It saddens me to post this. An amazing baby boy Matthew Burnham went to be with our Lord. This precious baby touched the lives of so many people! We know that he is now healed of his heart problems and is in Heaven playing with all of our Footprints Babies. We can not wait for the day when we will all be reunited with him and tell him about all the lives he changed! Please pray for the Burnham family without ceasing.
Daddy, please don't look so sad, Mama please don't cry~
Cause I am in the arms of Jesus and He sings me lullabies.
Please, try not to question God, Don't think he is unkind
Don't think He sent me to you, and then He changed his mind.
You see, I am a special child,and I'm needed up above
I'm the special gift you gave Him,the product of your love.
I'll always be there with you and watch the sky at night,
Find the brightest star that's gleaming,That's my halo's brilliant light.
You'll see me in the morning frost,that mists your window pane.
That's me in the summer showers, I'll be dancing in the rain.
When you feel a little breeze, from a gentle wind that blows
That's me, I'll be there, planting a kiss on your nose.
When you see a child playing, and your heart feels a little tug,
That's me, I'll be there,giving your heart a hug.
So Daddy, please don't look so sad,Mama don't your cry.
I'm in the arms of Jesusand He sings me lullabies.
Author~Claudette T. Allen
"Yours, O Lord, is the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty. Everything in the heavens and on earth is yours, O Lord, and this is your kingdom. We adore you as the one who is over all things." 1 Chronicles 29:11
Monday, June 23, 2008
In Memory of Matthew Burnham
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Amazing Opportunities!
The Lord continues to bless Footprints with so many amazing opportunities!
Yesterday I got a call that we were selected to participate in LWT Communications-CREATATHON. Every year LWT selects non-profit organizations and they devote a full 24 hours on September 11th for FREE creative services to each organization. We are so excited about this opportunity! To see more info. you can visit here LWT Communications
We had an article in the Montgomery Baptist Association newsletter. Please click here to read the article A big thank you to Lisa Rose for writing a great article!
We also had an article in the Alabama Baptist newspaper last week. Below is the story that was written. Jeremy Henderson did an amazing job!
"Lord, you will grant us peace; all we have accomplished is really from you." Isaiah 26:12
Montgomery Mother Leaves ‘Footprints’ in NICU
By Jeremy Henderson
Many babies admitted into the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Baptist South hospital in Montgomery – those born unexpectedly early, some even before their own baby showers – receive their first gifts from Dana Gallahair.
“Yes, I’m the bag lady,” Gallahair said, laughing.
Gallahair will knock on the door of an anxious mother’s room and she’ll hoist the gift bag (they keep getting nicer and heavier). She’ll smile, and the mom’s will smile back, and Gallahair, a registered nurse and care coordinator for the neonatal and newborn nursery, will get on with her job. The baskets make it easier, help her with introductions, but they’re not hospital issue.
They’re delivered to Gallahair whenever the need arises by her friend and former patient Kim Wilson, founder of The Footprints Ministry. Wilson, a member of Montgomery’s Heritage Baptist Church, started the ministry at Heritage in August of last year to uplift and encourage the parents of the 800 babies per year who are admitted to the NICU’s of Baptist South and Baptist East hospitals, like Wilson’s son John Parker was, the long night of Sept. 30th, 2006.
Wilson can remember everything about her personal experience with the NICU at Baptist South – all the smells, all the sights, all the scary medical terms and all the crying, from both the babies and the parents. And there, behind a glass partition, lying in an incubator was John Parker. He’d been rushed to the NICU from Jackson Hospital for emergency surgery after his lung collapsed the day after he was born by planned C-section. Even if she’d been able to be by his side, she couldn’t have kissed him because of the tube down his mouth, couldn’t have held him for the IVs in his tiny arms. Monitors and wires were everywhere. She couldn’t be with her son. She couldn’t help him.
It was, said Wilson, “indescribably overwhelming.”
John Parker was released ten days later (he is now, his mother says, a typical almost-two-year-old). That’s 240 hours, that’s 14,400 minutes. They were the longest 10 days of Kim Wilson’s life. She and husband Glenn credit the prayers of friends, family and their church, including Pastor David Grumbach, and the compassion of nurses such as Gallahair, with whom she would soon partner, with helping them see those days through.
“We wanted to stay up there every second of every day,” Wilson later wrote in the blog serving as the ministry’s website (http://nicufootprints.blogspot.com/). “I can remember those long drives [to the hospital]. Would today be the day I could hold my baby for the first time? Would he be better today? Would today be the day they would tell us we could take him home? It was such an emotional roller coaster,” a roller coaster that, through Footprints, she is determined to make less scary for others.
“[Footprints] helps cushion what many parents would describe as a nightmare,” said Gallahair, a member of Wadsworth Baptist Church, Autauga Association, where her husband Bill serves as pastor. “It can be a little bit of silver lining in what might seem like a really dark cloud.”
