Update and Request

Update
Selah was stable through the night. We need to see some improvement and SOON! The more time that goes by, the less chance of a full recovery. We are depending on the mercy of God. The staff here is amazing. I've never seen anything like the level of concern, care and professionalism. They are as postitive as they can be, but I see in their eyes/faces and by what they don't say, that they do
not give us much hope for a full recovery. They have seen too many children/people in this situation that do not recover. I am a realist, I've seen so much heartache in life, and beiing in the ministry, I know God doesn't always answer prayers the way we may want, we live in a fallen world. But I still trust the One who has been my guide through life. I don't feel that I (as a mere mortal) can comand or demand that God do what MY will is. But I throw myself on His mercies...and I can rest in that. This morning I woke with a heavy heart and a sick stomach. I ask you to pray for the mercy of God in this situation. Pray that He will, in His grace, work a miracle. Thank you

Request
Can I ask you a favor? so many have asked "what can I do to help?" THIS is what I want. I want each of you to go to church Sunday morning and ask your church to pray for Selah. I know some of you have gotten out of the habit of church attandance and some even feel it is not necessary to go anymore, that you can worship where ever you are....but there is something special about a corprate worship service and so many praying at once. So if you want to do something for us, please do that! and ASK specificaly for your church to pray for our little girl for improvement. thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Grace Church, the church my husband pastors is having a prayer service tonight (Saturday) at 7 pm for Selah. If you live in our area, please feel free to attend!!!!! http://www.gracechurchofzephyrhills.org/ is our website and there are directions there on it.

Thank you all again from the bottome of our hearts!!

I love this song....it ministers to me I just had to listen to it tonight.....

Update

Selah has had a good day. Everything has remained stable. Her heart rate is still higher than they'd like so please pray that it will go into normal range. She has made some small advances neurologically but we have a long way to go. We have been given hope for her survival based on the fact her body has remained healthy and her organs are functionally good. Of course they can not predict where she will be neurologically. She is making small advances, she is breathing above the rate of the respirator and her eyes are responding a tiny bit.

So please pray for Selah that she will remain stable and that she will respond to stimulus. We are NOT out of the woods yet but God is listening to our prayers and showing mercy. Thank you all for holding her up before the throne of grace....God is our refuge and strength a VERY present help in trouble! He is the only God who promises to be our help in trouble and He is with us in trouble....I know He is carrying us today!

Thank you all for everything! We feel cared for and loved by so many people who are holding us up to the Father....thank you!!!!

Update

Selah's heart rate continues to be high and her blood pressure won't stay in the normal range, it goes a bit too high at times. Please pray that this will stabilize quickly! Pray that she will begin to respond on a consistent basis to the neurological tests. We are crying out to God from the depth of our beings for our precious little girl. She has been such a blessing and joy to our lives these past few months, she fit into our family like she had always been with us. We didn't have one major issue with her adjustment and we love our little LaLa. Please ask God to be merciful to our family and to heal our child. Although she has only been with us a few months, she is our child and I can't imagine life without her!

I want to thank Rochester NY for the outpouring of love. We have always loved this city and Strong's hospital since we started coming here five years ago for Sam's corneal implant and follow up visits. We were impressed with the friendliness of the city and everyone we dealt with. We have such a hig regard for Strong's hospital and for all it (and Dr Aquevella ) has done for our son in giving him sight. Now we are being cared for by the awesome staff here and just are amazed at the level of care and concern our children are getting!!! Thank you Strongs!!! And thank you Rochester for opening your hearts to our family!!!!

I have to thank the Ronald McDonald House here in Rochester that has always been a blessing to our family. They happily accommodated our two new girls this year and gave us a wonderful room. Now they have been there even in a greater way for us. We have a room in the hospital itself where we can take a shower and sleep for awhile. I can NOT say enough about the wonderful sweet spirit of the RMH, we've always felt we were so blessed by their kindness and even more so now!!

Thank you all for your prayers, we go through many emotions throughout the day. This is so hard. When we are in Sam's room and he is playing happily, our heasrts are so glad and so thankful, then we go to Selah and our hearts just long to see her back to normal! I have gone through some heartaches in life, but this morning I felt like my heart was actually breaking ...we love our sweet girl so much, it's so hard to see her like this.....

