A celebration of life!

After a battle of 3 and a half years, my dear friend Ciska and her husband fell pregnant through IUI during May 2008. On 16 February 2009, Louie Auguste van Niekerk was born.


Unfortunately, his parents’ joy was short-lived, as the next day the paediatrician attending to him diagnosed a heart murmur and he was admitted to NICU. He was seen by a cardiologist who was confident that no intervention would be necessary and he was discharged from hospital on 20 February.

A tense few weeks followed in which the family undertook various trips to the paediatrician because of Louie throwing up, not drinking properly and overall just being a sick little boy. On 19 March, during yet another visit to the doctor, they were told that Louie had suffered heart failure. He was admitted to hospital immediately and later airlifted to Unitas Hospital where he would receive open heart surgery the next day. When the cardiologist informed Ciska and Frank about what the operation would entail, she told them that Louie is very weak and that there is a good chance their baby boy will not survive the surgery, words no parent should EVER have to hear! Family and friends started praying for this little guy immediately!

When I woke up on the 20th, I had an Afrikaans hymn in my head which, try as I might, I just couldn’t get out again: “Strome van seën”, which I suppose would directly translate to “Streams of blessings”. It was a cloudy day, ominous and scary, until a dear friend of ours sent through a prayer she had written for Louie, ending with “Let Your love, comfort and healing rain down today”. All of a sudden I started experiencing the rain as an incredibly tangible sign of God’s presence! (May I confess that I did absolutely NO work that day as I couldn’t concentrate at all and I spent the entire day silently praying for little Louie and his parents...)

Ciska smsed through updates as things went along: they’re waiting for the doctor, they’re preparing him for theatre etc. If memory serves, it was raining the whole time he was in theatre. At one stage, I had an incredibly foreboding feeling and all of a sudden it started really POURING down...which gave me an unbelievable sense of calm amidst the fear. Thinking back on this, I still get goosebumps. When I spoke to a mutual friend of me and Ciska later that day, I told her about my experience, also that I have a feeling that they came very close to loosing Louie at some point (hence the feeling of doom) but that God intervened in that operating theatre (hence the showering rain and the feeling of calm). She lives in Durban and went to her church during the time of the operation. It was raining in Durban... At some point during the operation she felt the same sense of foreboding, mixed with a feeling of total calm...

Words cannot describe the relief I felt when I received Ciska’s sms that Louie had made it through surgery, nor can I begin to imagine the feelings my friends experienced when they heard the doctor say those magical words! Of course the little man was by no means out of the woods, and the 48 hours following the operation was very critical. But in my heart I knew that this miracle boy was going to be just fine, that God still had BIG plans for his future.

On my way to work that morning I had been listening to a CD of Navi Redd and as I got into the car that afternoon, the last few words of a song was playing “Let it rain, rain on me”... The goosebumps where back! When I got to Shevaughn’s school, I told the headmistress how the operation went (I had the world and his wife praying for Louie!), I told her about the significance the rain held for me, the prayer Charné had written and she told me the following story: at some point, it had hailed a little bit, and after it stopped, some of the black assistants at the school took the kiddies outside to pick up some of the ice. They have a custom to eat the hail, they call it ‘healing rain’... I just cried!

On 29 November 2009, Ciska and Frank finally got to Christen their precious miracle boy. I have to admit that it was the most emotional Christening I had ever attended!


Next week Saturday, we will be having a very special party: we will be celebrating Louie’s first birthday!! I know that this past year has probably been the worst and hardest year Ciska and Frank has ever had to face, and hopefully ever will have to face. But God has blessed them with an amazing little boy, who in the first year of his life, has touched more lives that most of us will touch in an entire lifetime. Despite all the pain he has had to endure this past year, he is just the friendliest, happiest baby, forever smiling and laughing. Love you to bits, little guy!!
(Thanks to Ciska for allowing me to share their story and to show you what a gorgeous little boy she has!)