Miracle in mall where ‘dead’ toddler comes to life after shoppers drop bags and pray

Last Saturday young mother Danika van der Berg was pushing her 18-months-old toddler in a pram in a Roodepoort mall when she noticed something strange about the child’s hand and the angle of her head.

She immediately stopped and discovered the little girl’s face was blue and she was making choking sounds as she tried to cough up a sweet she had been eating.

Danika, who is pregnant with a second child, experienced the events that followed in a state of shock as she watched her daughter choke and die in front of her eyes, then saw an army of prayer warriors materialise around them, and then witnessed her little girl taking breaths and coming back to life.

In an interview yesterday she said her little girl is at home, doing well medically and cognitively although she has been showing post-trauma signs, such as nightmares. She is still undergoing various precautionary clinical tests.

She told Gateway News that a friend who accompanied her on their outing in Clearwater Mall helped her piece together some of the details of what happened that she experienced through a daze.

As soon as she stopped the pram and saw her daughter was blue and choking she picked her up. Immediately a man asked if he could help and she handed her child to him.

Her friend said at the same time, three women appeared out of nowhere and started praying.

“And then more people came — the mall is built in a circle and for the whole distance we could see people come running towards us. My friend said people threw down their shopping bags and joined in prayer. Three women also attempted CPR — mouth to mouth. They eventually gave up on that and they began to pray. A man was praying in tongues. Everyone just sank to their knees and prayed,” said Danika.

In a Facebook post Danika shared how at that time, as she looked at the lifeless body of her daughter on the ground, she had to face the awful truth that her child was dead. She heard a woman calmly asking if there was something they could use to cover the child with.

Danika said she immediately phoned her mother and told her her little girl was dead. Her husband was on a hunting trip in an area with poor phone reception so she could not reach him. She said her mother, who was at a training camp at the time, stayed calm and got a crowd of people who were listening to a talk in a hall to start praying for the “dead” child.

Friends of her mother-in-law, who were at a holiday resort at the time, immediately gathered a group of people and began to pray.

Danika also sank to the ground and lay next to her lifeless child, and prayed for her restoration.

Then the little girl started to take breaths.

“After she began to breathe again and cry they [the people kneeling in the mall] kept on praying. I absolutely believe it was only the prayer that saved her,” said Danika.

She said she immediately called her mother when the little girl started breathing. Noting the interval of time between her cell phone calls she realised her daughter had been “dead” for between six and seven minutes.

During the ambulance ride to hospital, Danika feared that her child would be brain damaged as a result of her brain being starved of oxygen for too long. But doctors who tested her said she was well and ongoing tests have been encouraging.

In her Facebook account of the mall miracle, which she posted two days after the incident, she said she was sharing the testimony in order to tell people of God’s goodness and miracle-working power, and to express deep thanks for all the people who had come to their aid and prayed during their time of crisis.

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