Seth Vinjelu Muyaba

Seth was born at 11:26am on Januray 10th 2008.
He is three weeks old today on January 31st.
We will post more pictures later, but wanted to get a few on right away.

kath and vinj

Baby news... or no news:)

Baby is still not here.

If the baby is not born by thirsday, I already have an induction appointment. We will be going in to the hospital Thursday at 8am in wetaskiwin to be induced.

We are poraying the baby wil come naturally before that.

Will try and keep you all updated.

Kath and Vinj and Baby

And we are due!!!!!!

Today is our Due date. I have been having contractions since december 29th... now am 1cm dialated... and so on. So hoping the baby wi9ll come soon. At the latest the babay will be bron by January 9th. So either way we are having a baby very soon!
Here are some pictures

38 weeks and counting!!!!

Baby should be coming soon, due january 2nd! Will kepp ya'lll updated.

Good News!

Hey guys.

We got a phone call from vinjelus future boss telling us we got a POSSITIVE LABOUR MARKET OPINION FROM UHUMAN RESOURCE CANADA !!!! So it is leagal for the organisation to hire vinjelu!

We were told we would be waiting for this approval for months more, because they were only processing applications from June! (and our application was sent in october)



So this is a huge praise report, it happened one day and a half after e-mailing all of you. We feel your faith was so strong for us when we felt so discouraged. Thank you!


Now we are applying for the WORK PERMIT to Canadian Immegration. This is suppose to toake 46 days to process. Again we have seen God do amazing things, so we want to believe for the process to be:

-Approved by Immegration, and vinjelu given a work permit
-to take less then or only the 46 days they say it takes.
Thank you for believing with us this far, and please continue to keep us in your prayers over the next month and a half as we wait to hear from immegration.
As soon as we have that work permit vinjelu will be employed full time, and we will be recieving health and dentile benifits, which will help us out alot!

Some of you have asked about sending us money- because you are all either in Africa or England, it's probably best you use MONEY GRAM it is cheaper to send money through them then through Western Union. But we have both here as an option.

We feel very supported and loved by you guys. Thank you.

Vinjelu and Kathryn Muyaba

P.S we will keep you all posted on the work permit process.

Need support and Prayer big time!

Hey guys, you are receiving this because we call you friends and we need prayer and support right now very much.

This is the situation.
We are having a baby! Which is not the problem at all! we are excited to be parents and having this new chapter in our lives (a long chapter we've heard!)
Because Kathryn is 8 months and 3 weeks along now, and has been in bad health since the beginning of the pregnancy, she has not been able to work, and cannot work at the moment.

I vinjelu am not legally allowed to work in Canada on my present visa.
I have applied for permanent residency in Canada, we will hear back about this in April/May 2008. Once we found out we would STILL be waiting many months before being approved for permanent residency, we had to make a new plan.

So I made up my C.V. (resume) and applied for jobs, which is the first step in applying for a work permit in Canada. I had one response (and really believe that was from God) from a organization that works with youth at Risk in the Camrose, Alberta area. They want to hire me and so have applied to HUMAN RESOURCE CANADA. Now we are waiting on HRC approval. This is one of the Major prayer requests, we want to pray for this approval to come out in the next few weeks. If not days!

After this approval comes through I then have to submit my application for a work permit to IMMIGRATION CANADA. That could take from 2-12 weeks to be processed.
Again this is a prayer request, we want to believe for this work permit to be issued by the end of January!

Because of this situation we have no income, we've just got back form Zambia in September. Unfortunately while we were in Zambia we accumulated debt. We are doing the best as we can to make this process go as fast as possible, but recognize that we need God to do something big. Please pray with us and believe with us for break through with HUMAN RESOURCE CANADA, and with IMMIGRATION CANADA.

Thank you for your support,
Vinjelu and Kathryn Muyaba

34 weeks pregnant

33 weeks pregnant (8 months one week)

This was taken a week and a bit ago... so we have grown some since.

Gods provision

We just wanted to share some little mericles that have been happening in our lives.

Becuase vinj is not able to recieve money for his work yet, and I am not and have not been healthy enough to work, we have no income at the moment. Very hard, and interesting...

We have had people give us money five times in the past month and a half- each time is when we ran out of the last amount. Just enough to pay our bills, and even save for our future rent and damage deposit costs in december!

God is good, and he does speak to people, people we don't even know AT ALL have come and said God told them we needed it, and they come and give.

Amazing, God is good, and he does take care of us, so much better then we do!

Our baby is happy and healthy! (update from doctors appointment)

We are just back from the Royal Alex Hospital in edmonton.

