Happy Saturday friends. Today I’d like to introduce you to my friend Melissa. Melissa is an amazing woman with a passion for people. She is a pastor’s wife and a mother of four girls. Melissa is sweet and kind and this woman never fails to make me laugh. She is the founder of Mercy For Mamas and this is her story. If after reading her story you would like to make a donation or learn more you can click on her website below or find Mercy For Mamas on Facebook and Instagram. Have a great Saturday!

“In 2009 my world was rocked when I met a small, precious baby in a remote village in Uganda.
It’s hard to describe that moment without tears welling up in my eyes. It was a holy moment, and
it was a moment that would forever change me and my family.
I had been to Uganda several times before that trip in 2009. I had fallen in love with the people
and culture. I truly felt at home there. I loved the beautiful landscapes, the delicious food, and I
adored the people. Then I met baby Mercy, and my heart belonged even more to Uganda.
Several months after meeting Mercy, my husband and I began the process to adopt her. In the
months of waiting, I began to really think about her mother who had died during childbirth. I
wondered how often this happened to women, and I researched how this could be prevented. I
was surprised to learn about the maternal health crisis in Uganda. I was also shocked to learn
that many of the deaths and critical complications could be easily prevented. This is when I first
learned about “mama kits”.
In Uganda, when a person goes to a hospital or clinic for treatment you have to bring your own
supplies with you. You must bring gloves, soap, surgical blades, bandages, etc. Many times the
hospital will not have those items on hand, and if they do have them they’ll charge you a lot of
money for them. A mama kit has all of the items that the government hospitals require a person
to bring with them for birth. The items are all wrapped up to be kept sterile for the birth. If a
woman has a mama kit she is more likely to go to the hospital for her birth. If she chooses to
give birth at home, she’ll have sterile supplies to use.
After learning about the mama kits, I decided that while in Uganda to complete Mercy’s
adoption, I would find some kits and pass them out to some women in honor of Mercy’s mother.
I had some friends and family donate a little money to help with this project. I bought my first
100 mama kits and gave them to a few different crisis pregnancy centers. It was amazing.
During the next 10 months while living in Uganda completing the adoption, I heard story after
story of the desperate conditions so many pregnant women in Uganda were facing. God began
to give me a deep love and passion to help these women. I continued to share the need with my
friends and family back home, and people continued to give. I ended up passing out 700 mama
kits that first year.
Once Mercy and I came home to the US, I knew that this work needed to continue. This is when
my ministry, Mercy for Mamas officially began. Since that time, Mercy for Mamas has been able
to expand our operations. We now have ministry partners working all over Uganda. We partner
with different pregnancy centers, clinics, midwives, women’s groups, churches, and
missionaries. We have distributed more than 100,000 mama kits to women in need. It costs just
$7 to buy and distribute each mama kit. For the cost of a large latte, you can literally help save
the lives of a mother and her baby.
Over the years, we’ve added in a lot of prenatal education programs. We’ve found that
knowledge is power. We want women to understand what is happening in their bodies during pregnancy and while breastfeeding. We teach them the dangerous signs in pregnancy and
when to seek medical help. We educate them about what to expect during labor and delivery
and afterwards. We love being able to help women to have safe childbirth, and we also love
pointing these women to Jesus and the eternal hope they can have in Him. Our goal is to deliver
health, hope, and dignity to every woman we serve.
I will probably never know what could have prevented Mercy’s mother’s death, but I want to do
whatever I can to keep it from happening to other women.

If you’d like to learn more about Mercy for Mamas, you can visit our website,
https://mercyformamas.com/

You can also follow us on Facebook and Instagram.”

All photos taken with permission from mercyformamas.com and their social media accounts.