Life has continued on since my last blog, there have been babies, assignments, church, and outings.
Life in general
Not gonna lie to you I am a little fuzzy as to what happened in January, we did have a great assignment on breastfeeding which was really interesting and very informative. In December we had the assignment on fetal development, part of the assignment include Ellora and I collaborating and coming up with a teaching material. We got to use this teaching material when we went on our out reach to Bugnay, which was pretty neat.
Speaking of which you might remember Bugnay from a previous post, Ellora and spent some there shortly after we came here. Anyway there is a maternity clinic but unfortunately it has to be closed down temporarily until we get supervisors trained and renovations done/ There is a big need for this clinic as the village women have no other facility to give birth unless they manage to find a car that can drive them the hour or more drive to the hospital. Until the clinic is "rebooted" w are doing monthly day trips to do prenatal and postpartum care.
Clinic life
February saw lots of babies into the world. Last year there were only nine births in February, this year there were nineteen, a record month for February which is typically quite slow. I had a lot of patients that I watched over and it was a very busy time but also very rewarding. One such time, early in the month after the baby has been delivered I was sitting in the labor room while the mother and her new son were cuddling, she turned to me and said "thank you mam," I replied simply that she had done all the work and then she replied "yes but thank you for not leaving me." it was a really cool moment. It is moments like that, that remind me I am where I am meant to be.
There was another baby that I witnessed into the world whom was very small, 2.1 kilos to be exact which is 4.6 pounds, this is considered to be an abnormally small baby. In most hospital facilities the protocol would be to take the baby away from the mother and put him in an incubator, in some situations this is a good thing, however in other cases the best thing is to put the baby skin to skin with the mother. This is what we did. sometimes small babies can have a hard time breathing or just coping well, but as long as that baby was skin to skin with her mama she was just fine. The little baby is currently gaining weight very well.
Assignments anyone?
In January we had an assignment on breastfeeding which was super interesting, we learned so much, I did a presentation with one of the other girls where we interviewed different people about their breastfeeding experience and noted the similarities and dissimilarities. It was really neat to be able to talk to women with different backgrounds, beliefs and experiences on the matter.
February saw us working on a Nutrition and an Art assignment. The nutrition assignment was very interesting and I leaned lots, I am pretty sure I am eating more vegetables because of it. I also had a lot of fun with our Art assignment, where we got to write a short story about a fictional midwife, I set my story in 1983 Edmonton about a frontier midwife. It was a lot of fun to write. I also put together a picture video with music which represented my journey to midwifery. I got the other clinic staff and volunteers to help me with different picture poses and put it all to music. I was very happy with the result. I really liked this project because it shows how God really paved the way for me. Even though I felt like I was swimming up stream to get here, the truth is that God was very carefully placing stepping stones in front of me.
And in other news!
I was in a parade!!! Okay so I grew up watching the Mayday parade (and when i say grew up I mean I saw it like maybe three times) and I always wanted to be in a parade and my wish came true. Every year in February overlapping with Valentines day all of Kalinga (our province) celebrates Kalinga day, which is really Kalinga week because it lasts for 7 days. Anyway there are several parades that occur during the week and on the last day of the celebrations the Abundant Grace of God clinic staff and volunteers joined the procession. we all dressed in our purple scrubs with the clinic's logo and marched through Tabuk while throwing candy to the kids. It was a lot of fun, a little hot but fun nonetheless.
And speaking of Kalinga day! we deffinitly got in on some of teh fun besides just teh parade. One the first day, I went with several of the girls and Catao and I went on the ferrest weel which was really fun! we also went on the "scary train" ride, which really wasn't that scary. We ate Shawarma and hung out. On the last day of teh celibration (after the parade) we went and ate more Shawarma (shawarma is a big thing on Kalinga day and really good!!!) here is a picture of us eating Shawarma
So life continues. It is a good life, sometimes it is hard other times it is full of joy. Things that were once so foreign when I arrived a year and half now have now become familiar, like hailing a tricy or jeepney, eating rice 2-3 times a day, doing laundry by hand, maneuvering through the market place to find the best fruits and vegetables and knowing the best days to go, and delving into the world of midwifery.
a day in the clinic
Midwife power!
Thank you all so much for your continual support and prayers throughout this journey
A little money talk
So I haven't talked a lot about finances recently but I realize that I need to let you all know where I stand. I do not have enough money for my last semester, never mind my plane trip home and of course other expenses that come up. The Canadian dollar is not helping matters either. In August I will need to pay my final semester which is about $5000 US where the dollar stands now it will cost me almost $7000 Canadian. As I cannot work overseas because I am on a missionary visa not a workers visa I am dependent on donations. I also want to take this moment to thank everyone who already has been donating to me, it means so much! thank you! I also know that some of you want to donate but can't or don't feel you are in place where you can. But prayer is a huge need! for both the incoming of income and for the rise of the Canadian dollar. If you are interested in donating you can do so through several ways, if you know my mother Karen, you can give cash or cheque to her and she can deposit it into my account, you can also use the paypall account linked to this blog, or you can pay through my GoFundMe which my mother set up for me. I think you can find it under Vienna Moilliet. Again no pressure to donate its just if you feel led.
Thus ends another blog post from thesheepishmidwife
P.S. so next week is my 24th birthday and I am going to attempt to make a black forest cake, hoping and praying it goes well, yes i am praying, I believe God also cares about randoms details in our life such as black forest cakes :) I will let you know how it turns out in the next post.
Farrell for now friends!
