Returning with Purpose

It is hard to believe it is already 2025. As you probably ask regarding your own lives, where did the last year go?  We hope the new year finds you and your loved ones well.  

Sue and I are ready to get to Uganda and start teaching again.  Here are the highlights as we go:

• Birth with Dignity received a Rotary grant from combined Rotary clubs in the Twin Cities for the supplies we are bringing this year.  This includes over 500 headlamps to investigate and intervene in postpartum hemorrhage along with a two-year battery supply for each, preeclampsia teaching sheets and posters so mothers can be taught symptoms that should bring them to the hospital, protocols for each health care center, and supplies for our training conferences (we say teach, Ugandans say train).  The 250 pounds of supplies and the help assembling them by the Rotarians was a wonderful gift.  

• The three new Birth with Dignity programs we planted last year have been incredible.  The leaders’ reports of the improved care they have witnessed as the maternal death numbers decrease and their stillbirth bereavement care improves, are so encouraging. The midwives are also encouraged by the improved standard of care they are giving along with the families’ appreciation of this care. One program in Lira has two strong nursing leaders, both named Judith, who presented us with detailed spread sheets and power point slides of all the changes and results they are witnessing.  We are consistently blown away and thank God for these amazing leaders and the results. See picture below 

• This year we are holding 7 conferences in 3 different regions, teaching a total of about 300 midwives/obstetricians/nursing leaders. We are trying to saturate the regions by teaching all the large health centers. Our hope is that if the whole region has our teaching and supplies, we will see even better care and results. 

• We have also been given permission to teach at least 90 midwives at the largest maternity hospital in Uganda, called Kawempe.  This opportunity was granted in part because of our connection with the Ugandan Ministry of Health.  Our biggest maternity centers in MN do less than an average of 20 births a day.  Kawempe Hospital does up to 100 births a day.  I have been to Kawempe and have done deliveries there.  “Unbelievable” is my one-word summation!  It is an understatement to say, “you cannot imagine!”

I will finish this by thanking all of you for your prayers, your support, your financial help, and your ongoing interest in Birth with Dignity and care for the Ugandan people.  Ugandans have told us how surprised they are that we return year after year, and are even more humbled by the realization  that our family and friends care enough about them to help.  

May you be blessed as you have blessed us.

With gratitude for all you have done,
Lynn and Sue