Today we had a small party, Anna Grace's weight was today 2,030 gram!!! This is such an accomplishment, this baby was born 10 weeks early, at the side of the road and her weight was 1,3 kg.. She has been in a room, seperated from the other children. Fed via the NG tube, but this little girl is a fighter!!! We are very happy to see her coming from so vulnerable up to this day!! She is still small and vulnerable, but  now we have confident that she will live!!!!

This is a true miracle story about this little sweet Martha. Martha’s mother was still a teenager when she became pregnant. The father was a married man, with a family… The mother was only 15 years old and Martha was born premature, and very small and malnourished. The mother and Martha were more than 5 months in the feedings centre in Soroti Hospital. As Amecet, we visit the feeding centre every week with some feeding supplements and some encouragement. We brought some clothes and blankets to Martha, but every time we came, we saw the baby laying on the bed (without the clothes) and the mother was elsewhere. When Martha was 6,5 months old, the social worker of the hospital called us to come and rescue the baby. He felt the mother was giving up and he feared that Martha may be in danger. Talks started between Amecet and the family of Martha and her mother and the result was that Martha came in Amecet on 13/2/2017, when she was 6,5 month old and her weight was only 2.9 kg….

This week I got a phone call from the Probation officer; Els come to our office, there is here an old friend, you have to meet again!! So I went to the probation office and there I met Brenda!!!! I first had to look very good, but then I knew, this is Brenda, who we got in Amecet in 2005. She was rescued from the shrine of the witch doctor. When she came to Amecet, she had everywhere big wounds, even from nails and burn wounds. She stayed quite a while with us, but we got her re-united with her mother in Kitgum, in the North of Uganda. She now stayed for a while in Soroti again, with her auntie, she goes to P6, but the family moves back to Kitgum  It was so nice to see Brenda again after 12 years!! She is a young lady now, she is happy and looks very healthy. This as such an encouragement, Thirteen years ago, this girl was in a terrible state, she was to be sacrificed, the people around the home of the witch doctor, warned the Police and they rescued her. In Amecet we saw the wounds heal and also her emotions started to heal. And now I saw a young girl, happy and healthy!!! I thank God for Amecet and I thank Him that I was part of the healing of this girl!! 

Lately we had a lot of toddlers, out toddlers room was full and you have to have your eyes everywhere, because they do all kind of things they should not do... On the picture above, Paul and Gilbert are sitting together and have a nice time....eating the flowers!!

It goes well with little Anna Grace. Her infection is gone and she is gaining a little bit, her weight is now 1.5 kg!!! Her temperature is good, her saturation is good, we do still feed her by NG tube, but she takes it well. Since some hours she has a little friend!!! I was called by the maternity ward from Soroti Hospital, that a mother passed away this morning and she left a small premature baby boy behind... I went to the hospital and talked with the father, who was very thankful that we wanted to help. The baby is 5 days old, but was born 4 weeks too early and is very small. The mother had been very sick and their plan was to go for further investigations after the baby was born. And now the mother died... The baby is called Stephen (after his father!) and his weight is 1.550 kg,  so he is 50 grams more than Anna Grace. We are using Pre mature milk formula for him as well as for Anna Grace. We have now 2 mini baby's in our medical room. We keep them seperate from the others, to keep them warm and more protected. Pls. keep praying for them

Today we celebrated the going home of 5 children!!! It is always such a joy, to see them go, healthy and happy! There were 4 bigger children leaving and one small one. Our social workers, Simon and Elias are bringing them home. They have been working at this for a while. The children came from different villages and some could not go back to their old home. It would not have been safe for them. One boy was kidnapped and sold by his father to be sacrificed, another girl was raped by her HIV+ stepfather. But we are so happy that she is HIV-, she was put on ARV's for 1 month and several tests were done, but she is negative!!! She also never had gone to school before, she went for the first time to school, while in Amecet, and she did so well. So in the talking, that Simon and Elias have done with the relatives, they made sure that the children will continue their schooling. Two of the children came in Amecet, when they were quite sick and malnourished, they were both HIV+. But now they have gained a lot and they are active and playing and they do well on the ARV's, prescribed by the doctor. We will keep visiting them and checking on them and their relatives, that they keep taking their medicines and go to the clinic for their reviews. You can read some of their stories in the blog of June 6, 2018 (the tears of the little people). 

Anna Grace is now 11 days old, but she was born 10 weeks too early!!!  At first she did well, she started to breath on her own and her temperature was stabilising, but then....  She developped a fever, all her other vital signs were normal, after some tests it showed that there is an infection in her intestines. Being born at the side of the road brings a lot of extra dangers... She was put on I.V. medication and we were very alert on her. Yesterday we stopped all the feeding by NG tube and only gave her I.V. fluids. This morning we started with a little bit formula milk by NG tube.. You see on the picture above how she holds my finger, she is too weak to really hold it, I feel that is how she hangs on life, she is almost too weak to fight. Please join us in prayer to stand for her....... The picture under in just taken right now, she is very weak and there is still some temperature. On and off her saturation drops, but there is still hope!!!!!

Today was a day of happy endings, three children were leaving Amecet with their new parents who started the fostering process in order to adopt the child. The Probation officer Adotu Amos (right on the picture) came to Amecet to hand the children officially over to their new parents.

Yesterday, Baby Anna Grace was brought to Amecet by her uncle and grandmother. She was born after 30 weeks of pregnancy. The mother had not expeced her to come yet, when the contractions started, they set off to the health centre. But  the baby was born on the way, at the side of the road....The mother passed away, due to heavy bleeding...The baby was, ofcourse, very small. They brought the baby to us. The baby was cold and a bit dirty, you can imagine how that must have gone, there at the side of the road.... So our nurse, Deborah, first wiped the baby, as fast as she could, we weight her (only 1.3 kg.) and dressed her and she was placed in the incubator. They tried to feed her, because she had only be given some drops of water, but she couldn't suck. So a NG tube was brought in. After trying to warm her for an hour, they took her to the neighbours clinic and the doctor saw her. She was started on IV medication, against infection and also for her lungs. She was also put on oxygen, because the saturation (oxygen level in her blood) was low.

The room has 8 baby beds and we had only 3 small babies. But since the beginning of this month, we got several new babies coming in.. Their stories are all so sad. We got a phonecall from a health centre, there was a baby born and the mother has a mental illness. We know the mother from before, she had twins and we were asked by the authorities to take the twins. We had tried the relatives, but nobody wanted to care for them. Now we went to get the newborn baby, the mother was very happy to see us again and was very okay with us taking her baby.....

This picture is taken a couple years ago, we had a meeting with the families who  foster a child via Amecet. They all want to foster, to adopt later. I am so thankful for these families, they are willing to open up their home and heart to a child who has no family or home. We get children who are abandened by their parents, or just left behind in a bus station or in a maize field, we had a small boy, who was found at night, alone sitting in the main street. These children also need love, care and protection. As Amecet, we do the first aid, but then, they need to belong somewhere.........

In Amecet, we care for baby's, that is how we are known, but lately we got three girls of 11, 15 and 16 years old, who were brought by the Police. The 11 year old girl was raped by her HIV+ stepfather, she was not pregnant, but the danger was that she is also infected by the HIV virus. We took her to the doctor for tests and she got one month ARV medicines as prophylaxis. After one month we took her again for a HIV test, she was negative!!! Last week we took her for her last test and she is still HIV-!!! We are very happy for her and our Social workers are now looking where the best place will be for her, she has never been to school before. We took her to Harmony Primary school, in P1, and she loves it!!!