Please pray for Malachi

Hello friends and family. John Sharbaugh was one of my friends in high scool. He and his wife, Marissa, just had their 2nd child on 10/28. His name is Malachi (Chi) and he is currently at our NICU at Riley. He has been diagnosed with CHARGE syndrome. (here's a great reference if you'd like to read up on it, CHARGE syndrome or CHARGE association ) Basically, he has a genetic disorder that has caused several life threatening birth defects. One major defect involves his heart. Today, at 2 weeks old, poor Malachi is undergoing his 2nd (I believe) major surgery. Today's surgery is on his heart. John and Marissa have a strong faith in and relationship with our Heavenly Father, which is carrying them through. I can only hope that my faith would be as strong as their's if I were to face a GIANT like this!

I am putting this post on here to ask #1 for your prayer support for this family - John, Marissa, Emerson (Emma, almost 2yrs), and little Malachi. I also would like to throw out there that if any of you are able to and would like to give something tangible to this family, I know it would bless them. They are going to be at Riley until at least December. One can only imagine the stress and financial burden...to say the least...that a long hospital stay like this can cause. They are driving back and forth every day to the hospital from Plainfield (about 30 minutes). Some ideas I've come up with that would be helpful and I'm sure much appreciated are:

1. Gas cards

2. Walmart gift cards for groceries

3. Jimmy John's, Danotos, and PaPa Johns giftcards (b/c they deliver to Riley)

4. McDonald's giftcards (b/c they're in Riley)

5. Money :)

Please know that they know nothing about me posting this on here, but my heart goes out to them, and I just want to do what I can, and encourage you to do what you can, to help this young family out! If you want to donate any of these or other things to them, feel free to send them to me and I will take them to John and Marissa. If you'd rather send something in the mail to them, I can give you their address.

If you'd like to keep up w/ this family, they have a great blog (Marissa is great at updating!!) and you can just click on the "button" on the top right corner of our blog to get directly connected to their's. Thank you in advance for supporting this family in prayers and maybe more! May God bless the Sharbaugh family as they walk through this very trying time!! Thanks for listening.