Conjoined twins memorial service message: Mission accomplished

Robin and Michael Hamby defied medical advice and continued the pregnancy that delivered their conjoined twins last week because they wanted their journey to be a ministry.

The Ladonia, Ala., couple publicly shared their story because they wanted the community to embrace their remarkable sons when they came home.

Thursday night's memorial service at Ladonia Baptist Church showed the Hambys accomplished both missions.

Through preaching and singing, about 150 mourners felt the power of the family's faith. And through Michael's tearful eulogy, they heard the reason he believes God gave Asa and Eli and took them away 34 hours later:

"Why did God send two beautiful angels like this, joined like they are, with one heart? Well, to soften your heart, of course, to open your eyes up, because He's not happy with the way we're treating our brothers.

"You look in the news: People fighting in Missouri; people fighting overseas. He's not happy with us. So the only way to show everyone is to send a symbol to soften your hearts."

Michael said his parents also were advised to abort the pregnancy that delivered him because he was supposed to be born without a skull.

"Standing here before y'all and telling you what God wanted, I did what my father wanted me to do, as (Asa and Eli) did what their father wanted them to do," Michael said.

He compared the conjoined twins' brief but meaningful life to a fire: God is the oxygen; the people are their fuel; and Asa and Eli were the spark.

"So, what I say to you as I end this, we've got to be good to one another and love one another, as they did," Michael said. "You have to put that word out. You have to tell everyone. I know we're just country folk, but it starts with a spark. We're the fuel, and we've got to let it run like a fire."

The Hamby family's pastor, the Rev. Tim Harris of The Verge Church in Columbus, asked aloud whether, despite the grief, "Can I praise Him through this storm?"

Then he offered an answer.

"I think I can," Harris said, "but it's only because of the faith that I've seen exhibited through this family here, the faith that they've had through this whole journey -- unfaltering faith, unwavering faith, a faith that not many people I know really have when the rubber meets the road.

" It's fun to be all spiritual and lovey-dovey at church and praise God. But when you step outside that door, what do you see? And the thing that I saw this whole time is a beautiful picture of what the Christian walk can and should look like."

Asa Gabriel Hamby and Eli Alexander Hamby were born Dec. 4 at 7:32 a.m. by cesarean section in Northside Hospital of Atlanta. Joined side-by-side, they had separate heads and spines but a shared torso and one set of arms and legs. When they were considered stabilized about five hours later, they were transferred to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston, where specialists tried to help them breathe better. The twins' two brains were trying to control three lungs and one heart with two aortas.

After their racing heart rate reached 300 beats per minute, they went into cardiac failure and were put on a ventilator. Robin was given a day pass and transported by ambulance to be with her sons. After the cardiologist said there was nothing more that could be done, Robin and Michael chose to take their boys off the ventilator. Asa and Eli lived for 45 more minutes as their parents held them and sang to them.

According to the Center for Fetal Diagnosis and Treatment at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, conjoined twins occur once in every 50,000 to 60,000 births and most are stillborn.

Statistics from the University of Maryland Medical Center are additionally daunting: 35 percent of conjoined twins survive only one day, the overall survival rate is between 5 percent and 25 percent, and female conjoined twins are three times more likely than males to be born alive.

Mark Rice, 706-576-6272. Follow Mark on Twitter@MarkRiceLE.

This story was originally published December 11, 2014 at 9:50 PM with the headline "Conjoined twins memorial service message: Mission accomplished."