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| Our guest blogger, Laura McGarvey, a senior social work major from Indiana Wesleyan University. |
This semester I have
been placed at Mirembe House for my senior social work practicum. Throughout my time there I have grown
tremendously and have been blessed by the people I have encountered and the
ways in which I have been able to be involved. I have loved getting to know the
girls, teaching life skill and discipleship classes, as well as counseling some
of the clients.
Mirembe House is a
crisis pregnancy center for teen girls in Kampala, the capital city of Uganda. Many of them have been displaced from their
homes or villages because of the shame their pregnancy has caused their
family or community. Because they are
left with nowhere to go, Mirembe House offers them a place to stay. The ministry, part of Youth for Christ
International, provides the girls with individual and group counseling,
vocational training, life skills education, parenting classes, and Bible
studies. The girls stay at Mirembe until
they deliver their baby; re-unification of the family is the end goal. The heart and mission of the organization is
for these girls to encounter Christ and find forgiveness and freedom in Him.
Throughout my time at
Mirembe, I have come to understand more fully the importance of being
intentional in getting to know my clients in order to establish trust. Due to what so many of them have gone
through, building trust is essential in forming relationships. It takes time, but getting to know them by
showing interest in who they are gives them value and purpose, which is integral
since at the core we are all human and desire to be known and loved. While the teenage girls are at Mirembe, they
are cared for and constantly reminded that they have incredible value. This then creates a sense of self-worth and
impacts not only how they see themselves, but also how they view their babies.
A few
weeks ago I had the amazing opportunity to be a part of a reunion for women who
had lived at Mirembe and are now a part of the Starfish Program which sponsors
the mothers and their children to go to school. It was great being able to meet the mothers
who had gone through Mirembe's program and hear their testimonies regarding the impact
the organization had on them as well as how they encountered Christ through
their time there. At the beginning of
the reunion, the women were divided up into groups to discuss the theme of that
day which was hope, and I was asked last minute to lead one of the groups. At first I was nervous about how I was going
to use up all the time allotted to talk about hope, but the women engaged
really well and were able to share about what hope meant to them. They talked about how God
brought, and continues to bring, hope to their circumstances. It was truly a humbling experience since I
was leading a discussion on hope but yet they had a clearer understanding of
hope than I have ever had. They blessed
me tremendously, and it was great to see what God has been doing in their lives
now since their time at Mirembe House. I
have never met women with so much hope, not because they have never experienced
the challenges of the darkness, but rather because they understand it all too
well. The hard times in their lives have
allowed them to experience hope in a beautiful way.
Another
wonderful opportunity I was given recently was to go to the hospital to visit
one of the girls who had recently delivered her baby. Through this experience I was able to gain a
better understanding of some of the difficulties present for the teenage girls
at Mirembe who are away from their families, have minimal resources for
themselves and their child, and are learning for the first time as teenagers
how to parent.
When we arrived back at Mirembe from the hospital, there
was much excitement as the staff and also the girls were ecstatic to hold the
baby. We then gathered around the new
mom and her newborn child and I was asked to pray a prayer of blessing over
them. I felt so humbled to be able to
have the privilege to pray over the life of this newborn baby and her mom. As we gathered around, it was such a
beautiful picture of community and the African value of collectivism and
relying on one another. No one is alone
on their journey, and that was evidenced during this experience as I saw the
whole community of Mirembe helping to care for the child and her mother through
this new, exciting, and scary chapter of her life. As I stood there holding the baby in my arms,
it truly struck me how God brings such beauty and hope out of brokenness. I feel incredibly blessed and humbled to be
able to do my social work practicum at an organization which truly cares for
these teenage girls who are hurting and desires, above all else for them to
encounter Christ and find forgiveness and freedom in Him. There is nothing more beautiful than knowing and
believing that truth.
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