Heartbreak for a Miracle Baby!!

 It's been a while since I have updated on Ashli and Restoration Orphanage in Ethiopia. For those of you who have supported the orphanage and Ashli's brave endeavors to bring the children back to health, you would be so thrilled. The kids look great! They are happy and the orphanage looks like a completely different place, thanks to your support. You TRULY have, and continue to make, a life changing difference in the children's lives.

Please keep Ashli in your prayers. She is brave, and cares for the children with her whole heart. She takes on more than many of us can ever imagine. Tonight's message from her is a perfect example. Earlier in the week I received a message from her that read....

"Also be prayin for a new baby. I named him Levi. He is so tiny and malnourished! He was found in Wolyta with hiennas!!!! I will elaborate later but he is a MIRACLE!!!!" 

I mean, can you even imagine??!! When I read that I just struggled to wrap my mind around this life that she lives and the things that she sees every day.
 I read another message tonight that just broke my heart.



"Lastly......the baby with the hiennas, I named him Levi. He got really sick and was on hard core meds! He needed one on one care! Needless to say he was so uncomfortable on Sat night and Sun morn and was struggling to cry. He had dark circles under his eyes and looked horrible. I was taking him to the Dr again Sun morn. At 4:14am I tried to feed him and he wouldnt take a bottle. I held him and sang Jesus Loves Me until about 4:40am. At 4:45am I was holding him and he was making the weirdest faces. As I stared at him I saw the look of panic in his face. I woke someone up and said, "Call the Driver and tell him to come NOW, Levi is gonna die!" At 5am he died in my arms. I ran and got Whitney and she and I did CPR on him but he was gone. Oh Kelly, this may have been the hardest thing Ive ever experienced in my life! Although he was already gone I didnt know what to do other than take him to a hospital so they could officially pronounce him dead. I held his cold stiff body in my arms as 4 hosptials turned us down. As I held him he was secreeting formula from his nose and mouth. His body was completely shutting down and it was making noises. I kissed his cold face and lips and wiped the milk from his cheeks as I soaked the blanket that was wrapped around him with tears. 4 HRS LATER, and the 5th hospita,l I lost it and said," I am carrying around a dead baby and no one wants to help me, what kind of place is this?" They wrote a death certificate and we went and bought a casket and burried him a few hrs later! Its all just like a dream! Im so numb! I laid him in that casket and put a blanket over his beautiful face and lost it!!! He came so far and then didnt make it, but then I realized yes, because he is in heaven now and Jesus is holding him and he is playing and HEALTHY and happy. The outfit he died in said DADDYS TEAM!! :) He is with his Daddy now. I am trying to just accept that I did what I could do but its so hard. 

None of us know what it is like to truly live out love like this unless we simply have lived it, seen it, held it. Once you look into the children's eyes, give them a name, see hope in their faces.....then you know....you know you have to do something.  

Ashli's mother wrote a note tonight about her daughter's experience. I thought it was beautifully put....

Tiny Child Without A Name
Would you weep for me...tiny child without a name,
Born in deepest sorrow, hidden out of shame.
Left alone in darkest night, child without a prayer,
Abandoned in the shadows, does anybody care? 

 Can you hear me crying? Terror fills the night.
Only heaven knows if I will wake with morning's light.
Will you come and find me, hold me in your arms?
Snatch me out of danger, deliver me from harm?

At last someone has heard me, now I am not alone.
She holds me close and loves me, and takes me home.
An angel on this earth I found for just a few short days
She prayed me into heaven, and dried my tears away.

Would you weep for me, a life so briefly lived?
Tiny child without a name with so much love to give?

The children pictured with her on this post are NOT the baby mentioned in this post. Please keep this brave girl and those she blesses in your prayers.