My amazing doula just wrote this for her blog…it made me cry…I know it will touch your heart too….
Who knew that touching a breast could be so valuable…
It is an absolute pleasure to be able to write this to you all today. My name is Justine Pearson and I am a missionary who left all I knew; my business, white leather couch, car, and big screen TV to come to follow God’s will on my life to work in cross-cultural missions in Africa. I worked as a full time top-paid Birth and Postpartum Doula (Pregnancy Coach) and Breastfeeding counselor. After leading a YWAM team to the Iris base in White River I have now returned to a place I truly can call “home away from home.”.
I am writing this post on a mild African afternoon with a warm cross breeze coming through the house I can hear some Black(politically correct word here in Africa) children who speak Siswati running outside and playing and I sit with little Johanna Joy just 9 days old on my lap while her mama sleeps in the other room. Daddy is out collecting food for the children at the feeding program that they sponsor and sent on a mission to fetch an electric breast pump from the local second hand store.
You see Teisa biological mother of one and “Mama Teisa” to many orphans was expecting a breast pump to come from America today but it has been delayed…why does she need a pump you ask…well Teisa is planning to feed not just little Johanna Joy but to pump and bottle feed her precious and most nutritious liquid gold to little baby Joshua who was abandoned at birth by his sick HIV mother… unfortunately she did transfer the HIV to him. Now at 6 weeks old Teisa and her Orphanage staff wait daily to hear when little Joshua will be released from the hospital and into their care. He does get visits from the volunteer missionaries periodically but on a daily basis he receives little touch and love.
This will change when he comes to Michael’s Children’s Village and is able to receive lots of love and cuddles as well as Teisa’s milk to help him get strong. Today the rate of survival with HIV is very good with anti-retro-virals as well as other nutritional changes to keep the body strong.
How long little baby Joshua will live we do not know but we do know without Teisa’s milk his chances would be less.
When I arrived 3 days ago to be her Postpartum Doula for just 10 days before going to Zimbabawe she told me she was waiting for the pump but I felt it was necessary to tell her body we would be needing the milk soon so we have started to hand express the milk…with a 9 day old baby and recovering from a Cesarian Birth Teisa leans over a white porcelain mug and expresses her milk by hand, or when I am awake I help her to build up her supply. I am happy to say in 3 days we have probably doubled her milk supply so that the little bags of liquid gold are adding up in the freezer for the arrival of little baby Joshua.
God gives hearts that you cannot imagine to people who give it all up and come to Africa to give to the children of this great continent love and nourishment…once you are here you really see this needs to start from the heart and we know here that that can only come through the blood of Jesus.
Who is your baby Joshua whom you want to do whatever it takes to help? How can you ask God today to give you a desire that turns dry eyes wet with the love of Christ?
Be blessed today,
Justine
www.justinesadventures.com
