Asking for Directions

Sometimes I'm so vague when I pray. "Dear God, please help me today. Please help everything go well. Please bless everyone...."

I think the pastor this morning added an extra "s" by accident, but somehow it made a big difference to me. He told us we need to remember to ask God "for directions."

Immediately a mental image appeared of someone in a car, pulling over to ask a pedestrian how to get to a destination. Well, take your first left, then your third right, go past the school, then the first right after the post office. This is pretty different than pulling up to someone and saying, should I go East or West in order to have a happy life?

God thankfully provides both direction and directions. But even if I know which direction He's leading me, I need to remember to ask God about the best route to get there. 

Sleepy Time

What I LOVE about this clinic is the way the graveyard shift is run. The theory is, if there are no vitals for 4 hours, why would 4 midwives sit around twiddling their thumbs, nodding from exhaustion?
During the night shift, if there are no labors and everyone is stable, you go to sleep. Brilliant.
Of course I still have to set my obnoxious watch alarm for every half hour or two hours, or four hours, or whatever the case may be. But everyone takes turns, so I'm generally only up a few times each night. No labors for me yet, but I have hope there will be one soon! 

First Shift

"I am praying so much that I will not have to have a Caesarean," the young woman whispered to me. "Oh I am praying that too," I told her, my heart heavy.

Transfer to a public hospital is never something we like doing. Hands down, they will get better care at Glory Reborn, but when the patient's BP is too high, or her labor has slowed down for two long, protocol gets the better of us.

After nearly half a day of a stalled labor, there was not option but a transfer. Shortly after our shift started at 10 pm, the patient, her sister, her husband, the midwife, me, and the driver, all climbed into the clinic's vehicle and we set out for one of the city hospitals. Instead of going into the front entrance, the driver took us over a bumpy road all the way around the hospital to the rear. As we drove up to the building, the light from the hospital windows illuminated a surprising scene. Remnants of construction; long beams and huge piles of rebar lined the path, and covering it all were dozens and dozens of sleeping people sprawled out or curled up on top and in between. When we stopped at the entrance to get out it seemed we had landed in a refugee camp, there were people everywhere, some sitting, most trying to sleep. Some had literally set up camp and had food and blankets. I realized that these were all the families of the patients inside. The midwife and I took our patient to the door, but we could go no further.

I felt like a betrayer as I stood fuming on the doorstep and let the poor girl go in to fend for herself. She would have to proceed through the rest of her labor without her husband or any family, without anyone to rub her back or hold her hand.

So that was that. I didn't get to see inside, but I was talking to a young nursing graduate today who was describing the inside of this city hospital. He said when he walked in to the room of 30 beds there were 3 women and their babies on each bed. For this patient population of 180, there were 8 nurses. I am too scared to do the math.

Say a prayer for strength for all those incredible nurses who continue on in their jobs, every day giving their best to their patients, despite seemingly impossible situations.

First Impressions

May, 2010. Glory Reborn is composed of a small prenatal room downstairs, and upstairs, one tiny delivery room and an equally cramped postpartum room. The labor room is smaller than my bedroom. It works; every corner was put to good use. But it's a little squishy.
May, 2012. Glory Reborn has indeed experienced some kind of rebirth. I woke up on Thursday morning in a spacious and beautiful clinic! I can't even begin to say how impressed I am with the expansion project. It is so logical, organized, and convenient. They basically expanded the clinic to include the apartment immediately behind the clinic. There are now several rooms downstairs for check in, prenatal visits, examinations, and antepartum. Upstairs, there is a much larger delivery room that can actually comfortably house two deliveries at once now. Then there is a spacious post-partum room with 4 beds, a CR (Comfort Room), and kitchen area. There is a logical flow through the clinic, and there is a place for everyone in any stage of pregnancy.

I don't have much of an eye for interior design, but even I can tell, this was a job well done. 

Dumpsite Day

I'd heard about the community that lived in the dumpsite. I was quite familiar with the ministry Glory Reborn has there. But I never ever imagined that it could be as difficult to see as it actually was.

Before we even arrived, children had jumped on the back of our van and others were running behind it. As soon as we stopped, they instantly lined up, single file directly behind the van. Some of us handed out crackers, a few doctors from Finland listened to people's chests, and antibiotics, tylenol and other drugs were given out according to need. I squatted nearby and little children came to talk. It was so lovely to be able to ask them questions in their own language. I was shocked how much I remembered from last time! As we walked along after the clinic, all the children came with us, on our backs, in our arms, holding our hands.

As we left the road and entered the dumpsite a smell so foul met my nose I could do nothing but consentrate on walking so I didn't turn around and run. I can't believe I complain about going out to empty the compost, when these people live in a place that smells worse than my compost pile. We passed a huge mountain of white paper cups. Then a similar mountian of styrefoam containers. The ground squished under my feet and if you didn't step on the tires or coconut shells or backpacks or pieces of cardboard that were laid down, you would sink right down into the black flilth.

As we passed people's homes, those fluent in our group spoke with them, and the rest of us smiled and said good afternoon. They were all very smilely and friendly. It was so bizarre that these people were LIVING here! We passed a house that looked like the leaning tower of Pisa. I felt sure if anyone so much as breathed on the second floor the entire thing would come crashing down. Most houses were only one story though, or one with a small one above it. We passed under an arch way covered in beautiful pink flowers. It seemed strange that such beauty could be found in such a place.

