Kyle Christensen says he’s hoping to donate one of his kidneys to his mother once she's strong enough to receive it.

When Pam Christensen got sick, she was working as a personal aid to clients with mental and physical disabilities. She was let go from her job as a result of her illness.

"I wasn’t dependable, and they need someone dependable," she told the Register.

► Never miss a beat! Get the latest political news out of Iowa delivered to your inbox: Subscribe to our free politics newsletter.

► And support our work: Subscribe to the Register today.

Kyle Christensen moved home when his mother got sick and sold off his music studio equipment and instruments to help pay the bills. He's given up his music studio and now picks up music, IT and auto body work when he can.

Most of Pam Christensen’s medical expenses are covered through her COBRA heath insurance and Medicaid. If it weren’t for the insurance, she said the three chemotherapy pills she takes every month would cost $10,000 a month.

To help cover the bills, Kyle appealed for donations online two years ago with the goal of raising $10,000, but the effort bore out just over $2,500.

Yang's payments will kick in next month.

The Christensens told the candidate they plan to use the money to pay off some of their outstanding medical bills and to do some home repairs.

“I’d like to think that I’d do what you are doing — taking care of your mom — but we can never really know what we would do in your situation,” Yang told Kyle Christensen on Sunday.

“He’s put his life on hold for me,” Pam Christensen said.

“This is his life,” Yang replied. “He’s not putting his life on hold because this is his life.”