Sam is doing wonderful and is back to normal with no side affects from this. Our heart rejoices for that and we thank God but we need another miracle!!!!

Today we got to meet the main people who rescued the children, what a blessing that was to sit down with them and thank them!

I want to address some things, I guess many folks wonder why two eight year olds would be in a stroller. Both of them are very small for their age as a result of their different special needs/handicaps. Sam has Peter's Anomaly and short stature is one of the characterises of PA. Selah is very small and we do not know yet if that is because of a certain syndrome or was it malnourishment? We do not know but think it must be part of Selah's diagnosis. We have an appointment for Oct for some testing for her. Tehy both walk, but slowly and don't enjoy walking long distances. So they were enjoying a wonderful walk with their daddy when this happened.

Also my husband glanced at his phone to check the time as we were taking another family to the airport from RMH to catch thier flight home and he didn't want to be late getting back to the RMH. He was not texting as some have suggested. He really doesn't text, just really learned how a couple of weeks ago and hasn't texted since. He just simply looked at the times and in that split second, the heavy stroller began to roll. It was an accident and my husband is devastated...please pray for him as he deals with this.

We are an overly cautious family. We have kept the children in car seats although they are past the age in our state, we never have live din a house with a pool and refused to even look at them when we were in the market, we even empty the baby pool as soon as we are done with it so it doesn't sit on our patio we don't let our kids ride with teenagers, We wear seat belts and check our fire alarms and keep a fire exighuisher right by our bedroom door at night...we do everything we possibly can to keep our family safe. What I am saying if something can happen to us, it can happen to anyone...so be as careful as you can with your children!!!

And cherish the moment, every moment with your family!!! I am so sorry we didn't spend much time with Selah on her birthday. but we were at the hospital from 5:30 am to 4 pm and just had to go to bed early along with the kids who were so tired!!! We had planned on doing something special on Wednesday night but didn't get the chance.. So cherish each moment with your children. Take time for each one every day.... Love them, we are not promised tomorrow! There is NOTHING in this world more important to me than my children, and there are no other folks Id rather be with than them and my husband. Dont let any petty thing come between you and a loved one, Life is too fragile. I'm thankful that Selah knows we love her and I know she loved us and we had won her love and trust...

So again please pray for our Selah!!! So many people are praying...one friend wrote me that she knows God is hearing Selah's name continuously coming up to His throne....thank you so much for the prayers...

Urgent prayer request!!!!!!

"If you've not heard, we've had a terrible accident. Jon took Sam and Selah on a walk on the Erie Canal before lunch today. He stopped for a minute on a level surface, to check the time on his phone & the stroller rolled into the Erie Canal. Jon Clanton jumped into the canal right after them. He was able to hold the stroller up & fought against the current pulling him and the stroller down. ...He couldnt' get the kids' unhooked but was able to pull them up some and evidently got Sam's head up. Someone jumped in and took him out and Jon and another lady pulled up the stroller so they could do rescue breathing on Selah until the EMTs got there. The Erie Canal is very deep, cold, and strong currents...the sides are cement with nothing to hold to... Sam is ok, put is being kept overnight since his body temp went down to 90 degrees. At this point Selah is not expected to live...our hearts are broken. PLEASE PLEASE PRAY FOR SELAH!!! We love her so much and have loved being her parents. We are asking God for mercy! She is on life support, currently she is in a study ( the only hope they could give us) The study is to keep her temp at a certain lower than normal point with the hope that could help. But they still give us no real hope and even if she should live, they feel she won't be "Selah" anymore. Please pray that God will give us a miracle for our little girl!!!!!!!"

Update on surgery

Picutres ...
Our THREE 8 year olds...Happy Bday Selah
Sam waiting for his exam
Sarah waiting for her exam...
Sarah with 'her daddy




Quick update....
We arrived in Rochester NY on Sunday after a long but safe trip!

Sam and Sarah both had EUAs (exams under anesthesia) today.

Sam's was perfect, everything is just right, five years and one day since the implant!

