Going to see the hospital in REAL LIFE!

Here we go!  It looks like it is going to be a long flight!

It has been about a month since we posted anything because life has been pretty busy!  We are so thankful that we got to go to Nyankunde in the Democratic Republic of Congo with Samaritan's Purse for the dedication of the new maternity ward!  Even now, it almost seems like a dream!  The whole time Livvy & I were raising the money for the hospital, we would talk about what we thought it would look like or we would talk about it as though it was already helping people.  Little did we know, it was already helping people!  The problem is that it was in really bad shape and there were many things that were needed.  There was only one sink in the whole maternity ward and it didn't even work that great.  The roof was in terrible shape and in some places the ceiling was caving in.  There had been a lot of damage from the war.  But this is all they have in the DRC.  Even now, some of the remaining wards are still in pretty rough shape! 

The tiny brick building to the left is the old outhouse

They had to take the roof off and then redo all the walls

With some of the money we raised, they were able to add on to the hospital!

The old maternity ward had only one sink that wasn't in great shape so they dug up the floor and added plumbing

The old walls were in rough shape

When they took off the roof and gutted the building, you could see from one end to the other

This is the outside wall of the old maternity ward in Nyankunde

Dr. Cooper started to send us some pictures of the hospital being worked on in late June of this year, (2015).  It was so exciting to see that there was a real building and that it was starting to change!  At that time, we thought the pictures were all we would ever see of the hospital and we were very happy with that.  In fact, it was really hard to look at the pictures and not share them with everyone because we were so excited to just see it!  It was so amazing seeing a building getting worked on!  When we got the email from Samaritan's Purse telling us that the building was going to be finished in October and asking if we would like to go for the dedication ceremony we were so excited!  It seemed like Christmas and your birthday and every other wonderful day all rolled into one moment!

We immediately started getting things like passports, (which actually became a huge trial for getting mine!  It came right at the very last possible moment, but God did get it to us on time!)  We got a million shots to be able to travel out of the country and we started to get ready for a huge adventure!

I will write another blog post about going to the Samaritan's Purse organization in Boone, NC before we flew out to Nyankunde, but right now, let's keep going on talking about the Congo!  We took four planes to get to the DRC.  When I write about Boone, I will also try to write a little bit about Uganda.  That was also a stop on our way to the DRC.

When we landed in Nyankunde we were so excited to go see the new maternity ward!  We stopped in a missionary house to eat some food, but Livvy & I were very anxious to just go see the maternity ward!  It really was beautiful!  Compared to the other buildings, it is stunning because it is freshly painted and has a bright blue roof with solar panels on it.  There are now some private rooms, as well as 30 beds for moms who have just had babies.  There is electricity in the whole building at night now.  The doctors used to have to do deliveries by the light of their cell phone! There is a new outhouse and it has showers that work!  The old one was really run down and dilapidated because of the war and the showers in it didn't work.  There is a new operating room and the delivery room has been updated.  There are now sinks in every patient care area, which will make an enormous difference for how the doctors can care for the moms and babies because it is much easier to wash their hands between each patient!

This is the sign at the bottom of the hill that leads up to the hospital complex

This is part of the new addition to the maternity ward.  There are two private rooms for moms now

This is the new delivery room.  They can do two deliveries in here at the same time

This is the new operating room in the maternity ward!  The very first baby born in the new ward was born by emergency C-section in this room!

This is the back of the maternity ward.  There are 4 new washing sinks in the back for caregivers to wash clothes.

There are extra large sidewalks so the caregivers have a place to sit.This is me and Livvy in front of it!

Here is a better view of the hospital with the new outhouse to the left.

This is the new outhouse and shower building at the Nyankunde hospital.

That is a new sink in a little room that was renovated to become a medication room.

This is a new sink in the room where the doctors take care of the new moms.

This is one of the moms in labor

This was one of the new babies that was born while we were there.  We prayed with his mom.

We gave out cupcakes to all the new moms

This little baby was named after me.  Her name is Gabriella

Meet Gabriella.  She was the first baby born in the new maternity ward!

I am holding Gabriella and Livvy is holding a little boy named Micheli. 

