A New Ministry - wow!

It's been a while since I've posted. I just noticed that it was last Sept that I blogged something. I've been substituting and thoroughly enjoying it (getting paid). It's pretty easy money. Like, tomorrow, I'll be subbing for 1.5 hrs (1 class) but they only pay subs half days or whole days, so I get paid a half day to be in there 1.5 hrs! Basically, I'll leave early in the morning, do my thing, then get home by 9:40am - SWEET!

Church has been consistently OVER 100 in attendance! It's been pretty exciting to see more people get plugged in. We did do the second in the series of Rick Warren's 40 day campaigns (40 days of community). During that campaign, each life group had to choose a ministry to get involved in. Our wednesday night ladies group decided to adopt a special new ministry.

It's a ministry that only exists in one part of the country, right now. I'm sure they'd like it to expand, wherever! The idea is they train women to become a "friend" of a woman who has an unplanned pregnancy. We just want to be there for this woman, help her with needs she may have, give her information about adoption, abortion, parenthood - whatever. They are NOT the same as Crisis Pregnancy Centers (which are awesome), but do work hand-in-hand with them. We aim for long-term relationships, whereas CPC's do what they can at the beginning and also meet during certain hours. We don't pressure the woman to do anything. We just make sure that the woman is informed of all of her choices, and let her know we'll be there for her during the whole pregnancy and postpartum.

So, our life group was able to set up a training time with this ministry, and we had 11 ladies trained! This has gotten us really excited. I knew that I wouldn't mind doing this ministry because I was adopted, received the benefits of adoption, and would gladly try to comfort a woman trying to make that difficult decision. I wasn't sure how anyone else in the group would feel, though. It soon came out that 4 of the ladies in our group had had abortions before. Another lady took the morning after pill, and another lady placed her child for adoption. The average household income, here, is double the average US income. Was this the ministry for us or what?

So, one lady is an ultrasound technician in our local hospital. She asked her supervisor if she could keep these pamphlets around, as a resource. The supervisor said, no, the hospital has plenty of resources. A teenager came in with a bloated stomach - turned out she was 24 weeks pregnant! She decided that she wanted to have an abortion. The supervisor asked our lady for the pamphlets, of which she had none, but promptly called her dh to get the information. We didn't know if we'd ever find out if this teen would call this ministry.

We had a second training session (about 12 of us were there). During the training, the trainer gave a very recent example where a teen had called and said she already had an appt to have an abortion. They talked and that was it. Half an hour before the abortion appt, she dropped by this ministry office INSTEAD, and got more information about alternatives. She chose not to have an abortion!

There were some personal details to the story that got us realizing that this was the same teen our lady had seen at the hospital!! Of course all of us began crying when we realized the connection! It simply amazed us that God would allow us to see the end result - and it be such a positive result!!

If you'd like to know what ministry I'm talking about, please let me know and I'll email you the information. There are a lot of privacy issues, so I felt I shouldn't provide any hints of who may be involved or where we live.