Harbor Life Ministries

India is just thriving in shepherding care living with Craig and Connie McEldowney and their family in Russia, Ohio. This has been so good for both the McEldowney family and for India.

India has finished two of her three school subjects with 93 or better, and has only a bit to go in biology to finish?it should be completed next week?and is carrying a 98 in that!

She got to see her mother and brothers who came down from Chicago for a Thanksgiving visit.

She is still planning to parent and will begin ?Bootie Camp? after Christmas, per Connie?s request.

India is seeing a midwife (one who is prolife and is also adopted) from the Sidney, Ohio, area. She will deliver at Wilson Memorial Hospital in Sidney.

Gabriel James, born at 2:00 PM EST, a healthy 7 pounds, 2 ounces, 19 and three-quarters inches long. Lots of hair.

There was plenty of time. Jamie was only 4 cm dilated at 1:30 this afternoon, yet she had arrived to the hospital at 5:30 in the morning, nearly 8 hours (of labor) earlier. She had been given an epidural around noon and was trying to sleep a little through the contractions. The baby’s father, Tony, had even left the hospital.

Then the call came at 1:50 PM. It was the OB nurse on the phone. Jamie was pushing. Wow, that was fast.

It turned out that the doctor had said the baby would arrive by 2 PM. Gabriel arrived right on time.

Jamie is doing great. The adoptive mother Joelle was there for the birth, as was Tony. John Huffman, the adoption attorney, and his daughter Sarah, 18, arrived shortly after the birth. Sarah got to hold Gabriel. “I’ve never held a baby this small,” she said.

Harbor House Maternity Home’s original location in Celina is now for sale.

Built in the 1920s as a home for Dr. John Gibbons Sr., the founder of Gibbons Hospital in Celina, the home is actually connected to the hospital building by an attached garage, which, up until the closing of the hospital in 1980, was where the ambulance parked. From inside the garage you can either head east into the house or west into the hospital.

Entering the house from the garage brings you first into a small laundry room and then into the back hallway which links the kitchen/dining room with a back entrance and bedroom hallway. There’s a full bath and half bath on the first floor, three bedrooms, an office (in the front of the house directly off of the master bedroom), a room that served the maternity home as a lobby/foyer (the front door is part of the room), and a side door (that exits into the Fayette Street front drive) with a landing and stairs to the basement.

A historically unique feature of the house is found on the second floor, where at one time, during the baby boom of the 50s and 60s, you could find the delivery room, baby nursery, and maternity ward. With the large Catholic population in Mercer County, during the post-war late-1940s Gibbons Hospital had the highest birth rate per total patient count of all hospitals in the United States.

When the home was originally constructed the second story was a normal second story, but with the baby boom, Dr. Gibbons decided to rebuild his home’s second floor and connect it over the garage to the second floor of the hospital. Due to elevation differences between the house and the hospital, the connecting hallway had to be sloped to accommodate moving gurneys and carts easily between the two. Dr. Gibbons also extended the second floor to the east beyond his home, and built a medical office under it, which was dubbed the Gibbons Medical Center. Even though they shared a common floor/ceiling, the hospital portion of the remodeling had completely separate HVAC/electric/plumbing, so that the medical office could be leased or even sold to a third party.

Harbor House Maternity Home bought the old hospital building, the home and the second floor extension from Dr. Gibbons’ son, Dr. John Gibbons Jr., in 1990 on a land contract. In 2002 the adjoining-but-separate medical offices to the east, along with a free-standing carriage house turned three-bay garage behind the offices, were also purchased. Three tenants came with the property and provided income to help pay for taxes and maintenance.

One of the first upgrades to the property after the 2002 purchase was to replace the flat roof over the eastern corner office with a DuraLast(TM) 30-year roof, a $12,000 investment. Other upgrades were made over the past few years such as installing new furnaces.

