CBN Sports goes behind the excitement at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas, where Duke, Houston, Auburn, and Florida will battle it out for the 2025 NCAA Men's Final Four championship.

One-year-old Elisa was learning to walk when she accidentally fell while holding a pencil.  It pierced her left eye causing a traumatic cataract to form.  Elisa lives with her mother and brother in Guatemala.      

Her mom, Cristina, feared the worst.  “I thought she was going to go blind.” 

She took Elisa to a local clinic, which failed to diagnose the problem and sent them home.  Within a short time, Cristina knew something was wrong with her daughter’s vision.  

“I told my daughter to go pick up her socks, but she couldn’t find them. I could tell she had trouble seeing.”

This time, Cristina took Elisa to the hospital.  There the doctor diagnosed the traumatic cataract and told her mother the baby needed surgery or she would lose her sight. 

“At that moment I panicked,” Cristina told us.     

Elisa’s older brother, Axel, blamed himself for the accident because it was one of his pencils that the toddler had found.   

“I thought she would have to live her whole life with only one eye,” he confided to us.  “I hugged her and said to myself that she should not have to go through this.”  

Cristina’s work is weaving and selling traditional clothes, but the money she earns is not enough for her daughter’s surgery. 

Axel wanted to help.  “I thought about going out to work to earn money and help my mom with the cost of surgery.” 

When Operation Blessing heard about Elisa, we paid for the emergency surgery needed to repair the traumatic cataract. The surgery was successful! 

Cristina is thrilled for her daughter and ever-grateful to Operation Blessing.  

“Now she can see and play with her toys, and she can put on her shoes by herself.  Elisa also can find her clothes alone.  Thank you to the people who paid for her to receive surgery.  I thank you with all my heart!”

“At first, I didn't even know how to take it. I mean, the death of a baby...it destroyed us,” says Jacob. “When your child dies, nothing matters anymore. Everything goes away. And the only thing that mattered in that point in time was God,” says Jennilee.

Jacob and Jennilee Mire lost their baby girl, Ray, at 26 weeks. Two months later, they were pregnant again. “Obviously I was, like, riddled with fear,” says Jennilee. “But I know that fear doesn't come from the Lord. And so I really tried to lean on that. I attended a revival service and they prayed over me. And I just had a supernatural encounter with the Lord and the Holy Spirit. In that moment, it's like as if He reached down and touched me. And just parts of me began to heal. And the preacher was praying over us, and he had prophesied over her as well. So that gave me a lot of confidence, kind of, in our journey forward.”

The Mire’s renewed faith and prayer was sustaining them, then at the 20 week ultrasound they received concerning news. Jennilee remembers, “The doctor was going through, and toward the end, he began to ask me a lot of questions. And suddenly I knew something was wrong. And he told me that my cervix looked as though it was 100% effaced. The severity of the circumstance became very real to us. That if my cervix really was 100% effaced, that we were going to lose another baby.” Jacob recalled, “We were, I mean, super devastated to know that it could potentially not, you know, be born. Our child couldn't be born. We were heartbroken.” 

They prayed for God to protect their baby and then a doctor was able to close her cervix. Two weeks later, she went into labor. “Just prior to the delivery, the neonatologist had come and sat with us that day and began to explain to us what it would look like to give birth to a 23-week baby,” says Jennilee. “They basically told us that you can almost guarantee that this child could be blind. They could be deaf. They could never walk. They could never talk. They may need long-term breathing assistance or feeding tubes. They could have cerebral palsy. They may never be able to eat on their own. I mean, the issues went on and on. So, as you can imagine, we were completely filled with fear. But I knew that God had a really big plan for her.”

Madelyn was born at 23 weeks, weighing a little under one pound four ounces. Dr. Sarah Coors was her neonatologist. “To start with, 23 weeks has a high risk of mortality,” she states. “And it was during her first week of life that we found out she had severe infection and meningitis. It makes it very difficult for such small babies to survive.”

Jacob said, “Seeing my wife suffer and knowing that she just, she just delivered another baby that may not make it was hard. I just continued to give it all to God and somehow helped me get through it.” Jennilee said, “I knew that I wasn't going to lose with Jesus on my side. I began to play worship songs over her and plead the blood of Jesus over her.”

Dr. Coors adds, “I remember Madelyn's parents being at the bedside and mentioning that they were praying for her. That these results would not be to her devastation or for her bad outcome. And I just encouraged them to continue praying.”

Jacob recalls, “They did find E coli. Normally when they do that type of test and they find that, then the chances of the baby survival is basically, I mean, minimal. At that point in time, it was all family members on deck, praying, praying as much as we could. Praying life over the baby that this wasn't going to happen.” He pauses, “And lo and behold, it was gone.”

Jennilee remembers, “She stopped me and said, 'We got the results from the test back and the fluid is completely clear.' She's like, 'I don't even see any signs of the meningitis.' And I just broke down crying and I hugged her and I said, 'I've been praying.' And she said, 'I know you have and it's working, so keep doing it.'"

“We prayed, I mean, harder than we ever did. And yeah, no medical explanation, even the doctors couldn't explain it. So, it was definitely a miracle, It was a miracle,” said Jacob.