I had an ultra sound done for about 45 minutes, they were taking picture and videos of the baby.

The doctor came in after reviewing with the nurses. He said....

"There is no cleft in the lip or palat. There is nothing wrong with your baby."
He told us to forget about it, they showed us the nose, it looks perfect! And the mouth, there is nothing, and we saw such a clear picture of it all. They checked everything else as well just to be sure. We were so tempted to find out what the baby is (boy ro girl) but decided not to in the end. So we will still be surprised.

We are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO HAPPY, and sort of in shock, it's amazing, and totaly unexpected! Praise God!

We also found out the baby weighs 3.ll pounds already! A big little baby! We are 8 months along now, won't be to long before we can meet our baby face to face, hold him/her in our arms! We can't wait!

Our Baby

We were called into the doctors this week because our doctor had to go over our last ultra sound with us. We had to wait two days to find out what the problem was, and why he was calling us in. These two days were very hard to get through without thinking the worst.

We went in today and found out that our baby has a 90% chance it has a cleft lip. Inicially when he told us it was a celf lip I was SO THANKFUL it had nothing to do with the heart or the brain or any other life threating problem.

BUt I also didn't know anything about clef lips or what it meant for us. The doctor went to explain this.

They don't know how bad our babies clef lip is, if it's the lip and the palat or not. If it's in one place or two places. He is sending us to a specialist at the Royal Alexander Hospital, we will have an appointment there in two weeks, there the doctor will be doing the ultra sound him self, it's a special machine that gives very clear pictures. So we will see if the clft is up to the nose, if it's a cleft palat and lip or just lip... and so on. So basically right now we don't know how bad it is.

Babies with this condition struggle with eating. Our baby may have to be fed through a tube. Usually the first surgery happens at 10 weeks old, where they will mend the upper lip togther. Depending on how bad the cleft is the baby can go through 4-12 surgeries.
Babies with this condition also struggle with ear infctions, some babies even lose their hearing because of this.
The jaw usually needs to have a surgery done to re-aline it, information says to expect many visits to the dentists with some surgery involved with that to. Again, depending on how bad it actually is.

Children often take much more time to talk, and some times struggle alot with certain sounds.

Physically our baby can look "normal" very quicky even before it is two, it just depends on how bad it is.

We are obveously very upset about this. I can't keep my mind from thiking about how much pain and trama our little bundle of joy may have to go through. I just keep thinking about the pain, surgery, trama... But also in the midst of it have faith. We are going to pray and believe. Please seriously join us, I would love to go to the doctors in edmonton and fin out there is no problem, or a very minor cleft. Anything that will ease the pain for our baby.

If you have questions please post them here,on face book, or e-mails. We can't afford phone calls at this time (not enough minutes on our cell phone plan).

We will up date this as soon as we know more.

Kathryn

Child Intervention Worker- Vinjelu Muyaba!

Hello people, A little update on Vinjelu, immegration, and apartment search!

Vinjelu is employed by Comrose Community Connections.
They are now applying to human resource department in Canada, if they are aproved vinjelu wll get a letter of employment and a letter from human resources. Once we have those two documents, he will be applying for a work permit, which will be running us $1000.00 bucks. It usually takes 24 days for that work permit to be processed. Once he is approved and given a work permit, he will get a social insurance number, and will be leagal to recieve pay, by this organisation.
In the mean time vinjelu is volunteering to get used to the house he is working in, and get to know the youth he will be working with. He will be working full time, over 48 hours a week.

Permanent Residency will be take another 6 months at least to be approved.

We may have found an apartment in camrose, alberta. We will be finding out about this in the next few weeks, if we get it we can only move in december. It is a large aparement with two bedrooms and lots of storage.

Anyway, the greatest news is vinj got a job and the employers are willing to go through the whole immegration process with him. PRAISE GOD! And I am not kidding!

6 months 2 weeks

6 Months and one week old!

Kath at 20 weeks-

Hey guys, this is me at 20 weeks prego, only now I am 24 weeks along, but will post on that in the next few days!

August 16th and beyond....

Hey everyone

we are now back from Malawi. The conference was really amazing, a huge blessing, and we are so thankful we could make it to the meetings. We met people from our region and really felt at home with them.

We are now back with YWAM, still douing the projects we mentioned in the last posting.

We are also going to visit a foster care center, where they place foster children in homes around Zambia. And an orphanage where we will possibly adopt one of our children from. So we are excited to meet the staff and ask alot of questions.

