Finally an elephant!

Another wonderful week right down the tube.  We are loving the adventure and the wonderful senior couples, Mission President and his wife, and of course the Elders and Sisters.  We rub shoulders with the most wonderful people and that doesn't even get to the people we meet on the street or in our everyday dealings here in Uganda.  We do get a little sad when we miss a sweet granddaughters baptism or the newest addition to our family, Talmage Jex Squire.  We are blessed on so many levels.

I have been thoughtful this week on some of the postings from the remembrance of the 9-11 tragedy.  It is sad that people will claim the lives of innocents to justify their cause.  Some have mentioned where they were or that the event caused them to reconsider their whole life and what they stood for.  It is always OK to consider where we are going with our lives and what is important.  We can change from a Conservative to a Liberal or Democrat to Republican or vice a versus but I love the one thing we never have to change is our relationship with our Father in Heaven.  He never changes and His love for us in unconditional.  None of the measures we so often use for one another really matter to Him if we are living righteously, doing good works and love Him and our neighbors.

I know we had a spirit that existed previous to our coming to mortality.  All living things exist as individual spirits and our spirit is in the likeness of our physical body (Gen 2:5).  Each and every one of us is a literal son or daughter of God.  He knows us and we know him.  We are immortal and will live with our Father in Heaven once again.  God is our Father and through his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, he has created this wonderful world on which we live.  I always feel sad when someone rejects the only way to find peace from trials and hardship.  The only way to find comfort is to keep the pathway to our Father in Heaven open with sincere prayer, reading scriptures and pondering.  The Holy Ghost will comfort and help us understand when we are humble and believing. 

God knows the end from the beginning and while we may not understand why the world seems to be out of control at times, He does.  Even in time of trials we can find peace and joy.  We never have to question God, only what we need to do to have His spirit to be with us.  We can be happy, we will have joy, and we will at some future day understand why things happen that we cannot currently understand with our limited capabilities. Never, ever stop believing there is a higher power that is watching over us with a perfect understanding of all.

President Uchtdorf summed up quite nicely that we as members of his church are not perfect but we never have to stop believing in God.  “To be perfectly frank,” Uchtdorf said, “there have been times when members or leaders in the church have simply made mistakes. There may have been things said or done that were not in harmony with our values, principles or doctrine.  God is perfect and his doctrine is pure, he said, but human beings — including church leaders — are not."

We finished the training in Lira on Wednesday afternoon and then drove to Chobe to stay overnight at this beautiful resort.  We went there for lunch only when we traveled back from Gulu after the knickers humanitarian effort.  It is still beautiful and we were able to see many animals.  What a wonderful Country Africa is.  They were able to train 58 midwives on how to resuscitate newborn babies that are not breathing at birth.  Currently 90 babies out of every 1000 deliveries die.  In the U.S., 1 baby dies out of every 2000 deliveries. This will save 90% of the babies if the principles taught, along with the equipment, are used.

This is the administration building where the training was held.

 These are the trainers: Dr Joyce, Sister Squire, Dr Charles and Dr Lind

The final speech, she did great

This was a much bigger class than the first one.  We had 8 extras attend this one.

President Chatfield was able to give final encouragement and talked about how you can't use this training for yourself.  You have to use it helping others and how wonderful that is for all of us.

Some of the class wanted a picture with Sister Squire.

This is one of the midwives preparing to do a skit in front of the class at graduation.  It was cute.

This little girl would only let me hold her if she was asleep.  I got a phone call and handed her off to Sister Lind and she was not happy to see an unfamiliar face to wake up to.

This Nun had a baby as part of the training, it was cute.

Sister Lind kept everything organized and made sure everyone received a certificate at the end of class.

Babies and hair, love it.

As we got close to the lodge we finally saw our first elephant in the wild.  This guy was close to the road and we were able to take pictures from around 20 to 30 yards away.  Part of our group was with the rangers having arrived earlier and were about 100 yards away.  They were waving at us and we thought it was to get out of their picture so we slowly moved down the road as we waved back to them.  Later we found out the ranger was telling them to get us out of there because the elephants like to ram vehicles and tip them over. 

Senior couples have it rough.  Here we are on the Nile river at sunset.

Several hippos in the water.  There are litterly tons of hippos in the water around the lodge.

 Nice huh?

Elder Wallace caught a Nile Pike a month ago when he came up for his anniversary.  He was willing to go again so here is Patrick, our guide, catching tilapia in the pond at the lodge for bait.

On the way to our fishing spot we caught our first glimpse of giraffes.  They run so gracefully.  We saw a couple of very large heards on the way.

You can see we are not fishing for a little fish here.

Getting the grass off the line for another cast.

We tried to get a picture of a hippo with its mouth open and Sister Squire finally did it.

If you hold the fish out in front of you it actually looks bigger.  Elder Wallace caught this one and it was all we got.  Next time...

Love me some gariffe pictures.

We were told the light spots are female and the dark are male.

I like this one with the Impala in front.

Almost done, here are the two events we missed this past couple of weeks.  Sweet little Ada was baptized.

Welcome to our family Talmage Jex Squire!

Love you all!

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!)