Thoughts and prayers needed for family

The closest ET family to us is 100 miles away, here in the Upper Peninsula. They adopted about a year after us - a sibling group of a 5 yr old girl and 8 yr old boy. We are the only two ET families in the entire Upper Peninsula. Sometime last year, they also adopted a 6 year old ET boy from a disrupted adoption. They have a large family, including about 6 bio children as well.

This family endured a long, dramatic 6 month delay in getting their daughter home (she had been dx'd with TB shortly before her scheduled departure, and wasn't allowed to leave the country with her brother). Their son came home on June 6th, 2006.

only 4 months after his arrival to the US, the older boy, David, was dx'd with leukemia. They traveled to Marshfield, WI on a regular basis for treatment. They began maintenance treatment in April, 2007. Before David was done with his maintenance phase for the leukemia, he suffered a relapse in early January, 2008.- an extremely bad sign. This drastically cut his chances for survival. Their best option for him at that point was a bone marrow transplant. After some initial difficulty finding a match, they matched with some umbilical cord blood. David had his transplant several weeks ago down at Mott Children's Hospital in Ann Arbor. He's been there since July 15th.

David is extremely sick at this point and is suffering from several complications, including internal bleeding of unknown origins. His parents take turns being constantly down there with him, and the other parent travels 8 hrs home to be with the rest of the children in the family.

Here is a link to his caringpages site: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/davidgockenbach

Please keep this family, especially David, in your prayers. This little boy has been through so much since arriving here in the US.

From the Gockenbach's website:
"The quality of our lives is transformed not only by our initial response to Christ but also by the daily answer of faith to whatever a day holds." E. Elliot

We have learned the truth that no one can tell what a day will bring forth. Please read about David's journey - and ours.