The baby is kicking and has been for a week and a but now. iot's noit like butterflys its like KICKING! Vinj feels it kick his hand... so it's a strong one this one:)

Please pray for my health (kathryn) - my stomoch has not been able to adapt to food this time and I and the toilet are suffuring for it:)

We will be home in three weeks to Canada.

Thats about it for now.

vinj and Kath

August stuff and YWAM

Sorry no pictures this time, wich is a shame, because now you can see that I am actually pregnant. It's getting really exciting.

How Kath is feeling
As of yesterday I have been feeling really good compared to the last few months. Wasable to work for a few hours in the gardens cook and wash clothes and clean. So it was a really good day. It is actaully a VERY hot cold season this year, definatly not missing summer. I got a little burnt being in the sun all day. So actually have to wear sunblock this year.
Only feel tierd afte a time, and if I don't eat on time I start feeling sick, but it's really much better, thank you all for your prayers!

Vinj
VInj is doing well and is VERY excited about the gardening and starting some new meat projects up for the base. We are also looking at costs of building a house on the base for moving next year-ish. He's also more and more excited about the baby, especially now he can see it some how. The first thing he says to anyone we meet is "We going to be having a baby!" . He's healthy and happy, and very exicted about YWAM.

Our Schedule

YWAM- fist week of August
South Central Afircan Staff conference- August 7-16- Lilongwe, Malawi
We will be traveling by bus with two other Lusaka YWAM staff. It will really be a great week, meeting MANY YWAM leaders from our region, I really believ this will be a key week of vision and refreshing!

We are looking into changing our flights to be back in canada by the end of August. This means will will only be around for another 4 weeks. If we can't it will be another 8 weeks.

YWAM Stuff we are doing....
Yesterday and today we are MULCHIng in the garden, covering the soil with dry grass form the field, this helsp the plant retain their water 96% more then when they are left bare. They have a BIG GARDEN, which is GREAT! But also the mulching is taking a bit of time as well.

We will be starting a compost system at the YWAM base as well. Good for organic fertilizer! Some of the staff and the staffs kids are helping with this.

We are also looking into investing in some rabbts and good cage for them, so the base can have more meat available to them. We are attending an Agricultural Show this weekend, will ba asking some farmers who do rabbits questions of what cages or fences they use, we cant wo make the most secure and comfortable for them.

Thats it for this week. As you've read the next week we are off to Malawi to the staff conference.

Here are some ideas for Birthdays, Anniversaries, Christmas, and for new babies!

Dr. Martin Luther King
“We are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s road side… but one day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed. True compassion is more then flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that a system that produces beggars needs to be repaved. We are called to be the Good Samaritan, but after you lift so many people out of the ditch you start to ask, maybe the whole road to Jericho needs to be repaved.”

I have been trying to find out where shops get their merchandise from- like when it says “MADE IN CHINA” what does that mean, or “MADE IN INDIA”, who made it? How much are they making off of the producers? Are they getting treated fairly with basic human rights? Was it made by a child who should be in school? ETC….

I really think these are questions we need to be asking before buying all these gifts every year. Every time we make a purchase we make a statement weather we want to or not, we show who we support and what we support. I really want to challenge you all to find out before you buy, and also look into some of the FAIR TRADE options out there.

The United Nations reported in 1992 that income disparities between the world’s richest and poorest have doubled since 1960. TODAY, the wealthiest 20 percent of the words population receives 83% of the worlds income, while the poorest 20% receives less then 2%! In 1965, the average US worker make $7.52 an hour, while the person running the company made $330.38 an hour. TODAY the average worker makes $7.39 an hour, the average C.E.O makes $1566.68 per hour. 212 times more.

Coca-Cola has been accused of arming it’s factories in Columbia with paramilitary thugs.
Nestle had been accused of mass-marketing an infant formula as a breast-milk substitute to third-world women.
Disney has been accused of maintaining sweatshops in Bangladesh and Haiti.
Gap has been accused of having similar factories in Cambodia and china. These are a few of the companies who continually appear as human rights violators documented by corporate watch groups across the globe. Some, like Gap, have made significant improvements, but usually only after public outcry brought attention to their abuses and they lost lawsuits.

Here are a couple good groups working for corporate accountability and who suggest health alternatives…

www.gxonlinestore.org - this is an online store with gifts for any age, party or event. Even stuff to decorate your home with. Check it out. All of it is FAIR TRADE.

www.puravidacoffee.com - FAIR TRADE coffee, buy it online and be sure the farmers are getting enough to live and continue producing!

www.globalexchange.org - this site gives lots of information for those of you who would like to find out about products, companies and policies.

www.Hrw.org -This is a Human Right Watch sight. There is information, employment opportunities, country profiles, tons of info on this site.

