James was brought to Amecet after his mother passed away. During the pregnancy the mother had been sickly and the delivery was too early. Around 6 weeks early. The baby was born, but then suddenly the mother started to bleed and died..... James was very small, weighing only 1,6 kg, he was at risk, so the family brought James to Amecet. That was one week ago. We laid James in the medical room, with the windows and door closed it is a warm room. We took him to the doctor next door and James was put on IV medicines and we started to feed him by NG tube. There is a place in another district, where we can get special pre mature formula. We order it and they bring it to our home. We use that also for James. It looked to go well, but two days ago he started to have a temperature. For premature baby's it is difficult to maintain their temperature, so we check it every two hours and if it is higher we take away a blanket, if it is low, we ad a blanket. Normally that is enough. But with James not, he started to vomit a bit. We took him back to the doctor, and his medicines were changed, the milk intake a bit lowered and we observed... Two nights ago, his stomach started to grow and was a bit hard. When I came in the morning early (after some phone calls in the night), I took him back to the clinic next door. James had many prickholes from needles, I think even in the hospital, where he was born,, they tried to get a vein to give him IV medication. The cannula he got the previous day was blocked again... his veins are so tiny and now we had to stop the oral feeding and only give him IV fluids, so we had to get a new cannula. 

At the moment, we have 3 sets of twins in Amecet. .On the picture above you can see our last set of twins, Moses and Tom. They are 1 week old. They were born with a caesarean operation, everything went well, the mother was discharged and at home she started to bleed. They rushed back to the hospital, but it was too late, she died. The two little boys are brought to Amecet for 2 or 3 months. During that time the family can organize themselves and then they will take over the care for them.

This is Samuel, he is 13 months old and very malnourished, we picked him and his 3 months little brother Daniel today. But let me start at the beginning:  Yesterday, we got a phone call from a nurse, who works in a village Mission hospital in a neighbouring District. There was  there a young mother with two baby's , only 10 months apart, who were malnourished. The mother has a mental problem and the baby's are crying from hunger and mostly laying naked on the floor.

A happy day today in Amecet!!! Charles was picked up by his new family, who are so excited to have him! We are so excited that Charles has now a family, who will love him and care for him!

Today the Amecet staff received a Goat blessing! One of the missionaries in Soroti is a veterinarian doctor and he wanted to encourage and bless the Amecet staff with the precious gift of a goat!! They told us that God knows about our struggles and how difficult it was (and is) to be in, for the lockdown, that this was a reminder that He knows it all and that He wants to encourage us!!

As in many places in the world, Covid 19 seems to be on its return, in Africa, and in Uganda are we now in the second wave. This wave is worse than the first one....  In many boarding schools were outbreaks and two weeks ago, the President closed all the schools again and a stream of people tried to get to heir homes, up country. The president also locked up all the districts, so nobody could travel outside their district, public transport was stopped. In two days, all the schools in Kampala tried to get transport home, it was chaos, people slept on the bus stations, trying to get a seat. The busses were only allowed to fill up half, and the bus fares doubled...

In the blog of April 16, I wrote about Ivan, a small malnourished boy. He was abandoned by his mother and he was HIV+. Last week we could bring him back to the village, to his father.... he is strong, smiling, healthy and almost walking!!! It is sometimes hard to let children go, you start to love  them, but they belong with their family and we pray and hope he will do well there. ( we keep in touch with them)... 

In our blog of April 16, I wrote about the premature twin babies we got in Amecet. The girl's weight was 950 gram and her twin brother's was 1200 gram. Honestly, I was scared to loose them and together with the team, we set up a plan to care for them... They were in a separate room, got fed every 2 hours, taken their temperature and we did that for all those weeks!! God had His hand on those little one's, they started to grow and we never had major problems..... I had told the team, when they are both over the 2 kg., we will celebrate!!

Last week, three small babies were brought to Amecet, you can see them on the picture. Left is Emmanuel, he was the first, He was brought on 5th of May, in the morning! His uncle came with a neighbour, the father was not able to travel.... Emmanuel was born the day before, his mother gave birth via a Caesarean operation, Emmanuel was breech... The mother died after the operation..... Emmanuel was her 10th baby!!

Last Sunday evening, baby Hannah went to be with Jesus....... It was a big, big shock to all of us, because Hannah was doing so well. this was the baby who was found in the bush, still connected with the placenta. I wrote about her in the blog of March 9. We all got to love this little girl and there was a family, who was willing to foster and adopt her... Many questions and tears among the staff...... It was more than a year ago that we lost a baby. Hannah was not wanted by her biological mother, but she experienced so much love from the staff while she was in Amecet, and now she is in the loving arms of Jesus!!!!

This is Deborah (at the back) and her twin brother William (front). Last week Thursday, we got a call from the hospital in neighbouring district, that a mother has passed away, leaving 2 baby's behind...... The mother was only 7 months pregnant, but she had developed pre -eclampsia and the Doctors had preformed a Caesarian operation, trying to save the mother and the 2 baby's.  Unfortunately, the mother passed away. The family asked us if we could take the two mini baby's to Amecet. Honestly, when I saw them, I had to swallow, they were so small..... The little girl's weight was 950 gram and the boy weighed 1200 gram. We have had small baby's under 1 kg. in Amecet, but they didn't make it. What to do??? They would for sure die at home, those baby's need a lot of care, warmth, hygiene and feeding..... often they develop complications, because they were not ready to be born.... Earlier that morning I had read in a devotion that we get sometimes chances offered, it is to us what we do with them...... We don't have to do it alone..... So we took them in the car, back to Amecet. We took them directly to the doctor and we had to give them several days IV medication. We gave them both a NG tube and we set up a feeding schedule, with taking temperature, writing down urine and stool etc. At first we fed them only 5 ml. every 2 hours. They couldn't handle more... William didn't poop, so we prayed for poop and he did after 4 days. Now they are both regular with urine and poop.  They are now 8 days with us and they have gained!!!!!! Deborah was 950 gram, now she is 1105 gram and William was 1200 gram and today he is 1370 gram.  We are very happy with this, but we realize that they are not yet  out of the danger zone. They are laying in a separate room, which we keep as warm as possible. we have assigned one staff to attend to them and we pray that they will pull through, please join us in praying for those two precious children.....

This morning a newborn baby was found in the bush. It was in a part of Soroti, not far from  Amecet . The baby was naked, still connected with the placenta and was put in a paper cement bag. people found the baby around 10 am and they called the Police, some women tied and cut the cord and the baby was brought to Amecet. It was a beautiful, newborn baby girl. She was a bit cold, we took her directly to the doctor  and her cord was re-tied and re-cut. She was given a canulla and is started on I.V. medication. Because of being in such a dirty place and we don't know how and where she was born, she is very vulnerable to sepsis. Her weight is 2.1 kg, she doesn't drink very good, but we give her some time. She is fed now every two hours and we keep her nice and warm. It makes me so sad, seeing this lovely little girl, and knowing that she was thrown away in an old cement bag. Nobody should be coming in this world and be treating like this. I pray that God will protect this little girl, we gave her the name Hannah, which means "favour" or "grace".