Amecet n'ainapakin (Shelter of Peace) is a ministry of Youth With A Mission (YWAM)in Soroti, Uganda. We are reaching out to HIV infected and affected children. We also are caring for new born babies, who lost their mother after the delivery. The third group of children we help, are children who need a safe place, they mostly come via the police. In this blog we want to share with you our stories, our pictures, our needs and blessings!

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

R.I.P. Amida.........

Elias came to Amecet, this morning, with the news that Amida had died last night. What a shock, I couldn't believe it.... Amida has been twice in Amecet, in 2005 and in 2007. During her stay in 2007 she was very sick, I really thought she would not survive. One moment she even saw Jesus, it was such a very holy moment, in that little room!!! I wrote about this in my little book (sorry in Dutch) "Jij bent geen dood ding.." (page 26).
We kept having contact with her and helped her with school fees, last year she did a course in hair dressing, because that is what she wanted to become, a hair dresser. She always came to the Amun weeks and even in between she sometimes visited us. And today, the news that she had died....
Amida comes from a Muslim family, so Elias, Dominique and I went to visit the family, the burial will be today, in the afternoon. It was sad, crying people everywhere and Amida was laying there, she didn't look very bad. Then we heard the story from the mother.... Amida had stopped taking her ARV's for two months!!!! Nobody knew, they only found out some days ago... Amida is 20 years, so she managed her own medicines. I feel so sad, so frustrated, so angry in a way...... I cried this morning, why did she stop taking her medicines??? She knew that she needed them, why did she do that?? All kind of thoughts go through my head, I am confused, what did we miss???
I want to remember as I knew her, a funny girl with a special sense of humor, I also want to remember that she saw Jesus, I pray that she remembered that too, at the end.....

Friday, June 17, 2016

Good news stories....

We have been busy the last weeks, but we are doing well! We have not had very sick children and several of the babies we have re-settled with their relatives!
One of them, or better two of them, were Emmanuel and Elijah.They are twins and their mother passed away after the delivery. They came into Amecet as two very small babies, they weighed both less than 2 kg. each. We struggled in the beginning, they were too weak to drink, so we had to feed them by NG-tube. But when you see then now, it is worth all the struggle!!!

 John (picture above) and Anna Grace (picture below) were both brought by an other organization, which works in the villages. They are do a lot of home visitation to HIV+ patients. They asked us to help John and Anna Grace. We also visited them at home and we felt that it would be good for them to be with us for a while, to release the family a bit and to focus on taking the ARV medicines better. They both do well, are still weak and need time to recover, but they want to go to school and they are smiling and playing (a bit). That are good signs......

 Lazarus was brought into Amecet in April, he was already 6 months old. His mother was HIV+ and after the delivery she was very weak, she struggled, but she passed away when Lazarus was 5 months old. The family asked us if we could help with Lazarus, It was all a shock to them. We took Lazarus and also tested him for HIV. We got the good news that he is HIV free!!! Lazarus is a cute little man and the family is now ready to take him back home!! 
Sagal is doing great, he is going to school and is all over the compound. I wrote about him before and also in the blog of 31/12/2015 you can read about him. 
And this is Jackson, I also wrote about him in the blog of 31/12/2015. He is almost one year with us, much longer than most of the children, we always try to resettle them after 2 or 3 months, back to their relatives. Jackson was very malnourished and sick, when he came, he could not even sit by himself. He picked up, but still every time he got sick, with high fevers and lost again the weight he had gained so slowly. Tests were done and more tests were done, then at the end it came out that he had TB, his lungs were good, but it was somewhere else in his body. He was started on anti TB drugs (now 2 months ago) and he is doing so much better now. He will be 2 years old in August, but he can't walk yet. He walks around the small table and at your hand, so he tries, and what he discovered now is the slide.... He crawls towards it, climbs up and slides down, then he crawls around it and repeats and repeats and repeats... We are happy with him, he will be walking soon.........