When we finally came out to the road again, we saw what looked like bleached sand dunes stretching into the distance. But it wasn't sand dunes, it was garbage. Children ran about on the hills closest to us, laughing, and chasing each other.

I have seen many poor places in my life. I was in a dumpsite community in India last summer. But somehow, this one filed me with the most sorrow, the most hopelessness. It is such a dreadful situation to live, to raise a family. Yet I know that there is hope. And if I think of Jesus, walking through that dumpsite, what would he do? I don't think he would start programs to get them out of there, or programs to clean up the houses, or make better paths. I don't think he would start any programs at all. I think Jesus would sit down and gather the children to him and love them. He doesn't care where people are living, he just loves them exactly the way they are. I don't even know what I could do for these people to improve their situation, but I know I can love these kids, and with the amount of love they show me, I know that will be easy.

Bumpy ride

I'm in Cebu! For those of you who are wondering how I managed to take a month to get here, I must tell you I took the scenic route and detoured through Thailand and Vietnam. Amber and I had a wonderful time, but that is another story for another place.
We have actually been trying rather hard for the last 4 days to get to Cebu from Hanoi, Vietnam. It was honestly an unsurpassably irritating experience. Our flight from Hanoi to Ho Chi Min was over 30 minutes late. We rushed to the check in counter, but there was literally NO one there! We flew around frantically trying to find somebody.  We ran with our bags past security (they were busy chatting with each other), and up to immigration. The officer was playing a game on his ipod. Trying to stay calm, we explained the situation. He didn't say anything, but very slowly got up from his chair and SHUFFLED slowly in the direction we'd come. He certainly didn't seem to have internalized the EXTREME RUSH we were in! He conversed in a relaxed manner with several people, and the end conclusion was they would NOT let us check in because we were too late. We tired whining, arguing, asking to speak to managers, tears and speaking with authority, but to no avail. They would not let us get on the plane. If only bribery were more ethical. So, one in the morning in a huge city, alone in an airport of people who really did not care to help us, we sat on the cold floor and felt prodigiously sorry for ourselves.
But by 4 am we had a nice hostel and had booked our flights for the next day.....again at 1 am.

After a full day in Ho Chi Min city, we were in plenty of time for our 1 am flight. Everything was going smoothly until the lady at the check in counter asked to see my return ticket to Canada. I had not seen or thought about my ticket since the day we left Canada. And if you have ever seen my backpack, you would realize that to find something in it is similar to trying to find a Tim Hortons in Vietnam. Impossible. But they would not let me go the the Philippines without it. So I began pulling out souveneirs, socks, underwear, clothes,  etc... and digging around my bag. Nothing. After probably 10 minutes we began to feel frantic and Amber decided to try to find internet somewhere so she could try to print another one off. Shortly after she left, I prayed I would find it, and seconds later I did. I got checked in, repacked my bag and handed it over. But Amber was not back yet. I set out in serach for her, but she was no where to be found. I began to get worried because our flight was departing soon. As the elevator opened at the end of a huge floor full of stores and green plants, I suddenly saw Amber running away from me at the very end of the long hall, and beginning to decend a flight of stairs. "Amber!!!" I screached, but she didn't hear me! I took off, running as fast as I could, but by the time I got to the stairs she was gone! I did appreciate the drama of the situation, but rather wished it was not quite SOOO soon before our flight took off. You can imagine my relief when I finally found Amber again!!
After that, we got on the flight with no hiccups and arrived in Manilla at 5 in the morning. We still had a few hours before our flight, so we had coffe, ate pizza (it really seemed the most appropriate thing to do), exchanged our money, and then hung out at our gate. We closed our eyes, but heard all the announcements every 15 seconds or so. Finally, we began to wonder why our flight had not been called. It must have been dreadfully late.
"No sorry ma'am, it is already gone. We called your names many times but you never came." No. No. No no no no no no no no  NO way. It is just NOT possible. Between the two of us, Amber and I have literally taken hundreds of flights (we actually counted), and never have we ever missed a single flight. How could we miss TWO out of THREE flights this trip????
It wasn't until several hours later when we walked into an airport convenience store and stood staring at the clock in the wall for several minutes that we realized our clocks were wrong, Manilla was one hour ahead of Vietnam, and nobody had cared to mention the fact to us.

Well the cheapest flight to Cebu was 10:40 pm that night. A solid 13 hours away. So, we made the best of  it. We tried on mascara that makes your eyelashes grow longer. We made friends with the people selling the mascara. One of them was turning 25 that day so we bought her a donut and a drink. Because it was her birthday, we sang happy birthday to her, fairly loudly and discordantly. Then because some of her family was visiting, we had lunch with them including her aunt who wanted at least one of us to marry her son.

We went and watched a movie in a nearby cinema. We chatted. We read our books. We slept. We pretended to be sleeping. We watched people. We sang little songs to ourselves.

We got to our gate hours ahead of time, set our watches, and told the staff exactly where we were sitting with strict instructions not to leave without us and to please wake us up in the unforgivable event we might be sleeping. Thank goodness we had that thought. When our flight was called, I was in such a deep sleep I woke up neither to the announcement nor to the concerned staff member shaking me. Good thing Amber is a little more easily roused than me, and the end of the story is that we made our last flight, and got to Cebu in the wee hours of the 24th. We made it to the clinic where we crashed at once in the nurses room and slept until this morning. It was certainly a journey and a half, but we're here, and that's all that matters.