WASHINGTON — Elian Gonzalez will have two guests from the United States at his seventh birthday party this week — one who helped save his life and another who helped return him to Cuba.

The Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, the American minister who fought to send the little shipwreck survivor back home earlier this year, says she'll be going to Wednesday's party in Elian's hometown of Cardenas.

Sam Ciancio, one of two cousins who found Elian adrift off the coast of Florida, is visiting the family now and is expected to stay for the celebration, Campbell said Friday.

It will be Campbell's first visit with the family since Elian left the United States in late June, ending a tumultuous seven-month battle by his Miami relatives to keep him from returning to the communist-ruled country.

In frequent phone calls since Elian went home, his father, Juan Miguel, has reported that the family's life is returning to normal, Campbell said.

In his latest call two weeks ago, he said he and Elian's stepmother, Nersy, are expecting another child.

"They're adding on to their house because they're going to have a new baby," said Campbell, former head of the National Council of Churches, who is writing a book about Elian's international custody saga and other foreign work she's done.

"The baby is due in April. Juan Miguel is back in his job," she said. "These are the ordinary things that people do."

It's a far cry from the boy's extraordinary past.

On Thanksgiving 1999, Elian was found adrift and lashed to an inner tube after his mother, Elisabeth Brotons, and 10 others died in the crossing from Cuba. He spent the next five months in the spotlight, cheered and adulated by Cuban exiles in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood as relatives there refused to return him and fought to get him U.S. asylum against his father's wishes.

"He still has some fears from being lost, from being adrift for two days," Campbell said. "And they are still trying to get him to talk about that.

"But now that he's back in Cuba with his mother's mother, being back in that house with her has helped him with his memories about his mother."

The 41-year-old Ciancio, a roofer and avid fisherman, supported Elian's reunion with his father, while his cousin, Donato Dalrymple, sided with Miami relatives.

While in the United States, Elian was showered with toys and gifts and photographed day and night. He regained his privacy April 22, after federal agents snatched him from Miami in a raid and whisked him to Washington, where his father, stepmother and infant half-brother, Hianny, waited for him.

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Campbell traveled to Cuba several times during the battle after being asked by Cuban church officials to help. She also was host to Elian's grandmothers when they came to the United States and unsuccessfully sought his return.

Campbell visited the family in the Washington area during the two months in which they waited for the court ruling that eventually allowed Elian to go home.

It was supposed to be a surprise, but Campbell told Friday what she's taking the boy for a birthday gift: a Polaroid camera and film.

"So many pictures were taken of him," she said, "I want him to be able to take some, too."

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