Real life...

Habari!

Our time feels like it is flying by here. We are officially done with our first month. I can’t get over how beautiful it is here. I think there is a different sky over Africa. Every time I am walking down the path I feel like I am walking into a picture. It is like a painted blue sky with fake fluffy white clouds. It is getting extremely hot and it isn’t even summer yet! It has been so much fun eating all the fruit here! I have learned about jack fruit and sour sap. Sour sap is my new favorite!

We finished our first week in the hospital in town. It was a world wind of emotions, situations, learning, and realizations of harsh truths. We learned a lot this week about life, midwifery, what it means to be without and the implications it causes. The hospital is moderately equipped for an undeveloped nation and is very understaffed. There is around 50-80 births a day. There are three different wards at the hospital that our school rotates through. Labor ward, pre - labor and post delivery ward, and then ICU ward (which is just post c-sections and pre - eclamptic mammas).

This past week I was in the ICU ward. It is the slowest of the three wards. There were on average around 14 patients (not including babies) in this ward with ONE nurse. I fought a lot this week with knowing what it is like to work in a hospital in America and then seeing the way they work in this hospital here. God really opened my eyes and broke through my own judgements to see the enemy at work. The people that work in this hospital are working as hard as they know how to work. The workload is overwhelming, the death rate is overwhelming, the hours of work are overwhelming, yet they still work and push forward with a patience and dedication about them that is so amazing. I was letting my own judgements and ideas about what it should be like get in the way of doing what I could do to improve the situation and loving the people like I should be. I listen to this podcast this week that said Jesus is pro-people, He is not pro everything that people do but He doesn’t let the things that He doesn’t like that they are doing get in the way with loving the people. I was letting these situations skew my view and interrupt what I am here to do. Love the people, the patients, the staff. I can’t improve things if it doesn’t come from a heart of love, my heart can’t be a heart of love if I am looking down with judgement. God broke my heart and showed me the desperation these staff are in. The amount of death that they see, and the fear that comes over them when things go wrong leaves them to attempt desperate measures to save lives.

Things by the end of the week were starting to look better. Coming in with new eyes that were clear and a change in my heart helped me serve. I can see and know that in these next two and a half months we can really be a light in this place. There are 16 students and 4 staff that make up our team. We make a scene every time we arrive at the hospital. By the end of our week, the number of prayers were starting to increase with every patient we took care of and the more questions the staff began to ask about our prayers and ask us to keep praying. God is ready to move, I think the staff are ready, and I know our team is ready. Pray for open hearts, pray for more workers, and pray for life. It may sounds crazy to pray for something so general as life but there is so much death in that place. That spirit just lives there, and I pray in these next couple of months we would see that change and replace it with the life of Jesus.

Just a little note, I haven’t delivered any babies yet. We got to observe so many before we started delivering are selfs. I am in the labor ward next week and look forward to putting into practice what we have been learning. Praise Jesus we did see healing this week, babies that were resuscitated, and moms that had so many prayers spread over them. God is good and is here!

You are blessed to be a blessing.