Mission Stories

April 8th, 2003

Julita’s Miracle
By Melissa Sissons
(as told to me by Jodi Mcdaniels and Dave Hosick)

   It was 1:00 a.m. on the campus of Kimbia Mission Academy.  Jodi rested quietly in her bed after a long day of teaching her 60 students.  Her husband Warren, the school administrator was in Georgetown and would be traveling back shortly with the Sissons family.  It is tiring to perform the responsibilities of campus administration alone, so she welcomed the night’s peace and solitude. 
   “Suddenly, I just sat up in bed.  I thought I heard a baby crying.  Then I listened again.  It was when I heard the girls screaming near the pit toilet that I jumped from bed and just started running” said Jodi.
   “I was so confused” stated Dave.  “I just heard all these girls yelling and screaming with complete chaos just outside my bedroom window.  I immediately thought someone had been bit by a snake.  Just recently in Pariuma we dealt with a snake bite so I ran from my bed and down the stairs ready to help.  As I reached the corner I met Jodi running full speed.  I joined her in the sprint”
   The night was pitching black with no moon to cast its glow.  By now the entire campus was awake as well as villagers across the river due to the pandemonium.  Jodi and Dave met a group of hysterical girls near the pit toilet yelling “Miss, Miss…Julita…she had a baby…in the toilet.”  Sure enough, there was the infants’ piercing cry bellowing up from muck beneath.  There was no time to stop and comprehend the ghastly situation.  Immediately, the infant had to be rescued from the six foot abyss and the young mother assessed. 
   Julita came to Kimbia Mission Academy from a mountainous village named Kopinang west of the Berbice river region.  At the age of 15, she is barely over four feet tall and has the classic Amerindian petite frame.  She is a wonderful student with an addictive giggle and bubbly yet mousey persona.  She quietly and bravely smuggled her developing pregnancy through a majority of the school year.  She never asked for help, never complained, and never told the faculty or the nurse.  The day she went into labor, she was in the school garden digging irrigation trenches as diligently as her male classmates.  In the night she cried into her pillow on her bunk bed in the dorm until the girl’s dean was brought to her side.  Assuming it was gas pains, the dean went to boil her some tea.  That is when Julita walked herself through the inky midnight with some friends to the toilet and proceeded to deliver her child.  The girls heard the moaning as they stood waiting for her outside the stall.  Then they heard a final groan, a heavy splash, and the instant cry of a new born baby.  “Julita!  Was that a baby! What is going on?  Julita…?”  They screamed at her.  “I don’t know, I don’t know” Julita mumbled back in confusion.
   “I have seen a lot of things in my many years of mission work” said Dave.  “But I knew this one would only take divine intervention for life not to be lost.  I immediately began to pray.  We were all praying if not yelling our prayers out to God.  I heard Jodi crying ‘Lord Jesus help us’ over and over again.  I hollered for the chainsaw and then it hit me to get two rakes to scoop up the baby.  I will never forget those moments.”
   “I beamed my flashlight down deep into the hole of the toilet and saw the tiny infant laying on its back, crying.” Jodi remembers.  “Praise the Lord it was on it’s back.  The umbilical cord had been snapped during the fall.  I held the light while Dave maneuvered the two rakes down and around the infant’s body.  Unfortunately the cheap rakes had been purchased in Georgetown which meant each head had been broken in half, opposite halves.  This made it all the more difficult for Dave, but he was able to bring the baby near the top.  I was shouting orders left and right for hot water, towels, and for someone to get Pearl the health worker.  Someone even ran and raided Abigail’s clothes in the Sisson’s home.  I knew Melissa would understand.  It was utter chaos.”
  “The baby was right there at the top of the hole but Jodi and I just couldn’t get at the baby between the angle of the rake handles and holding the light.  In one horrible second the baby slipped from our grasp and plunged back into the darkness, face down.  We were devastated.  Jodi was hollering ‘if we can’t get that baby in the next minute, I’m jumping down inside myself.’  I decided to give it one more shot, but I asked someone to fire up the chainsaw just in case we had to cut open the toilet and dive in.  In what seemed like an eternity, we brought up the baby again and this time Jodi grabbed it”, sighs Dave.  In actuality the whole incident from birth to rescue was less than 10 astounding minutes. 
   Jodi swaddled the infant, a baby girl, and rushed it to her home to clean off the sewage and crawling maggots.  The health worker arrived and attended to a shaken and traumatized young mother.  The cord was finally clamped and cut and Julita finished the delivery of her placenta with the health workers assistance.  No one slept that night.  There were many tears and blank stares into the moonless sky.  What had just happened?  How would this change our life here on campus?  What will become of Julita and her new little girl? 
   When Nurse Melissa arrived on campus later that same evening, the baby and mother received a full assessment.  Amazingly, not one complication could be found.  The baby weighed in at 3 ½ pounds and was 17 inches long.  She had a full head of jet black hair and had no trouble catching on to breastfeeding.  Young Julita and baby were transported to Georgetown where she will eventually be flown back to start a new and challenging life in her village.  There is no doubt we serve an almighty God who is constantly there to deliver us from the muck and mire of this sinful world.  Praise Jesus!
           
“I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry.  He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.”
Psalm 40:1-2.