Midwife Seminars

On Wednesday, we had two obstetric nurses Janice Grey and Anita Garland from the Georgia visit to present a seminar for the midwives in the area. They gave one in the Clinica Ezell area and one up here for the midwives registered through the health department. We are always a little nervous at first, waiting to see what the turnout will be, but we were really excited when 44 midwives showed up. Of course they were very serious and hard get to open up at first, but as the day went on, they came out of their shells and we saw a lot of interaction during the class. One very interesting thing they did is tell how they got into midwifery. My assumption was apprenticing with older midwives, but all of them told us they had been sickly children or young women, and their families and/or Mayan priests had told them that it was a sign that they would have the gift of midwifery. One woman said she was reluctant and scared because of her lack of knowledge, but trusted that her gifting would be sufficient. Another said she considered it for a while before jumping in. She became a christian in the meantime and asked God to help her decide. She felt torn because she already had a child and felt she couldn't be a good midwife if she had more children. So she prayed about it, and asked God to not let her have any more children if He wanted her to work. She said without any birth control measures, she never had any other children and began to work as a midwife.

We are so thankful to these caring christian sisters (in the faith and genetically) for sharing their time and expertise with us and these local midwives. And also to our Dr. Josefina and the nurse from the health department, Maxi for translating for us. The doctor and staff from the health department as well as the midwives were thankful for the training and invited us to work with them again in the future. What a way to honor God's name, serving our community!