That silver lining comes with the gift bags – over 400 distributed to date – and with the hospital-to-home empathy of experience.
The bags are filled with the things you’d expect – baby magazines and burp cloths and gift cards to local stores and restaurants, but also things you wouldn’t, things obvious only to those who have been through it themselves, like travel necessities.
“[Travel necessities] are very important as most babies are premature and the families are not prepared [for an overnight stay] when the baby arrives,” Wilson said.
But it’s the scent blankets with the poems attached that a new mother can sleep with and then place with the baby, and the prayer request cards they can fill out and send to churches that people really seem to appreciate.
For Beth Barranco, it was the disposable cameras that came in the bag, which she gave to the nurses to capture her daughter Peyton’s first bath. Peyton came 7 weeks early and weighed less than 3lbs when she was born. Barranco couldn’t give her the bath or even be there to watch, but thanks to The Footprints Ministry, she feels like she was there.
"[Footprints] was just really great, they gave us a gift basket when we had her and Kim came and prayed with us all the time, it was so uplifting,” said Barranco, also a member of Heritage Baptist. Peyton stayed in the NICU at Baptist East for six weeks. She has been home for a month. Wilson and Co. were there to welcome her with balloons, signs and footprints cut out of poster board leading to the front door.
“Kim still continues to pray with us, I talk to her all the time, it really is a great ministry.”
And a growing one – Footprints is on the verge of securing 501(c)(3) non-profit status with the IRS and will possibly be expanding into Atlanta and even Orlando.
“I would love to be able to expand to Birmingham and Huntsville as well. I also hope to have a Footprints house one day for families to stay in while their babies are in the NICU,” Wilson said.
“I know the Lord has great things in store for this ministry,” she said. “There is such a huge need.”
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Footprints in the Fairways
We are having our 1st annual Footprints in the Fairways golf tournament on August 9th 8am at Lagoon Park in Montgomery. It will be a four man scramble. We are in need of corporate sponsors as well as golfers to play in this tournament. All proceeds will benefit the Footprints Ministry. If you are interested in playing or sponsoring please email kimcwilson1@yahoo.com or gwilson54@gmail.com With your help this is going to be an amazing event! Thanks so much for your support and prayers!
"Use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends. Then, when your earthly possessions are gone, they will welcome you to an eternal home." Luke 16:9
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Even When the Storms Come.....
The hardest thing about this ministry is when our precious babies go to be with our Amazing Lord. Last weekend I went to the funeral of precious Jackson Kenneth Carlson. I was overwhelmed with sorrow as I watched the Mommy and Daddy hold their tiny angel in their arms. His sweet sister Sophie Rose was there and placed her mermaid doll in the casket with him. Knowing that she'll never get to play with her little brother absolutely broke my heart. It was an incredibly beautiful service. Jackson was buried at Alabama Heritage in an area they call "Babyland" As I looked around it sent chills down my body. All these markers with baby's names and parents that lost their children. It was so overwhelming! It's so hard to make sense of these circumstances when the Lord takes these babies so early.
As I left the funeral home, I stopped by the gas station. I went in to grab a few things, there was a lady in front of me that was yelling at the cashier because before she started pumping gas the gage registered 11 cents. 11 cents! Is 11 cents really worth ruining this poor lady's day? I was thinking to myself I just left a funeral of a baby and a family that is overcome with grief and then I run into this lady who is upset over 11 cents. I knew the Lord was trying to show me something.
Later that night I went home, still not able to make sense of my day. I started to read in Matthew 8 where Jesus takes the disciples out on the boat. Jesus is sleeping in the back of boat when a Storm comes. The disciples run to the back of the boat and wake up Jesus to help them. Jesus says "why do you have little faith" he then says to the waves "silence, be still" This story really hit home with me. Sometimes I think, I allow the Lord to be in the back of the boat until something really bad happens and then I'm down on my knees saying Lord help me. When actually the Lord should be steering my boat. The Lord is in control of everything even the storms we face.
As I'm writing this blog this song came on, definitely not a coincidence:
Even rain falls
Even flood start rising
Even when the storm comes
I am washed by the Water
by NeedtoBreathe
My prayer is that all the time and in troubled time we can "Be still", allow the Lord to steer our boat, and have "faith" that he is in control.
Please continue to pray for the precious Carlson family as they are still coping with the loss of sweet Jackson.
Monday, June 2, 2008
One Hour-Eternal Impact
We got together Sunday and put together some Footprints Bags. We had a wonderful group of women and children that came! We also wrote cards to our Footprints families. It only took us an hour to make our footprints bags. I was thinking, that the one hour that these women spent making these bags could have an eternal impact on a family that receives one. How awesome is that? We all have such busy lives but where do we spend our time? This was a great one hour spent that will leave eternal impacts on many families. I encourage you to find something to spend your time on that will leave an eternal impression on someone's life. Thank you so much to the following women for serving in this incredible ministry!