Sarah's was a bit more complicated. First they couldn't do the implant today because her cornea is smaller than normal and she has to have a custom made implant to fit her eye. Also the sclera (the white of the eye) has some issues. There is concern that it may not be able to support the implant and her eye would be like a deflated tire. Also there was some strange things seen on the ultrasound of her eye near the pupil. Soooooo she will be scheduled for a MRI Wed or Thurs and based on that, they will know how to proceed.

We feel they will attempt the implant next Tuesday despite all of this. The good thing is her eye pressure is normal, the retina and optic nerve are there and in the right places and we KNOW she sees because she reaches for light up toys, up to a foot in front of her. We don't know how good the optic nerve or the retina is because they were looking at it through the cloudy cornea and on the ultrasound.

We love our Dr Aquevella and totally trust him in this decision. Please pray for him to know just what to do to help Sarah, that's his heart desire to give children sight! Pray for Sarah!

I have to admit I'm a bit shocked by this. We've felt that she saw more than Sam did before his implant and thought this would be straightforward but we trust that they are gathering all the info necessary to be prepared for the surgery.

Today was Selah's 8th Bday and we didn't spend much of the day with her but plan on doing something special for her tomorrow. She did get a dolly from us and a lion and a dolly from the Ronald McDonald House. So we now have THREE 8 year olds and think that is pretty neat:)

Sarah

Next Tuesday Sarah will be getting her corneal implant, the Boston K-Pro! It will give her sight! Now she sees light & shadows but then she she will see much clearer imagines. We don't know exactly how well she will see but based on Sam's success it should be a lot!

So today as we are getting ready to leave, my heart is filled. The first time I saw Sarah's picture I though "oh my God she looks like Sam!" and my second thought was "she needs the corneal implant surgery!" Now 9 months later, it is happening...God is good! I didn't know that first time I looked at her picture that she would become my daughter!!! But God did!!!!

So that leads me to another thought...does God just love Sarah (and Selah) more than He loves those other 150 children living in an adult mental institution in Ukraine? Does He love them (and Shad also) more than the 100 million orphans in the world that He would rescue them and give them a family??? I don't think so....

So WHY were they rescued??????

They were rescued because we swallowed our fears, swallowed our doubts, didn't listen to ALL the many reason why we should NOT go and get them. Oh we had some fears and some doubts and God KNOWS there were many reasons why we of all people should NOT go and get them ...but we went. We obeyed that small voice knowing that one day we will stand before God and give an account of our lives. Will fear, doubt & reasons why not matter on that day???? I don't think so.....

We are NOT saints, we're not trying to work our way into heaven... we don't have a great amount of patience or virtue...we're just ordinary folks living in this world who want to do all we can....

You can do the same thing we did...even if you are single there are countries that allow singles to adopt...Are you poor? LOLOLOL...we are poor in comparison to most of America, but RICH in comparison to most of the world! God provided. No we didn't have $32,000 in savings...our bank only requires $5....LOLOL The God of this Universe stepped in and made this adoption happen. He will do the same for others too...of that I have NO doubt! Are your hands full? Mine were...and are even more so but it is worth it....

I can promise you that if you trust God and step out in faith He will meet you and meet every need. If you adopt an international child you are rescuing a life that has very little hope. We are so blessed here in the USA, you have no idea. We have foster care and while that might not be a perfect system, I can assure you it is a much much better system than anything I have seen or heard of in other countries....

If you are interested in international adoption, write me, I'll be glad to help you ...

So pray for my sweet sweet Sarah! Pray that the surgery is a complete success, I have to admit I am nervous, nervous about her being put under and nervous that something will go wrong...Sam will be put under first for an exam to check his Kpro and then she will go in for the operation, all on the same day. Pray for the hospital because I am a crazy MAMA! Pray for a safe trip for all of us. Our oldest son is having some major issues and may end up with appendicitis as he has pre condition for it. He is ok to travel, but we are having to watch him closely. This is our first road trip with 5 kids, so it should be fun LOL espicially with all the medical drama thrown in!

Thank you all for your prayers for our family in the past and now as we go on this next step!