Posted by Doug Eberle

Here’s how Justin Taylor concluded a post on his “Between Two Worlds” blog in which he commented on John Piper’s view that today’s U.S. election has a few “complicating factors”:

…I want to plead with fellow evangelicals to recognize that this is a watershed election with regard to abortion. Barack Obama has promised to make signing the Freedom of Choice Act his first order of business in the White House–and with a Democratic Congress, he will be able to make this happen.

The Knights of Columbus recently catalogued the many small successes achieved in the pro-life political process since 1973:

• The Hyde Amendment, which restricts federal funding for abortions;
• The federal law banning partial birth abortions, which was finally upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in April 2007;
• The ?Mexico City Policy,? which has barred the use of federal taxpayers? money to pay for abortions in other countries;
• Laws in 44 states that preserve a parental role when children under 18 seek abortions;
• Laws in 40 states that restrict late-term abortions;
• Laws in 46 states that protect the right of conscience for individual health care providers;
• Laws in 27 states that protect the right of conscience for institutions;
• Laws in 38 states that ban partial birth abortions;
• Laws in 33 states that require counseling before having an abortion;
• And laws in 16 states that provide for ultrasounds before an abortion.

With a stroke of the pen, all of these would be gone.

I am under no illusions that electing John McCain will necessarily lead to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. But I do believe that McCain would be a good pro-life president, I know that McCain would veto the radical FOCA, and I know that Obama is the most extreme pro-abortion candidate to ever run for president.

I believe evangelicals should care deeply–though not idolatrously–about this election, and that they should do what they can to stop, or at least slow, the slaughter of the innocent. Voting is one of the things you can do. I encourage you to do it, and to do so with a view toward the weakest and most defenseless members of the human race–3,700 of whom are being killed every single day in the United States.

Well said.

The results of today’s U.S. Presidential election are ultimately in God’s hands by his sovereign nature. However, I pray that God’s people see the abortion issue as superseding any of the other important issues and vote accordingly. And may God continue to receive the ultimate glory no matter who is elected.

Now just a memory, recalling the evening brings a smile. It was intimate, much more intimate than other years where 400-500 people attended.

This year, just 133 people, but that brought everyone closer, and the quality of the speaker, the sincerity of the testimony, nothing was lacking there–in fact, it was probably the best (yeah, I know, you think I say that every year) Sharing Banquet that I can remember.

The young lady, Amber, who shared her pregnancy experience and how she got the help she needed, summoned up an emotion that everyone listening felt. I knew her struggles, I knew her joy at finding someone who stood with her through the difficulties.

14-year-old Hanna shared via video (she lives in Arizona and couldn’t miss school) how she discovered she was pregnant and all the implications for her: the near-abortion that was scheduled but then reconsidered and skipped, her parents finding a maternity home along with the odd “God-sighting” when they found out there was a shepherding family from HLM right near their family, and how Hanna came to renew her walk with God through the experience. If you haven’t seen the video, you should. Hanna’s Story…

Finally, there was Jeannine Floores. Founder of Sarah’s House in California and Breath of Life Ministries in Austin, Texas. Quite a resume Jeannine has. Since I’m married to a maternity home founder, this will be familiar and boring, I thought. Ha!

Jeannine claims to be adult ADHD and I have no problem believing her.

“Why,” she queried as she began her time at the podium, “if you know Bill (Rieth, HLM board chairman) is going to tell a joke (note: she had been fore-warned of Bill’s traditional ‘groaners’), do you allow him to get up here and do this to you year after year?” Her puzzled gaze was met with a smile from Bill and an uproar from the 132 others who had “suffered” earlier from his humor.

The laughs didn’t stop there, but Jeannine was also very poignant as she related her own personal story of growing up a pastor’s daughter, getting pregnant before she was married, and how she dealt with the relational damage in both her family and her church.

Jeannine then let us know that she didn’t come to Ohio because she was paid. (This I knew already, and yes, I admit I do look for bargains in banquet speakers.)

“Tomorrow I get to meet my daughter’s parents for the first time. They live about an hour-and-a-half from here and I’ve never met the people that have raised my little girl.”