The Agdao "BUNtis" Party!!

"Buntis" means pregnant in Visayan. And thIS morning we organized a party for the patients of the Agdao Clinic - it went SO SO well! Out of the 17 patients I've taken on as continuities, 15 showed up and 3 of them were also able to bring their husbands/bfs. This party was a reason to get these girls together for a morning to really inform them about pregnancy, labour, and delivery, and especially, what this looks like at Mercy Mat. They miss out on the regularly scheduled health teachings done at Mercy, so we invited guest speakers (supervisors and students alike from Mercy) to come and share their knowledge of family planning, nutrition, labour and delivery, postpartum, and what to expect when they actually come to deliver at Mercy. We were able to serve pancit bihon (a fav fil party food) and rice, compliments of Krys and Mercy's cook Ate Lori. Also, the YWAMmers that help out every thursday brought and grilled fish.. the whole morning was just amazing. My favourite part was afterwards though, when - after a morning of conjured up awkwardness - they all flOOD to where Lois and I are sitting with smiles of recognition to ask personal questions about their pregnancy or hand in their required labworks and the chaos of it all and the girls calling me miss jenna or ate jenna or maam and Lois doing most of the work while i just sit there and marvEL at it all... ahhh man. It's just great!