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In The Pink Alice Band: A Journey of Faith, Resilience and Miracles, Daniella Kafouris shares the gripping story of how her family grappled with her young daughter’s cancer diagnosis. Facing their crushing reality with firm faith, she and her husband Mike clung to prayer through interminable months in the hospital beside their beloved Maria.

In the Introduction, Daniella writes, “This is not only Maria’s story. It is not only my story. It is a story of victory in Christ. If He could meet us in our darkest valley and carry us through, then I believe He can do the same for you.”

Childhood: From Zambia to South Africa

Daniella begins the book with a vivid description of her idyllic childhood in Zambia, growing up on her parents’ farm with her beloved pack of pet dogs. Her experience of Africa’s natural beauty, especially the peaceful sensations of the falling rain, laid the foundation for her relationship with God.

She relates the trauma of being sent away to school in South Africa at the tender age of six, “a familiar, painful rite of passage”, a sacrifice for a good education. Staying with her strict Greek grandmother and friendly Uncle Dimitri, Daniella wrestled with homesickness.

This continued to boarding school in Johannesburg. Daniella reminisces about waiting for her turn each Wednesday to speak with her mother on the payphone: “The value of hearing your mother’s voice when you need comfort is a treasure held dearly in a child’s heart.”

Love, Marriage and Forays in Faith

Daniella recounts her plunge into university life in post-apartheid Johannesburg, reading law at the Rand Afrikaans University. She reminisces about how she met her husband and fell in love, marrying in Mike’s Greek Orthodox parish where he had served as an altar boy in his childhood.

As they welcomed their two children, Maria and Yianni, into the world, Daniella and Mike were surrounded by a wonderful support network: “It was deeply comforting to know that no matter how tough things got, we had our tribe standing firmly by our side.”

Then came the massive blow that Maria had leukemia. Through their three-year tussle with illness and close brushes with death, the family entered into a deeper faith, discarding idols as they learned from Daniella’s sister Natali and her husband Niko to read Scripture in Greek and Hebrew, and to lean completely on God’s Word when everything in their world seemed to be falling apart.

Not only that, they were able to minister to other children in the ward, with Niko’s and Natali’s fervent prayers bringing about miraculous healings when all hope seemed lost.

Triumph of the Cross

Daniella declares: “When you truly understand what Jesus accomplished on the cross, when you realise that the same Holy Spirit who raised Christ from the dead now lives inside of you, you discover a strength you never knew you possessed. You become unstoppable.”

Written with humour and joy in the early chapters, and gut-wrenching honesty in the following account of their battle with cancer, this book is a marvellous testimony to a family’s faith forged by the fires of suffering.

At 159 pages, it is an easy read filled with spiritual gems, with a practical spiritual guide at the end encouraging readers to stand on God’s Word, speak life into situations, and claim our salvation and victory in Jesus Christ. A beautiful gift to yourself or a friend; an uplifting reminder of how the Holy Spirit continues to heal and redeem ordinary families faced with the vicissitudes of life.