What an amazing, beautiful month we’ve had!  There is SO much that has happened it truly feels as though THREE months have passed and not just one!  March began in a most lovely way for our family.  We got to welcome our precious friend, mentor, teacher, and midwife, KRISTIN, into our home and our country!

From the moment Kristin arrived it truly felt like she has always been a part of our family. She just belonged and melded into our family and life seamlessly.  I just can’t get over how blessed we are that she was willing to come to Kenya…for an ENTIRE month…during a time of political uncertainty, just for us.  If that’s not love I don’t know what is! She left her family, her practice, her students, and her ministry and came to love on and bless me and my family – in a very new and different, challenging, uncertain, and sometimes scary land!  And not only that, but her family supported her in doing this, at what I know was a great cost to their own comfort and happiness in her long absence.

Not only was Kristin a tremendous blessing to me and my family, but to countless Kenyans, to women and their families, and to future generations as well!  Oh the adventures we had!  We tried to cram as much activity and experience as possible into her first days in the country because we couldn’t know for sure when our sweet baby would arrive and I knew we’d be mostly housebound once she did.  It will definitely take me several months worth of newsletter writings to share all that we experienced together and all that I learned from Kristin.

It was such an honor and joy to get to share so much of my life and world with Kristin.  I took her to the slum where I serve women and we had a pregnant mama’s discussion group and did prenatal check ups together.  The expectant mamas had so many questions and Kristin did an awesome job teaching and leading the conversation.  Of course, I learned so much just by watching her in action.

We also visited Mercy House several times, which is a home for teenage mothers who have been victims of unimaginable abuse and suffering.  Kristin was such a special blessing to the girls and they fell so in love with her.

Kristin was also invited to speak with the women in one of our local churches. I was so touched and blessed by her wisdom and her cultural sensitivity. She truly had a heart to help the women find solutions that work for THEM, in THIS culture, and in ways that always pointed them back to Jesus.  I was so encouraged to see the women open up and ask questions and bring up issues that are normally taboo and never discussed in this culture, but are issues that desperately need to be addressed.  What a blessing that Kristin provided an atmosphere where they felt safe to do so!

We spent an emotional day in Kibera, which is the most populated and poorest slum in East Africa.  We visited a special midwife friend of mine, who was delighted with the knowledge Kristin shared with her, and who also had such amazing stories to share with us.  We were brought to tears by her strength and courage and by the hand of God upon her life.  She is on the physical and spiritual front lines of midwifery, giving her life to serve and try to protect mothers and babies living in unfathomable, abject poverty.

It was also such a blessing to introduce Kristin to my new friend Lucy, who is the only licensed independent midwife in Kenya.  The three of us sat for hours chatting, sharing stories, learning from each other, and dreaming together.  It was such an encouraging and exciting time.

Kristin was also a blessing to so many outside the midwifery world.  She shared with and taught in our little Bible study that gathers weekly, and she shared with hundreds of boys at a boy’s high school.  She quite literally made friends and shared her wisdom wherever we went.

And of course, most wonderfully of all, Kristin’s hands were the first to welcome our sweet baby girl into the world!  One Saturday afternoon when we were out and about, we took a very bumpy road and my bag of waters broke!  It was just a little trickle and I didn’t even notice until later when Kristin was walking behind me and noticed the back of my skirt was all wet!  We just continued about our business and when we got home later than night decided to try some herbs and things to see if we could get labor going.  We tried and tried into the wee hours of the morning, but everything we tried did nothing more than bring on a few piddly contractions.

We decided to go to bed and first thing in the morning were back at it, especially because the hours were ticking away with broken waters and no labor what-so-ever.  We tried and tried all day long, but we couldn’t get labor to start for anything!  I was feeling so tired and discouraged.

When my husband came home later that evening, I joked with him that it was his fault we couldn’t get labor going because when I had been 33 weeks along and was having some preterm labor, he had laid hands on me and prayed and it stopped.  I laughed and told him he needed to undo that so labor would start again.  But he took me seriously and as I sat on the birth ball he took my hands and prayed that our baby would be born that night.  I didn’t know until later but around the same time Kristin had asked her family to pray too.  What’s even more, at that very moment our entire sending church in Seattle, Washington was praying for us in their Sunday morning gathering!  People I have never even met had been praying and fasting!

Miraculously, as soon as my husband was done praying, I laid down on the bed on my left side and had a powerful contraction!  It was so strong I couldn’t move into another position, even though the position I was in was excruciating.  I made a mental note that if I felt another one coming on, I would quickly move into a better position.  And sure enough 3 short minutes later another all consuming contraction was upon me!  I started getting excited and hopeful that things were really moving forward.  And they were!  Every 3 minutes another contraction would come and in no time I was kneeling on the floor draped over my birth ball.