“In the preceding couple of weeks, she just started miraculously turning around. She was actually taken off the ventilator at only 18 days old,” says Jennilee. “So, she was only about 25 weeks gestational and she only weighed one pound, seven ounces. And she was breathing on her own with just a CPAP machine, which is just miraculous for a baby that small. And toward the end of her stay, her heart PDA closed on its own with no intervention.”

Dr. Coors added, “God was faithful in helping her overcome the barriers. And she was able to go home even earlier than any of us could have ever expected, well before her due date, which is quite remarkable from a medical standpoint. So, we recognize that God's hand was on her life and on this family's life. And it's such a joy to partake in watching that miracle happen.”

Jennilee smiles, “The hospital told us that she was a record, that they had never had a 23-weeker leave that early. And with no breathing tubes, no feeding tubes, really no major medical intervention throughout her stay.”

Today Madelyn is a thriving toddler with no deficits from her premature birth. “With Maddie being a miracle baby and through everything that she's been through, and to sit here and just give a testimony on it, we're super strong in our faith now,” says Jacob.

“Prior to this experience, I did pray and I believed in God, but I never really saw a lot of miracles in front of my eyes,” says Jennilee. “And so seeing this happen and knowing that it was an undeniable miracle, it just became very real to me. So, when I pray now, I know that He is real and I know that He can do whatever He says He can do, and there are no limits. And when I pray for someone, I actually believe with everything inside of me that it's going to happen, if it's in God's will.”

“I had reached a level of success I had never known in my life, and yet there was this apathy that overtook my life when it came to my work.”

At 55 years old, Steve Supe was in great shape and had a life most others would envy.
He was reading through his journal when an entry from a few months before caught his attention. In that entry was a memory from Steve’s childhood. At seven years old, he’d attempted suicide twice and didn’t know why.  

“I was very happy, super grateful, but I couldn't seem to get past why I was suicidal at the age of seven.”

Steve met with an advisor and discussed his difficult childhood. 

“My mom was the one who ruled the house with an iron fist. She would literally provoke my dad to anger to get him to beat us. She was tyrannical. It was a very abusive situation in a lot of ways.”

The two prayed and meditated, asking God for answers.

“And in that, two shadowy memories came back. One was being led down a hall by my hand as a 3-year-old child. And then the other was about the same age of where I was fighting to keep my clothes on. And so, I believe that in that moment, God showed me that I was sexually molested by my mother. 

Steve knew to move past the trauma, he had to forgive his mother, but he couldn’t reconcile the gaps in his memories.

“One of the biggest hangups I had trying to forgive was the fact that I couldn't remember everything. How can you fully forgive if you don't know what happened? I was being tormented by my inability to forgive.”

Despite the prayers of Steve, his wife and close friends, he couldn’t move past the hurt and anger.  He even worked through a book on healing abuse and wrote down the things he could remember, hoping to break the cycle.

“I was just desperately praying, ‘God, would you please help me? Would you please help me to get free from this?’ I was like, I can't remember, so, I can't fully forgive. It wasn't an unwillingness to forgive. It was a struggle of ‘How do I forgive?’”

Steve had been wrestling with this unforgiveness for five months when he went for a routine physical.

“She's checking me all out, ears, throat, all this stuff, and she starts checking my heart rate. And she's like, ‘You need to go to the emergency room right now. You're in AFib.’”

Instead of going to the ER, Steve got a second opinion and was told he should undergo a procedure to correct the problem. Even then, Steve was doubtful it would help.

“I knew it wasn’t going to work because I knew my heart wasn't healed. When I was diagnosed with AFib, I was praying and I felt like the Lord spoke to me and said, ‘Steve, I'm gonna heal your physical heart when your spiritual heart is healed.’”
Steve underwent the recommended procedure and then another a month later. But, as Steve had predicted, neither corrected the problem. 
Desperate, Steve asked his friend, Reuben, a pastor, to come and pray with him. Steve told him what he remembered about the trauma and Reuben explained that remembering everything wasn’t the key to forgiveness.

"It was like, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. God can give you the grace to forgive. And that was very freeing. He prayed over me, anointed me with oil, and he said, ‘Here's what I want you to do: I want you to go home. I want you to read it. I want you to forgive everything line by line. And then I want you to put it in the fireplace and burn it.’ And so that's what I did. It was a conscious decision to forgive my mom at that point.”
finally, a breakthrough.

“I really just felt like God met me and gave me the grace to just fully forgive and just let it go. It was a tremendous relief. I really felt a lot of release and a lot of peace.”

Afterwards, Steve spent several hours alone with God in worship and prayer. 

“The presence of God in the room was so strong, if I had opened my eyes and saw the Lord sitting there, I would've not have been surprised, because it was just so heavy in the room that night. I felt spiritually healed. I had a lot more peace. I felt free for the first time in years. And I've been in normal sinus rhythm ever since.” 
Steve is back to enjoying a good run and his heart is finally at rest.

“Now I am free of it, you know? And so, I feel like I can be a better husband, a better father, a better, a better Christian. If you're feeling guilt, shame, condemnation over things that you've gone through, horrible experiences that have happened to you, or that you have done yourself, God can forgive, and that shame doesn't need to be your master. I got free because God set me free.”