Last Sunday I was able to meet a very special person!!
I had received an email saying she was in the area and would be singing at a local church.
REALLY? was my first thought? How could that be?
Of all the places to go how on earth could she be here??
So Sunday Morning we ventured over to the church that they were singing at!
Where we met Gretl and Hannah and 11 of their students from Beijing that were singing in the USA!
Gretl is a very special person to us! She brought Luke to Israel to have his life saving surgery!
She took 3 months out of her life to travel with our son. She has never cared for a children before and as it turned out she was not allowed to leave his side.
It was a difficult task for this young girl but through this journey she grew in her faith and her desire to serve our Lord!
I never thought we would get this opportunity!
It was incredible.
I felt connected to her right away!
We loved hearing all about her journey to Israel with Luke and about what she is doing now!
I felt connected to her right away!
We loved hearing all about her journey to Israel with Luke and about what she is doing now!
She was able to meet our little treasures from China! I am so sorry I did not get a picture but to be quite honest we were welcomed into the church and felt very much at home! After the concert and a potluck the children were off playing!
This church also has a Chinese service on Sundays at 12:00!
The students sang beautifully and were so friendly and personable!
So here is how Gretl ended up taking Luke to Israel-
Luke was born with a heart that had only one atrium and one ventricle(among many other things). His heart was not going to be able to sustain him for long.
Luke was often short of breath and had blue lips.
If he cried for any amount of time he turned blue.
The family in charge of his foster home tried desperately to get someone to help him but the surgery was too complicated for anyone in Ch*na to do.
In the winter of 2010 Israel and Ch*na were celebrating 18 years of a stable relationship.
As a "good will" gesture Israeli Doctors went to China and preformed surgeries on 18 orphans.
The last surgery to be done was the most serious and intricate one. They choose Luke for the last surgery. Once they found out how very difficult it was going to be they tried to back out.
But the foster family would not let them- they continued to contact the Israeli Embassy and advocate for Luke!
The Israeli Embassy did not want the Doctors to back out and after 3 months they once again agreed to do the surgery. It was decided that the surgery should be done in Israel! They wanted all of the surgeries to be successful and this one was going to be very high risk.
Through prayer and fasting one miracle after another was happening!
Luke was able to get a passport and visa in record time- that just doesn't happen for an orphan in China...
Gretl happened to be between schooling and jobs and agreed to take Luke. She had no idea what she was getting into!
The next thing she knew she was on a plane to Israel!
There was a lot of testing that needed to be done before the actual surgery. Finally after a month and a half they opened him up...
Only to say "we can't do this"
The other surgeon said- "we have to"
They knew people from all over the world were fasting and praying for this orphan from China.
So they proceeded...
The surgery that was supposed to take 9-12 hours was done in 6 hours...
successfully!
Luke's recovery went well and he went home a month later!
Once we have him home we will see exactly where everything is at but for now he is doing very well!
We are so grateful to Gretl for all she did for our Luke!
We are so thankful to have had this opportunity to meet her!
We are intrigued with what she is doing now- hopefully I will share this in another post!
We are forever grateful to the foster family that has fought so hard for our son and loved him so much!
We our on our knees thankful to our mountain moving, gasp giving, awe inspiring GOD!