My wonderful husband and a friend of ours had lugged buckets and buckets of water up the stairs to our bathtub since we hadn’t had running water for two days.  We had worked so hard to get labor started, I knew getting in the water might slow it down again, but I was soon having a difficult time coping with the labor pains and asked Kristin if I could get in.  She agreed it probably wasn’t a good idea due to the risk of slowing things down, but after a couple more contractions, I was completely out of coping techniques and ideas, doula training at all, and so with Kristin’s blessing, into the wonderful water I went.  I had long ago given up my dream of one day having a water birth, but what a special gift and surprise God had in store for me!

I suspected I was in transition, but tried to convince myself I wasn’t so that I wouldn’t be disappointed if it turned out I wasn’t as far along in labor as I felt.  In between contractions I talked and joked with my husband, who sat beside me, but during contractions I turned into an amazon woman!  The contractions were so painful and coming so fast, I actually got angry about it!(=  Then all of a sudden I had a contraction and felt my body pushing!  I yelled at my husband that I was pushing and to go get Kristin.  He was SHOCKED and he jumped up and came back with her in no time.  Her quiet, gentle, calm, strong spirit was exactly what I needed.

I began to panic because I could feel my body pushing the baby and it was SO INCREDIBLY PAINFUL.  I felt so out of control because everything was happening so fast, I didn’t even have time to compose myself or make the conscious choice to work with my body.  I felt NOTHING like the warrior birth hero I’ve always imagined myself to be.  But even in the darkness of that all consuming pain I was so lost in, I could feel my husband next to me and I could hear Kristin’s voice calmly saying, “You and your baby are ok.”  She later told me that at that point, there’s nothing anyone can do.  My baby was coming like a tiny little freight train and we just had to let it happen and then it would be over.  And it was true.

Suddenly I felt the burning of her crowning and Kristin reminded me to do slow, gentle pushes. I regained some sanity and some control and it felt SO much better.  Little by little her head eased out.  I could hear my husband’s loving encouragement as her head was born.  The greatest relief of my life!  I said, “Thank you Jesus!!!!!”  Kristin later said she believed the baby had descended with her fingers in her mouth and that’s why it had been so unbearably painful.  She does love to suck her little fingers! She also had her umbilical cord around her like a little sash.  A little princess indeed!(=

Next we eased out her shoulders and finally, she was born! 9:24 pm, Sunday, March 17th, 2013, just an hour and a half after we’d asked God to deliver her to us.  Kristin put her on my chest and I was in love.  She was perfectly calm as if nothing had happened.  Her head was perfectly round and she was just gorgeous.  Her skin had the most beautiful color and she had wonderful tone, even though she still hadn’t taken a breath yet.  We just cuddled and everyone oohed and ahhhed.  I was so captivated I completely forgot about checking to see if she was a boy or a girl, something I had been DYING to know!  Kristin reminded us to look so we had Daddy do the honors.  A girl!!!  Adali Lynn Guya.  Adali is a Hebrew name that means “upright,” “God is my refuge,” and “noble one.”  Lynn was my wonderful late mother’s middle name and it means “pretty” and “waterfall.”  She truly is the sweetest, most angelic, pretty little thing.

As they helped me to bed I heard my 4 year old daughter call from her bedroom, “Can we come see the baby!?!?!?!”  We all laughed and told her not yet and then listened to her giggling with her two year old brother with utter delight and excitement.  When we finally let them come in they were wide-eyed with awe and wonder, and were just as captivated by Adali as the rest of us.

My favorite part of this birth story is how God proved Himself God and reminded us that HE is in total control, that HE is the author and finisher, and HE is the creator and designer of this incredible process we call birth.  I thought I knew just how it would go, and it went NOTHING like I planned.  Best of all, through my frustration, disappointment, and discouragement, His power and love broke through and brought my sweet baby forth into this world. When we had tried all we could possibly do in our own power and understanding, He met us there, answered our cry for help, and did what none of us could do.

During her final 2 weeks here, Kristin so lovingly and selflessly took amazing care of me and my family.  At first I was resistant towards her strict “21 day rule” because I hate being dependent or feeling like a burden.  But I truly learned the value in just resting and spending those first weeks exclusively cuddling and nursing my baby.  And now that my 21 days are coming to an end, I almost wish I could have them back!  Without a doubt, the love and gentleness that Kristin showed me will forever change the way I serve women in their childbearing period.

I learned SO much from Kristin every single day she was here.  About life, love, ministry, God, family, marriage, parenting, cooking, pregnancy, birth, being a woman, and so so much more!  I could never share everything, and certainly not in one little newsletter!  But I hope and expect that over the months to come, I will be able to share precious little pieces of what I was so blessed to get to glean from her.

And as much as we got to do and see together, there is still so much more that I wanted to share with Kristin that we just didn’t have enough time for.  We, and everyone who met her, are praying that God will bring her back one day.  But in the meantime, I am more determined than ever to do her and our Charis family proud!