Lira

Having finished the Book of Mormon last week I have returned to the Doctrine of Covenants for my reading pleasure.  In seeking His will the Church was told: "Behold, verily I say unto you, that it is my will that you should proclaim my gospel from land to land, and from city to city, yea, in those regions round about where it has not been proclaimed.  Continue in these things even unto the end, and you shall have a crown of eternal life at the right hand of my Father, who is full of grace and truth." D&C 66:5;12  I know that leaving our family and serving the people of Africa is a special blessing both for us and for our family.

We are in Lira this week.  We left on Wednesday and the road is quite nasty for a fourth of the way.  We arrived safe and sound and our hotel is nice.  Noisy!  They have a club down the street and the music plays all night.  I can sleep through it but if you wake up during the night it is tough to get back to sleep.  Sister Squire is helping teach a class "Helping Babies Breathe" here at the local hospital.  Dr Lind is here from Alpine, Utah, representing LDS Charities that pays for the materials and sponsors the event.  I get to do some of the office work and run to the places to get food and other supplies.  Fun to have different scenery for a few days.

We have had a lot of fun getting to know the Linds.  He is an OB/GYN in American Fork, Ut.  He and his wife are great and we have enjoyed getting to know them better.  We had 23 ladies in the class and 2 men.  We will start another class on Monday with another 25 participants.  We have two local doctors from Gulu, a little over an hour away, who also help with the teaching.  They get lots of work learning what to do when a baby is not breathing on its own after delivery.  This is called the "golden minute" where you take specific steps to get the baby breathing.  They practice over and over to make sure they understand and know how to work the equipment using baby Natalie.This area of Uganda has a high newborn mortality rate.  This training should help to reduce that rate.  Without resuscitation help about 1 out of 10 babies born will die or be damaged.  This should reduce this rate to 1 out of every 100 babies born.  It is a great service to these people.

Elder and Sister Hannan are the humanitarian senior couple and helped to set everything up here in Uganda.  Here they are not sure who had the car keys last...

The participants broke out into four groups with Dr Lind, Sister Squire, Dr Joyce and Dr Charles lead each training group.

One of the class members did not have anywhere for her baby so she had her sister come and take care of him during the day so she could feed him (Titus) during breaks.  Great smile!

Sister Squire never passes up a chance to hold a baby.  It helps her to find comfort where she can't hold her own grandchildren for another year. This is a baby boy.  It doesn't matter what color they put on their children.  They are just glad to have clothes.

Giving Instruction

Dr Lind

 Sister Lind

Dr Lind and the our team partner Nu-Hites talking to the local media about the class.

Here is the famous Baby Natalie that we use to train these midwives in resuscitation.

The lady in back would make labor delivery noises and then out would pop baby Natalie for the practice sessions.

You can see it was quite a large crowd.  Each is challenged to go back and teach as many as they can in the village and where they work. As we would teach, we found they had many barriers to accomplish their goals.  Often the power is out and these midwives have to deliver with their cell phone in their mouth with the torch (flashlight) on so they can see.  At least 10% of these women delivering have AIDS.  Not so great to have to put stuff in your mouth to see during this activity.  Wouldn't it be great if they could get some head lamps?  Also, they have no blankets for the babies, so they expect the women to bring their own. Some do and some don't have access to blankets. They don't have any caps or hats to put on the babies to keep them warm, which is part of the training. Keeping babies warm help them to breath better.  They don't have access to Vitamin K injections which is essential to keep all newborns from bleeding after delivery.  The midwives do the best they can with what they have, but wow...they have roadblocks along the way,

What good is training without food?  Oakley is from Kampala and traveled to Lira to cook.  The humanitarian couple gets bids for everything and then they have to sign a contract for the services.

This is Dorene, our partner representative, holding the certificate each will receive once they complete and pass the class. You would have thought we were giving them a lot of money with how giddy they were to get such a nice looking certificate.

That's right little fella, look both ways before you cross the road.

Hey mom, who are these folks?

I am always looking for the cute nurses.  I wish Nancy had those same hats!

We were able to teach Robert (40) and his family English again before we went out of town.  They have a beautiful family. You can see 2 of the 3 bunk beds with their mosquito nets. The wife is Betty (23), and the children are Sandra (9), Vanessa (7), Victoria (3) and Jr. (1)

We have to thank Jeff and Cheryce for asking Grant and Terri what would be good to take on a mission.  This book has pictures of all of our family and we use it for lots of activities.  Here we are talking about different hair styles for Robert so he can better serve his customers.

Sister Squire never goes anywhere without her shot needles.  Here are the Lira Elders and four of them got the special treatment if you know what I mean.

Yes, my mom did tell me not to play with my food.  This, however, is from other people at the table who ordered fish so technically I was not playing with MY food.  If you look close he is winking at you.

A kiss goodnight to the Talapia and then Sister Squire said no thanks the rest of the night.  Weird...

Anyone want to guess who ate what for breakfast?  Give up?  I had the nachos with guacamole and jalapenos and she had the cereal with fruit.  (I won, they were delicious!)