Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!

Our family gives a special THANK YOU for everyone who has supported us in prayer through the delivery of our baby Eliana.

After what felt like an eternity, (extreme understatement) our midwife finally gave Tracy the go ahead to start pushing. She thought Tracy would only have to give a few good pushes and Elli would be out.  Two and a half hours later Eliana still hadn't made an appearance and because of the meconium in the amniotic fluid the situation became much more urgent.  I decided to start making phone calls for prayer.  One call was to our campus leader, Chris Toney, to ask him to have our community in Belize pray for us.                                    

       

When Eliana finally came out she wasn't moving or breathing and was whisked away by the doctors to get oxygen.  Tracy looked up at the clock and felt God tell her that people were praying for us; the time was 8:15 PM.  Later we found out that our community here had been praying and at 8:15 PM Chris had specifically asked God to let Tracy know that people were praying for her.  What an answer to his prayer!  As we sat in our little hospital room unsure of what was going to happen to our little girl, we knew that our friends and family all over the place were praying for us.  
We are so indebted to all of you!   Thank you for your diligent prayers.  We know that not only was our community here praying for us, but also our parents and family at home.  One quick text from our parents and we knew there were many prayer warriors praying for our family.  Even more, we have friends from all over the world who prayed for us, friends in Thailand, England, Portugal, Nepal, Argentina, Belize, South Africa and more that we're sure we are unaware of.  God has richly blessed us with you all and we can't begin to show our gratitude for you.  

Little did we know that as we sat in the hospital room, it would actually be the easiest day out of the next week.  We ended up staying in the ICU for one of the hardest weeks of our lives.  We experienced many emotions and fears, but in the midst of it all, we felt a peace; peace to know that God was in control.
I kept thinking of a verse that John Murphy, one of our regular speakers, references a lot in his family's incredible story:  

"We are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved." -Hebrews 10:39          
We are so blessed to know that we are just a phone call or text away from multitudes of people backing us up in prayer; for this we owe our parents a special thanks.  You have been a steady ground for us to plant our feet and fight.  Thank you everyone for joining us in this extraordinary mission of God, and please don't ever forget how much your prayers really do matter.

  

"For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh.  For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds." 

- 2 Corinthians 10:3-4

Eliana is 3 weeks old!