ALIYAH TURNS 4 TODAY!

Today our little Aliyah Grace turns 4 years old! It is amazing to think about this beautiful little life that the Lord has given to us. You see, 4 years ago today we were in Fullerton, CA at St. Jude Hospital and our beautiful little Aliyah Grace Roper was born! If I just stopped there, it would seem pretty normal (could the birth of any baby be normal - it is always a miracle!), but the story definitely does not stop there! You see, when Aliyah was first born the nurses that were the first ones to take care of her noticed immediately that something was wrong. At first, we didn't notice anything different, but when one nurse came in the room, and then another, and then another, we could tell that something was wrong. The nurses and the doctor that delivered Aliyah were very professional about the whole thing (calm, cool, and collective). There was one that immediately began to encourage Rebecca and I and another one that really began to take over the details with Aliyah. I remember seeing her stick a little tube down Aliyah's throat and pumping air into her lungs. It was quite amazing watching so much commotion all going on at once, but how reassuring it was to hear one nurse say to the head nurse that there was now a steady heart beat and that things were getting better. So what happened? What went wrong? Well, 5 minutes before Aliyah came from the womb, the placenta had burst and for the last 5 minutes there was no oxygen or blood getting to Aliyah! Once we learned that had taken place, we were so thankful that the Lord had given Rebecca a very fast delivery! Had it been any longer ... well, we will not go there.
Aliyah was immediately taken to the ICU there in the hospital and we were not allowed to go see here until about 6-8 hours later. Aliyah was born a little bit after 2:00 am on Saturday, October 28, 2006.
After some things had calmed down, I (Joey) went outside of the hospital and although it was really early in the morning, began to make the phone calls to family, friends, and to a few of our pastors at CC Chino Hills and asked them all to get Aliyah on the Prayer Chain and to begin to pray for her.

The rest of the story is pretty long, but I am going to just sum it up! Starting that morning and going over the whole weekend there were literally thousands of people around the world praying for Aliyah from many different churches and we do believe that on that following morning, around 10:30am the Lord began to put His healing hand upon Aliyah. You see, Pastor Jack from CCCH had prayed with the 2nd service on that Sunday morning and had asked the Lord, by faith, to do "something" that would be noticeable to demonstrate God's healing power. Well, the LORD did just that! It was at about the same time that Aliyah was taken from the breathing machine that she was hooked up to and was starting to breath on her own!

4 days later we were able to take Aliyah home with us! She was truly a miracle! In fact, when we went back to the hospital just one week later for a check up, all of the nurses began to share with us all kinds of stories and declared to us how Aliyah was truly a miracle and how they had never seen a little baby that was in her condition from birth, leave the hospital so quickly, completely healthy!

So here we are four years later and she is celebrating her birthday with all of her friends in her kindergarten class here in Herborn, Germany! We love this precious little girl! She is so full of life, joy, spunk, creativity (especially with her clothing), and so much more!

Thank you Jesus for Aliyah Grace!

Happy Birthday to our little girl!