This was the very best part of going to the Congo!  Livvy and I LOVED holding the new babies!  Every time we went to the ward we would hold as many of the babies as the moms would let us hold!  As we look at these pictures now, it is almost like we are a little bit homesick or something.  To think that God is saving the lives of moms and babies every day now, and that these babies will grow up to become people who could also make a difference in the world is a very exciting thought!  We love it that the missionary doctors in the DRC get to talk to the new moms about Jesus every day!  We are just very, very thankful!

Press Conference at the Muhammad Ali Center To Announce That Gabe The Cake Man and Livvy Have Raised The Money To Build or Upgrade The Hospital

Livvy & I were the main speakers at the press conference.  We thanked everyone that helped us!

October 16, 2014 was a super fun day!  The Muhammad Ali Center invited us to have a press conference at the Ali Center to announce that we had hit our goal to raise the money we needed to build or upgrade the hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since it happened because of the generous donation from someone that heard us speak at the Humanitarian Awards at the Ali Center on September 27, 2014, they wanted to help us announce it - which was so super kind of them! We got to invite anyone we wanted to so of course, we invited the children that had helped us!

Chef Dodd from Sullivan came and spoke at the Press Conference

The Ali Center helped us to invite people like Chef Dodd from Sullivan and Denise Witt from Big Idea Media Group.  The amazing thing is that four tv news channels came!  I am going to include two of the channels here so you can see what they said about the conference.  Here is the one that WHAS 11 put up.   WDRB also put up the story on their webpage. 

Livvy did a great job speaking!  This is something neither of us loves but God sure has given us a lot of it to do for Him!

We made cake to eat to celebrate after the press conference

What we loved the most is that we got to invite the children that helped us.  Some of them couldn't make it but Efrata, Katie, Blaise and his sisters Lyric and Kayia, Mia and Dr. Stucker's little girl were all there with us. My best friend, Isaac came and it felt like a party at the Ali Center!  We made cake (of course) to eat afterwards.  The Ali Center put it up on their webpage and we were so happy because not only are we done, we got to give God all the glory for this once again!  It is really such a great feeling when you have done the thing that you knew God wanted you to do and you actually saw that HE IS THE ONE THAT DID IT!  I can't really explain how happy this makes me and Livvy!

The quote says: "I always felt like I was born to do something for my people...some people have special resources inside, and when God blesses you to have more than others, you have a responsibility to use it right."  Livvy & I agree!

Woodland Baptist Craft Bazaar TODAY 10/18 from 9-1 809 Pope Lick

Livvy & I are are SO EXCITED to announce that we now have The Chick-fil-a cow coming to the Bazaar, Cheezy the Clown, several crafters - including our own Grandma, some great vendors and Livvy's American Heritage Girls group!  WE are selling concessions and now there are some AMAZING RAFFLE BASKETS!  The tickets are $1 each or 6 tickets for $5.  We have a basket from Mark's Feed Store, 4 certificates from Safari Versatile Services for pest control and termite inspections, a shopping cart cover from Gram (hers are super nice and so great for this time of year for a Christmas present for someone that just had a baby!) Avon gift basket of My Little Pony items and many other items that I haven't even seen yet but I am told are super nice!

If you still wish you had gotten a table to sell things or tell about your business we still have some great slots open!  The Woodland Baptist Church youth group students are going to do a car wash and have things to sell also.

We sure hope you will stop by to see us and give hugs because we are still so excited about having gone past our goal!  We are hoping that the sale of the concessions and raffle will help us get some medical equipment for the hospital now!

Here's the info:

Livvy & Gabe The Cake Man meet Muhammad Ali at the Ali Humanitarian Awards

Muhammad says, "I will float like a butterfly and sting like a bee!"

Wow!  Where do we start with this?  Back in June the Muhammad Ali Center had called us and asked us to be part of the Congo14 celebration.  If you remember, we spoke at their press conference when they announced that Bruno Mars was going to be the singer they were hosting.  The Ali Center asked us if we would come be a part of their annual Humanitarian Awards to be held on 10/27/14.  We said yes because we have never seen something like that and it sounded like fun to go to a banquet.  They also asked us to make a cake for their silent auction.  This would be raffled off and 1/2 of what they got for the cake would go to our project and the other half would go to the Ali Center.  We said yes for that too.  Well, this week was the week of the concert and then yesterday, was the second annual Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Awards.  Livvy and I found out that Kid President (Robbie Novak) was going to be there, so we asked if we could make him a special cake.  We also wanted to make a cake for Muhammad Ali so that when we met him, we would be able to give him a special treat.

