Epperly Adventures: New Life comes to Hospital Adonai!

Our first baby, a baby boy....yet to be named

Our second baby born, but first baby girl...named Juana

After 3 years of project planning, prepping ground, pouring concrete, and prayer, new life has finally arrived to Hospital Adonai. Our end goal has always been glorifying God by providing excellent maternal-child care. This starts with high quality obstetrics to a people group with an abnormally high maternal-infant mortality rate.

Despite the fact that we are not officially open for hospital services, two babies have been delivered in our hospital over the last week. We hadn't planned for these deliveries, but God simply brought in laboring moms whom we felt, we should help. There remains several "small" details that haven't been completed yet...like a functioning OR, adequate medications for C-sections, or trained Guatemalan nurses. But those of us who were here, felt we had a sufficient facility, personnel, and supplies to give care to these patients in need.

It was incredibly exciting to be apart of these deliveries, especially considering the hundreds of people who have worked and prayed for these moments over the last several years. Hopefully, this is only the beginning of many new lives that will be held by their mothers for the first time within our hospital walls.

We know that within hospital walls there will be suffering, pain, and often loss, but the joy of a new soul entering this world far outweighs all of the latter. There remains many obstacles on our path, but with this last week we were able to see the years of hard work paying off in that thing which is most important......Life!

The writer of Psalms says in Psalms 139:13-16 "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mothers womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."

The process of birth is an incredibly hard, painful, and messy process. Thankfully, the end result and joy of new life makes those hours of suffering only a small wrinkle in the timeline of a brain. We are so thankful for new life at Hospital Adonai, and we know that every single soul matters to our Lord!