4/30 Update and Shameless Advertisement

With Carissa's two week birthday tomorrow what a time to reflect on how thankful we are for all of your prayers and for the merciful healing steps that our Heavenly Father has brought her through. Psalm 8 starts and ends with "O Lord, our Lord, How majestic is Thy name in all the earth!" I hope you have seen and heard of His majesty in Carissa's story. What a great chapter.

Carissa had another good day today. Do you realize that makes 14 out of 14 for an infant that was supposed to have nothing going for her and everything going against her from the time she was born? We are humbled and thankful that God has continued to answer prayer and give us what we have asked for as opposed to what we deserve.

Carissa took one feeding last night and part of one this morning from a bottle. This is a huge deal because if an infant does not start eating orally pretty early on they can have serious psychological problems with eating that usually takes months if not years to overcome. Her feeding amount is up to 29 cc's, about an ounce, at a time every three hours. They have decreased her IV supplement down to 5 cc's/hour and hope to be able to remove it in the next couple of days.

Dr. Flores, the fellow on the orange team for April, said this evening that Carissa is really at a level 2 NICU stage now and should be able to transfer from the level 3 area to the level 2 area in the next few days. The prediction before birth was that if she were to ever leave level 3 it would be after months. I sure do like God's calendar better. Carissa's platelet count decreased but at the slower pace of the last two days rather than at the alarming rate of her first few days.

So many of you have been so great about asking what you can do to help us while saying that you realize that praying is doing something. I've mentioned it before but it really is a big deal that if Carissa's story happens to come up or if you bring it up during conversation please make sure that God gets the glory for her progress. We don't want to ignore how incredible Texas Children's Hospital has been but we also want to give credit to where the source of her healing is coming from.
Please once again thank God for an amazing two weeks of watching Him doing incredible things in Carissa's life. Please also thank Him for another positive report I heard about Dante today and please keep lifting him up also.
Please pray that the transition to the new doctor and fellow and potentially to the level 2 area of NICU goes smoothly.
Please pray that Carissa's platelet count continues to stabilize.
Please pray that she will be able to continue and add to the amount of milk that she takes orally.
Please pray that Carissa will be protected from infection and any viruses floating around.
I want to put in a little plug just in case any of you don't have a regular place of worship each Sunday. Many of you know we have been part of a new church plant the last couple of years. In November we moved into a small strip center on FM2920 west of Tomball just west of Mueschke Road. Our name is LifeBridge Fellowship. We are still very small but it has been so great to see God both use LifeBridge and to bring people to be a part of us. I teach an adult Sunday morning Bible Study class that starts officially at 9:30 although often our visiting takes us a few minutes later than that. Our worship service starts at 10:45 and our pastor is in the second week of a sermon series on marriage and relationships using the movie Fireproof as part of the background. I have not been able to teach the last 3 weeks and I am chomping at the bit to start a new Bible Study series this Sunday, Answers for Life, that is going to deal with some amazing questions and topics on things such as how relevant and trustworthy the Bible really is, whether it matters what we believe as long as we believe in Jesus, how the Bible can be taken as truth when it does mention men over 900 years old but doesn't mention millions and billions of years of history like most science tells us we have, why we have suffering in the world if God is a God of love, and many other of these type questions and issues. Please feel free to join us. For this study the older students will be joining with us. I have a feeling some of Carissa's story will be popping up each Sunday as well.

Thanks again so much for all of your prayers...and please keep praying. I may stop sending daily updates just to keep from becoming annoying...or more annoying if it is too late for that...but please keep interceding for Carissa every day. I will continue to keep y'all informed of how your prayers are being answered and for additional prayer points.

Yours and His,
Terry