Hospitals- YWAM- and ultra sound....

Ok one of these pictures is my bely almost two weeks ago now.

The other oen is Wightson vinjelus best friend holding two of his sisters kids.

How we are doing
For those of you that haven’t heard. I (Kathryn) was feeling sick Friday night but didn’t think much of it since that has become apart of my life in the resent months 
But I started throwing-up around 1am that night and continued every hour up to the morning. I also had a bad case of the “runs”. So by morning vinj and I were concerned I was getting dehydrated. So we went to a little hospital/Clinic, they admitted me right away. I was on a I.V within an hour I think, something like that. I wasn’t really with it at the time. Was still throwing up every 30 minutes by then.
The first Doctor kept saying it was normal for pregnant women to be throwing up, “morning sickness” type of thing. I wanted to yell at him for such a stupid statement, but I was not in a state to start arguing with Him. I knew I was not experiencing morning sickness. Anyway, it was a long process of finding out what exactly was wrong. It went from morning sickness to cholera, to infection of the intestines, to a urinary infection… really frustrating for Vinj especially I think. So I basically threw up for 24 hours straight. Lost A LOT of water in my system. Dad said I sounded delirious on the phone, mom and dad called a lot to make sure I was fine. (THANK YOU!)
So in the end I was told I did have an infection in my digestive system and that’s what the problem was. In basic terms I got food poisoning.
One of the problems with the medical system in Zambia is if you don’t have money you won’t be treated, you just cant do anything. We were short about $300.00 for my medical care, it was the weekend so we couldn’t get any money out of the banks, and no money could e sent to us. So I didn’t get to go to a real room, I was in an examination room all day and night, which meant I had to run down the hall with my I.V in to get to the toilet in time. This was just as exhausting for vinj as it was for me. It was frustrating we couldn’t get into a self contained room, but it was just the way the cards were dealt that day. I woke up Sunday morning feeling a little more stable and managed not to throw up since midnight (Sunday morning). The bill for the hospital was getting WAY TO HIGH because of the bank situation. So we asked for me to be discharged. I felt stable enough to go home with oral medication. So we went home, I just layed in bed all day, I felt literally like I had been hit by a truck! My whole body ached, it hurt to move. My chest hurt so bad, it hurt to breat actually, and the arm the I.V was the worst part (I would really love it if I never had to have another I.V in my life!
We wondering what all of that did to our baby. We had an appointment for the next day to have an ultra sound to make sure the baby was fine. That was yesterday (Monday)
I woke up feeling aa bit sick still but much more energy. So we got to town had an ultra sound (the doctor was TERIBLE! I can’t wait to get back to my family doctor!)
The baby is fine, still very active, and getting bigger and bigger, this week it measured at 4 months and 5 days. Which is exactly what I am suppose to be.
I had been craving a sub from this delicious place in town, they make the worlds BEST fresh bread subs! So we went, and I suffered for eating that all last night and this morning. But I did manage to digest it! So I think my body is getting stronger and stronger by the minute. I will be really fine.

I am on Antibiotics, and re-hydration drinks.

This has shaken both vinj and I a lot. Initially we were thinking we are just going back to Canada. That we have had enough scares with this pregnancy and it’s just too much for now. We are taking a few days to think and pray about it. We don’t want to rush out. It looks like we are debating on staying to closer to the end of August, depending on flight changes, if they are possible or not.

We will e going to live at the Lusaka YWAM base at the end of this week. They have a international team there now that is taking up all the rooms. So we need to wait till they are gone. The YWAM Directors, who have become our friends are in the hospital as we speak having a baby! I am excited to e able to help Mrs. Banda with her family, cooking and such. We will keep you posted on this.

Update from doctors- new post below

OK again my malaria test came out negative! We are very happy about that. And will be following up with one more in a week. To make sure.

I have also been feeling like I've lost alot of weight and have been really worried about it. And found out today I have lost 26 lbs since leaving a month ago.... I was really upset when I found out.. never thought I would be upset bout that loosing wieght. But just hoping this hasn't harmed the baby, not being able to eat enough and all. I am carrying food with us all the time now so I am trying to eat just constantly snacking kinda thing.

OUr baby will be doubling in size in the next three weeks and so this seems to be a crucial time to really get enough food for the growth of our little one and for me.

PLEASE PRAY for me, I am getting kinda worried about my appetite it's actually a real constant stress in my life right now, and often find it almost imposible to hold down what I eat.

Thanx you guys, will be going for a prenatal appointment in two weeks probably.