We can't even describe how amazing it was to meet Muhammad Ali in person!

This is the cake we made to give to Muhammad Ali on September 27, 2014

They had a special table just for our cakes!

Kid President was so much fun!  He liked the cake!

As the week got closer and closer we got more nervous.  It started to seem like it was going to be hard.  My mom decided to see if we could go to Sullivan Bakery to decorate the cakes so that if we needed some help, Chef Richardson was there to help us. We were so glad we did this!  She was so helpful with smoothing the big cake and for helping us get the piping right and not turning it brown with the colors mixing too much!  Here are pictures of the cakes and the event.  It was like nothing we have ever ever ever done before!  If you click HERE you can watch our speech.  (if you watch all the way to the end you can see a really amazing video of the project the Humanitarian of the Year did).  Matt Lauer from the Today show was the MC for the evening.  It was fun to meet him.  He is the person that interviewed Dr. Brantley who lived to tell about having ebola!  Dr. Brantley is a missionary for Samaritan's Purse so that was fun to have as a common connection.

Livvy is putting on the first layer of frosting for our auction cake

Chef Richardson was giving advice about the number 1 cake for Muhammad WAVE3 was filming it

I had the edible image on the cake and was starting the piping around it

Finishing the piping.  I love the rainbow!  Chef Richardson approves!

Such a great feeling to be done!  I came up with the image and Big Idea Media Group helped make it on the computer!

We had a auction table for the silent auction and set up our display

When we got up to speak they had a picture of us up on the big screens

Here we are practicing in the afternoon before the banquet

Both Livvy and I spoke to about 750 people!

Gabe The Cake Man Baby Shower Reveal Cake

We have some friends that have been friends for so long, they seem like family.  This past week we got to be a part of a really fun baby shower!  Our friend, Jimmy Monteith and his wife, Elizabeth are expecting their first child in a couple of months.  Their mom and a couple other friends were giving them a baby shower and they asked us if we would make the cake in the color of the gender of the baby.  We told them not to tell us until right before the shower because we didn't want to accidentally reveal what the baby was if someone asked us.  Even my mom didn't want to know because her Gap Sisters are all friends of this family too and everyone wanted to know ahead of time!

Livvy was at the enrichment program she goes to on the day the cake needed to be made so I had to do it all by myself.  I chose to make it out of pound cake because then the cake would weigh about as much as the baby!  ;)  I added blue food coloring and kept trying to think of something special to do to the cake so it wasn't just ordinary cake.  I finally decided to add blueberries to the cake mix so it would have a surprise in it when they cut it!  I didn't know it at the time that I did that, but the mom and dad of the baby had already been calling the baby, "Blueberry" because when they had seen him on the ultrasound he was only the size of a blueberry!

When Livvy got home from her "school", we got to work on the frosting of the cake.  Livvy mixed all the colors and she put the raspberry filling on the middle layer of the cake.  That proved to be a challenge to get the filling to stop dripping out of the dirty-coating of frosting.  (It really isn't dirty, that is just what it is called when you put on a crumb coat).  We frosted the crumb coat with white so that no one would get a glimpse of the color of the cake in case we had a tiny spot that didn't get covered by the swirls.  I decided to go with a half-and-half look and not complicate it with anything else.  Their invitation had said, "Rifles or Ruffles, which will it be, come to the party so you can all see..." or something like that.  I did write a little note and put it on a piece of paper that I had burned the edges of.  That way, we could just take it off but people could still see the design of the pattern.

raspberry filling between the layers

Filling in some gaps between the swirls

Close-up of the swirls

Everyone was so happy to see that the cake was blue except one person.  The baby's cousin, Coraline broke out in tears because she wanted the baby to be a girl!  She stopped crying when her mom explained that the baby would still be fun to play with, just because babies are fun no matter what!  Livvy and I are super excited about the baby too because these friends come for Thanksgiving and we want to hold him and play with him too!

Almost ready to cut the cake!

And it is a BOY!

Good to the last blueberry!