A 3rd missionary to join our team…

We recently announced to friends and family that we are expecting a third missionary to join our ministry here in Malawi.  Baby Brockington should arrive at the end of July and we are beyond happy about our future son or daughter.  This is our first baby and just like Malawi, every day is new and different.  Our first year of marriage was also our first year of medical school, so we am not surprised that God chose this time in our life to bring us our first child.  We won’t know for a few weeks if it is a boy or a girl, but it doesn’t matter because we only pray for healthy.

We are undecided if we will deliver in Malawi or not, it mostly depends on how the pregnancy progresses and what will be best for the baby’s health and my own.  The first trimester was tough because there was lots of morning sickness at nighttime! Other than that, I have had an easy pregnancy so far, considering we moved to a new country, started a new job and had to move into a new house all within a month.

Now that I am in the second trimester, I am back to eating normally and my energy is a bit higher.  This improvement is just in time for our “orientation” required by the Malawi Medical Council to start.  In order to gain our Malawi medical license we must complete 6 weeks at Kamuzu Central Hospital, which is the government hospital in Lilongwe, in each of our departments.  Jared will be in the Pediatric Ward for his orientation and I will be bouncing between OB/GYN, Pediatrics, Medicine and Surgery Departments.
Since we have not completed our orientation up to this point, we have only been seeing patients under the supervision of the clinical officers at the McGuire Wellness Center. Oh my, the clinic has been busy! It is malaria season, which means we have seen everything from malaria causing fever and abdominal pain to seizures.  I think the hardest ones to evaluate are the babies and the small children since they often become the sickest.  We are fortunate to have the medications needed to stabilize the very ill and transfer to the closest hospital able to admit them for further treatment.

We had the opportunity to meet the chiefs of the villages in the area and the Traditional Authority, who is the top-chief of the region.  They were invited to the clinic to hear the most recent updates for the outpatient clinic and operating rooms.  This was a very interesting look into local politics and culture.

Besides work, we have been settling into our new house and learning more about the villages around our clinic, the culture and slowly the language.  Chichewa is a lot harder than it seems.  We plan to get a tutor to help us learn after we finish orientation at Kamuzu. We make a trip into the Lilongwe mostly for grocery store and church on Sundays.  We have visit two different ones so far and each has qualities that we like. Both provide solid scripture based teachings and have been full of kind and friendly people.

We are so blessed to have met another missionary couple that moved to Lilongwe the week after we did.  We actually met them before we left Houston and have become fast friends.  They have a 1 year old little boy and she recently finished residency in pediatrics and he is a civil engineer.  Its so encouraging to spend time with them and be able to share our similar experiences and struggles.  They truly understand when we talk about the hard parts, the funny parts and the down right unexpected and surprising experiences.  We cannot thank God enough for the chance to have another Christian couple walking a similar path along side us.

With our orientation starting in a few days and the long hours it will entail, we might be a bit off the grid for the next month or so.  We hope to have time to give an update in a couple weeks, but if not please know that we will have lots of stories to share when the 6 weeks is all done.

Until then, enjoy the photos we have taken over the last week and continue to pray for our ministry here and the baby!

–  Jared & Jenny