at work :)

Sudden rainfall brings refreshment.

Yesterday I spent my last day in the labour room of the hospital in India.

It was a nice calm day.. I spent it sitting by a labouring woman's bedside talking to her through signing because neither of us understood each other's languages. She did not deliver her baby during my shift so I was not able to assist, but we did have a nice day together.. laughing, and feeling her baby kick, and listening to the baby's heartbeat. It is so nice to share those moments with women as they prepare to become mothers :)

It started raining hard as we were leaving the hospital so we all got soaking wet as we ran to the street from our building - I stood by the curb trying to catch a rickshaw (transport) in the pouring rain just laughing, so happy because I love rain and laughing because I was getting SO wet due to the fact that the rickshaw drivers were being difficult with the price; I kept getting wetter as we couldn't come to an agreement.. Then finally one man agreed to a fair price to take us home - and we gratefully squished ourselves into his rickshaw dripping water everywhere!!
I snapped a couple pictures as we drove through the streets as they were quickly filling up with water that was ankle deep.

I leave India on Good Friday and will arrive in the Philippines to continue studying antenatal, labour and delivery, and postnatal care for pregnant women.
Thank you to everyone who has been praying for our team!!

I snapped this on the drive home from my last day at the hospital -
I am leaving India in two days.
Someday I hope to come back to India...

Fear of the Lord

Hello to all,

Yesterday I had a great day in the hospital -
I felt so happy being there, and being able to help.
I will miss India so much when I leave in two weeks to head to the Philippines with my team.
Being here has been a fulfillment of a long held-in-my-heart desire..
This place has been intense in so many ways, and being in the hospital has given me a clear picture of what India is like.

I attended a birth on Tuesday for a first time mother who delivered a beautiful baby boy in the early afternoon.

I cut my first episiotomy for this mom and then I did the suturing too.

Today she went home with her family and newborn son, and as I passed them all in the hall she smiled at me for the first time! I think she was so happy to be leaving the hospital!

Yesterday was an interesting day..
I was in the post-natal ward (that is where women go after they deliver) following up with the mom whose birth I had attended on Tuesday - and while I was there I noticed another woman laying on a bed in the corner of the ward near the wall..
she smiled at me and then I felt the Holy Spirit prompt me to go over and meet her; so I walked over to her bed and said "Hi".
Surprisingly she spoke very good English and started telling me immediately about the pain she was feeling. After talking with her for awhile, and reading her case notes - I decided to get permission from the doctor on duty to examine this woman more thoroughly. I was concerned that the episiotomy she had may be infected. I got permission to examine the patient and this is how I discovered that the stitches were actually loose and some were coming out; there was a gaping bit where the skin wasn't connecting. It was opening up even into the muscle. I reported this to the sister on duty in the ward who then gave me permission to bring the woman downstairs for re-suturing. I brought her down with the daima and was able to clean the wound and stitch it back together. Then I taught the mom how to clean the wound with clean salt water twice daily to prevent infection.
This experience is important to me because God helped me to find her.. in a busy room full of women, alone I would not have known that she needed immediate attention, but with God helping us, my team and I are learning that fear of the Lord is an essential principle that we must build our midwifery practice upon. Being sensitive to obey the Holy Spirit's prompting; we will be better midwives.

I am thankful that God used me to help that woman and teach me a valuable lesson about hearing His voice in the hospital. God is able to see what I cannot -

Today I checked up on the woman who needed the re-suturing and she is doing much better. She said her pain is less today and she would be going home soon. Then I got to share God's love with her in a story about the lost sheep and the Good Shepherd - who I introduced later on in the story as Jesus, God's son. I told her how much Jesus loves her, and how valuable she is to God.

Thank you all for all your prayers. God is good.

Crying with them.

It is uncomfortable to write this. But I want to share it with you, because it is real. Some days are harder than others. Some days don't call for smiling and hugging to celebrate life -

On these days, there are deep moments of connecting with strangers in desperate grasps and holding on when all you can do is cry with them.

A child of 12 years old was brought into our ward after having been attacked and raped by three men. She was so small. The police came in to get a report, sitting by her bed, asking her questions.. she lay there still, answering them without looking at them. We wanted to scoop her up into our arms and speak comfort to her. I wanted to hold her, but some family was there by her, around the bed. So we could only watch from a distance. Her hair was stiff and dirty, so were her clothes and she wore no shoes on her feet. She was wearing a green dress and gold arms bracelets.
At one point, one of the women had to carry the little girl to the toilet because she was in too much pain to walk by herself.

At the same time,
on the other side of the room a young woman laboured to give birth to her second child. Her first one had been a stillborn.

We walked over to her, where her mother was speaking to her -- encouraging her to keep going, keep pushing. We saw two feet come out first.. breech babies usually deliver themselves.
So we waited -

Then the madam (doctor) came over..
The breech wasn't delivering by itself this time. It was a little stuck. So she began to pull and coax the baby's head out. The three of us stood around the bed, clutching the mama's hands, and the grandmothers hands in ours..
Those were tense moments, of praying and waiting to see --
Then the baby came out, lifeless.
A baby girl of 28 weeks.
The grandmother wept in our arms. The mother wept on the table. They held our hands and we cried with them.

"God is near to the brokenhearted." We prayed for His comfort to draw them close together. Hope will rise -

learning an important skill

A woman tore very badly giving birth today. My teacher and I sutured together - I was able to suture 10 stitches. Then we prayed that the sutures would hold up nicely while she is healing. She gave birth to a beautiful baby boy that she named Aneel. He is her first child, she is 18 years old.

- Orissa

It is near to us, in our hearts, today

What book can transform a nation? - The answer is, the Bible.

There are certain books in the Bible that I just haven't read straight through;
books like 1 & 2 Samuel -- well, that all changed yesterday..

Maybe you have wondered what a group of midwives do with their free time while they are settling into a new country awaiting permission to work in the hospital?

We decided to read through the whole Bible together as a team!! It has been so incredible, so so so amazing!!

Starting yesterday we made small groups and took different books from the Bible to start reading. The purpose of this is to read the whole book in context and get the full story. And to read the Word out loud, which is an important part of the whole thing because hearing the Word of God does something, something radical.. like bringing revelation - and transformation, which is why I am convinced, it's living and active, sharper than any two edged sword..

I feel so grateful.

My small group read outside in the courtyard yesterday for about 4 hours. We didn't do anything else during that time - we just read. We started with the book of 1 Samuel, then 2 Samuel, and today we began reading the gospel of Matthew. Tomorrow we hope to start reading the book of Acts, which is about the early Church.

Samuel is a book about wild men. Matthew is the beautiful account of Jesus, a 14th generation descendant of the great king David ( who we just read about in Samuel ) and how Jesus brought a message to the world that had never been preached before..
love that turned the world upside down.
I am eager to get into the book of Acts tomorrow and see how the early Church lived life together.

getting the Word in my heart,
Orissa

PS. Today we made some friends on the steps of the Church where we live. The children were outside after school waiting to be picked up so we stopped to talk to them --
They said their national anthem for us in Hindi; and then I had to sing the American anthem with Bek for them! I do think we croaked as we strained to reach the high parts, but o well - it made the children laugh!
In the end we sat around with them discussing the Bible and how much Jesus loves.
It has been a full day - full and wonderful.