The other day I met an elderly lady in her 70s from Bugnay who explained to me how times are changing.
Old lady in Bugnay with Zion.
She said in her day, the women were strong and they would give birth in the rice fields, tie the babies to their backs and keep on working. She stated that now-a-days the women are lazy. She said that now, when the women get pregnant they stop working. I needed her to define “work” because I have never seen any Butbut sitting idly. They are always cooking, washing clothes and dishes, pounding rice and chasing after their children. According to the old lady, in her day, women worked much harder.
The next statement I asked a few times to make sure I’d translated it properly. My mouth gaped open when she informed me that she gave birth to 13 children but only three lived past their first year of life. She shared she would have been willing to have her stomach cut also if it meant more of her children would have lived. Our conversation was a reminder of our effectiveness here in Bugnay. My favorite part of the conversation was that she didn’t thank me or the other midwives but rather expressed all her gratitude to the one that deserved all the credit…Our Heavenly Father.
The truth is that our sister clinic in the village of Bugnay is the difference between life and death for many in the remote mountains of Tinglayan, Kalinga.
Have you heard the story about the baby that suddenly stopped breathing?
The parents noticed she was having difficulty breathing and by the time they brought her to the clinic she had stopped completely. The parents were about to turn around and take her home to bury her when midwife B-lyn grabbed the baby and started to resuscitate her. That baby is running around the village of Bugnay today.
How about the story of the woman who began hemorrhaging seconds after her baby was born?
If she had been at home without midwives attending her, like she had been for all of her other babies, she would have died. For this delivery she decided to come to the clinic and have trained midwives attend to her. They were able to stop the bleeding immediately. You can meet her in the village of Bugnay as she takes care of her five young children.
Did you hear about the girl who found herself pregnant and married before her sixteenth birthday?
She was scared and confused when in her eighth month of pregnancy she began having terrible headaches and dizziness. Her mother and aunties told her it was because she was lazy that her legs and face had swollen up; if she would only exercise more, she would feel better. This girl came for a check up at the clinic instead and was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia. She was referred to the closest hospital two hours away and delivered her baby via C-section. Both of their lives were saved.
Our midwives in the clinic in Bugnay are literally the difference between life and death for those living in the mountains of Upper Tinglayan.
Yet it is one of the most difficult parts of our ministry to keep going. We are challenged to keep the clinic appropriately staffed because it is such a remote area and it is a sacrifice for midwives to work so far from their families.
We are in the midst of such a struggle right now as we are down to one staff midwife and one volunteer. Neither of them trained to do deliveries without supervision.
2) We need more experienced Filipina midwives who are willing to work and live in such a the remote area until more local midwives ready to take over.
3) We need funding to build appropriate staff housing for missionaries and Filipino midwives to live nearby the clinic.
Please pray with us for these things. If you feel you want to help in a more practical way please consider helping fund Suzie Campana to be a missionary here (see her information above), or help with local midwives and staff housing by sending a donation to us specifically designated for Bugnay.
We will keep you updated on how things progress!
We finally made the long awaited move into our new clinic on February 1!
There are still lots of finishing touches to be made (ie: exterior paint, roof-deck office, terrace cover) but we are in and have already delivered three babies in the new building.
A rear-view of the clinic.
We will be having our Grand Opening and Five-Year Anniversary next Saturday February 11. At the same, Reinhard from Geshenke Der Hoffnung, Germany will be coming for a visit to see the building they have funded. We are excited to meet him and say THANK YOU!
We also had our first Well-Baby Seminar at the new facility and had 25 attendees. My good friend Joy, and RN and CPM from New Mexico, taught on what to do in emergency situations.
I will be posting pictures of our party next week!