Visiting a shelter for pregnant women

Thursday 15th of September

This morning we met with Bao and Claude and had a long taxi ride to district 9 to visit a shelter for pregnant women. It was good to catch up with them and we had a good chat in the taxi.
The shelter is in a house, which is just over one year old, and it is in the back yard of a doctor’s sugary. At the time we met five women, two were in hospital giving birth. The caregiver was an elderly lady and she kept the place spick and span, it looked like a hotel. Rooms and kitchen were stretched over four levels.










Bao (left) explaining the shelter to us, cargiver with baby (right)

The women all looked very happy, the youngest was just 18, but we were told some are as young as 14. Some women keep the babies and then settle into a new life with the baby, others stay at the shelter for 2 – 3 weeks and then give the baby up. That must be extremely hard … Bao is then taking care of the child and finding suitable carers.



Claude, Bao's husband at the shelter



Studying the bible ...



Women during bible study

Bao is sixty years old and at the moment she has got five children at home, we visited her last week after we went to the orphan shelters she and Claude are organising and looking after. Funding is always a problem;
IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO H E L P - E A S Y ... TALK TO US!!!

In the afternoon we met with Bob, our American friend who lives in HCMC. Had not seen Bob since we arrived, so we had a good chinwag and lots of laughs and interesting stories. Then we went to STELLA’s restaurant wher Bob had his favourite ginger chicken. Hien was supposed to come as well, but she was late … busy business woman. Then she finally arrived with her new assistant Dao, they came on Dao’s Honda. Apparently she is is a very good scooter driver. Interesting discussion about future projects and charity activities.

ZEOD … old command good old IBM /360 DOS system, telling the machine .E O D end of day!!! Funny how one suddenly one remembers those odd things.