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"Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers." Galatians 6:9-10 This month this verse keeps showing up in my life. It is an encouragement to me to keep seeking the Lord, following Him, letting Him strengthen me to carry out the good He has called me to. Sometimes when moving from place to place, changing time zones, and having multiple meetings, it is easy to become weary but the promise of harvest spurs me on. The rest of my time in Uganda was filled in several ways. First, we facilitated our first Community of Practice (COP) in Jinja. The goal in a COP is to bring together facilitators, mental health professionals, administrators, and advocates from ministries and churches that work with trauma survivors for networking, collaboration, professional development, encouragement, and prayer. This builds momentum for trauma healing in a country or area. We have now been involved in Trauma Healing in Jinja for 3.5 years so this was a perfect opportunity to come together and talk through successes and challenges faced. We held an Advanced Equipping where I mentored and coached two Training Facilitators who moved on as Master Facilitators after this training. Both have a huge passion for Trauma Healing and ideas for seeing it grow in other parts of Uganda. I also went through an Orientation for the Audio Version of Trauma Healing. This will help those groups where literacy is an issue. They have the materials translated in Amharic, therefore, I was able to take the training to Ethiopia and pass it on to 9 others. The feedback from several of them is the audio is an answer to prayer as they were trying to determine how to do healing groups in their context but were unsure the way forward. I love how the Lord provides as He knows what the needs are before we do. The rest of my time in Ethiopia was spent in missionary care meetings in Addis and in Soddo. As well, my time overlapped with a team, and more importantly friends, from my home church. It was great to spend some time with them, serving at Compassion Family International. I missed last year as I was in Thailand so it was a joy to get to be with them and to be reminded of how hearts are touched when it is their first time here. February also brought time in Florida, piloting the 2nd Strength from Weakness group (9 new lessons developed by the Trauma Healing Institute). The feedback we had was phenomenal as it gave an opportunity to go deeper into layers of hurt and trauma and see the Lord continue to meet each person where they are at for healing. My heart keeps being tugged to do more and more within Trauma Healing as there is such great value because I see the Lord right in the center of it. And in my free time this month, I worked on developing protocols for a missionary care crisis response team. It has been a full and joyful month! Thank you for your continued love and support, Misty Prayer requests and praises:
 For missionaries living overseas, sometimes a little joy comes from finding potato chips that we would eat in the USA!! Would you prayerfully consider becoming a partner of Misty Bodkins in 2020? There are 2 ways you may donate to Misty at Ministry Care. You can make checks payable to “Ministry Care” and send them to:
Ministry Care 14934 Pacer Ct. Carmel, IN 46032 Or you can also make an online donation, using Givelify, on our website at www.ministrycareinternational.org Ministry Care is a 501c3 therefore your donation will be tax deductible. If you have any questions feel free to email us as [email protected]
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"There are not enough mental health professionals to meet the immense need for comfort and to teach basic emotional strategies that can bring relief and healing to people in our communities-including children and teens. This is how the church can help." Excerpt from the Life Hurts, Love Heals curriculum. Trauma is part of the human experience in the broken world. Trauma happens when a person is overwhelmed with fear, helplessness, or horror in the face of death or threat of death. This affects their psychological, physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. This is the tragedy of trauma:
Which brings up our central questions. How do people recover from trauma? Can the Bible help? What can the church do? You know I have been involved in the adult and teen curriculum for Healing the Wounds of Trauma. This month, I also had the opportunity to participate in the children's version. Why is Children’s Trauma Healing Needed? Whenever a community is traumatized, children suffer, but often they are without a voice and their heart wounds go untreated. Children have some basic needs: safety, structure, order, protection, comfort, intimacy, adults they can trust, autonomy, and control of their lives. But when there is trauma, it fills their formative years with violence, abandonment, neglect, chaos, unpredictability, danger, cruelty, abuse, boundary violation, and exploitation. Living in the present, children have no backdrop of the past to help them under stand what has happened. Because they believe adults are good, often they conclude they are responsible for bad things that happen. They have great difficulty articulating their inner pain because their language skills are still in development. When adults don’t know how to help traumatized children, their response is one of frustration, which only increases the child’s pain and despair. This is where the Children's Training in Healing the Wounds of Trauma can help. In Uganda, we did a 3-day classroom training with 26 adults and then facilitated a 5-day Healing Hearts Club camp with 84 kids from the ages of 8 to 13 in attendance. It was a long 8 days but beautiful in how we saw the Lord work, including 7 of those children giving their lives to Christ. We are thankful for the facilitation team who made it possible, Good Shepherd's Fold for hosting the event, and the Trauma Healing Institute for continuing to develop tools for our tool kits in helping those whose hearts have been wounded! Thank you to my partners in the states for making it possible for both me and Rumbi to attend!! Thank you for your continued love and support, Misty Prayer requests and praises:
Would you prayerfully consider becoming a partner of Misty Bodkins in 2020? There are 2 ways you may donate to Misty at Ministry Care. You can make checks payable to “Ministry Care” and send them to:
Ministry Care 14934 Pacer Ct. Carmel, IN 46032 Or you can also make an online donation, using Givelify, on our website at www.ministrycareinternational.org Ministry Care is a 501c3 therefore your donation will be tax deductible. If you have any questions feel free to email us as [email protected] |
AuthorMisty Bodkins has a Master's degree in clinical psychology. She has worked both stateside and internationally doing counseling, training, teaching, and research. Her passion is working with people who are in crisis. Archives
October 2024
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