Are you ready for the HUGE blog????

Well believe it or not, Jodi and I now have a little one running around our house … Just the other week Jodi and I were blessed with little Gabriella … let me tell you the story. About three Thursday mornings ago, Debbie (the YFC Director) came into our office, shut the door, and then asked if she could ask us something. “Remember a couple of weeks ago when I asked you to pray about a little girl who is having problems at home with her grandmother” she began; “Well things are getting worse and the little girl is really sick and the grandmother doesn’t want anything more to do with her. Will you consider looking after her?” Well this definitely shocked us as we were told only the week before that the grandmother didn’t want to give her up. Both Jodi and I knew it wasn’t something to take lightly and we started some hardcore praying … Well as to be expected He took control and later that afternoon (after taking her to the doctors for a check up) we started looking after “Pinky” (the name that she was being called; it is a common name for abandoned babies, even though she wasn’t abandoned). This name didn’t gel for us, as she was no longer abandoned, so we have named her Gabriella (Gabi for short).

Gabi is about 20 months old and was born in the Crisis Pregnancy Centre (a YFC ministry) by a 13 year old. Unfortunately the mother was too young to look after the baby so the Grandmother took it upon herself. My goodness it is a good thing that YFC followed up when they did. Gabriella was extremely dehydrated, malnourished and has a fungal infection on her lips, in her mouth and down her throat. She has been very poorly looked after in very poor conditions with little to no personal contact. She was so malnourished and had absolutely no energy … even being fed a bowl of porridge would make her puff and pant.

It has been amazing to see that each day Gabi has been improving dramatically. On the first day (a Thursday), she didn’t want to do anything except sleep while being held and didn’t want anything near her mouth. We were able to get a small amount of water in her mouth by syringe. On Friday we were able to get more water into her little mouth and she built up her confidence with us and began to eat yoghurt and small amounts of mealie meal with porridge. She was so badly dehydrated that it wasn’t until Friday evening that she did a number onesies (wee wee). Things are progressing really well, by Sunday Gabi was fully hydrated (I don’t think that Vic falls would pass this much water during the wet season) and she enjoys a good feed. We didn’t see any smiles or emotion on her face for the first three or four days but now it is hard to stop her from running around the house laughing and acting like an 20 month old should. Things are starting to improve for little Gabi, we are thrilled with God’s healing hand and being able to see her grow more and more confident with us both. Her infection has fully cleared up and she now only shows small signs of malnutrition.

Now is the time to show Gabi off to you all … the photo’s are in order from when we first started looking after her to just the other day … Happy viewing.