Email to Friends at 11 pm on Sat March 4

Dear Friends and Family Members,

Thank you all of your prayers and thoughts. Sonia has asked that I send you the following message. We are still at the hospital and continue to hope and pray for Rachel and Isaac to hold on. Thank you again for your love and support..

Blessings,

Jong

----------------------------------------------------------

Dear all,

First, thank you all for your heartfelt prayers. We feel so very blessed because there is such an incredible number of people praying for our Rachel, Isaac and us. Our Rachel has been so brave. Earlier this afternoon, about 84 hours after we lost the water in her membrane, her little heart is still beating strongly away at around 150 beats per minute.

Most doctors we have consulted with believe that we have little or no hope. In fact, we learned that in most cases in the U.S. as well as in Japan, the doctors would strongly recommend aborting the babies at this point so as to not risk an infection which may result in a hysterectomy for me. We feel blessed that our doctor recommended a “stay the course”
approach appreciating our need to do everything we could for our babies. Our doctor believes that I will most probably start labor within the next few days at the latest but he wants to try his best to at least save Isaac. If Rachel can be delivered without rupturing Isaac’s
membrane, there is a small chance for him.

We really like and respect our doctor, but our Lord is a God of miracles, love and compassion and He loves His little children. Therefore we continue to pray and hope for our doctor to be shocked by a miracle for our little Rachel and Isaac. We were devastated on Wednesday
but our spirits were lifted up by all the prayers from everyone praying for us. We truly believe that all of the prayers from our friends, our family, various churches in Asia and North America and support group members are making all the difference in the world.

The Lord said that there is a time to hope and a time to grieve and for now, we believe it’s a time for us to hope.

We have read some incredible stories of babies surviving very early premature rupture of membrane (PROM). We know the odds are stacked against our babies, esp. little Rachel. First of all, we have to avoid infection. Also, she does not have fluids to breathe in to grow her
lungs. But we are praying for the Lord to somehow allow fluids to accumulate for her (we read on a PROM site that someone’s baby moved into a breech position and was able to block the fluids from leaking out of the cervix with his body for a short time.) We are praying for the
Holy Spirit to fill our little Rachel and surround her so she can swim and breathe in the Holy Spirit. We are asking Rachel to be the bravest little girl on earth and to just hang in there and stay strong, if not for herself, then out of her selfless love for her brother Isaac.

Every new day we have with our babies is a miracle for us. Looking back, Jong and I wish we could have slowed down enough to cherish every day of my entire pregnancy to date this way. For now, we are taking it one day at a time with a goal to get just past next Tuesday without infection, contractions or other problems for Rachel (they will be 19 weeks on Tuesday). We will then continue to take one day at a time with the hope of getting past one week after another.

We are spending our time talking, praying and singing with our little Rachel and Isaac. We are asking the Holy Spirit to talk to them and to keep them from fear and discomfort. Our babies have already blessed us so much during the past 4 months they have been with us, esp. this past week. We are very grateful to our Lord for this gift He has already given us. We don’t know what His will is for our precious Rachel Grace and Isaac Samuel yet, but we are going to keep hoping and praying in Him.

“He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall;
But those that hope in the Lord will renew their strength.
They will rise up with wings like eagles;
They will run and not grow weary,
They will walk and not be faint.” Isaiah 40:29-31

In Him,

Sonia