For nearly 20 years, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), led by Joseph Kony, has waged a bitter war against the Ugandan government. More than 10 years ago, the LRA began abducting children as young as 7 or 8 years old. The rebel group forced these children to fight, brainwashing them and teaching them to kill. Many of the young girls who were abducted were given to LRA commanders as “wives.” It is estimated that more than 80 percent of the LRA members are children.
For many years, Food for the Hungry has been working in Northern Uganda assisting displaced families. Recently, God gave a vision to Janet Shaver to start a new program for abducted girls who have children by LRA commanders. This is the New Life Center in Kitgum, a holistic rehabilitation center for child mothers. Many of the girls who were abducted into the LRA were used as sex slaves, a number of them producing children at a very young age. By God’s grace, some of these child mothers escaped, only to face rejection, discrimination and loneliness in their own communities.
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| | Mary, a formerly abducted child mother and her son, with Janet Shaver, the founder of New Life Center. |
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New Life Center is a four-month residential holistic rehabilitation program for child mothers and their children. The term holistic refers to the meeting of physical (medical), spiritual (Christian counseling), emotional (trauma counseling) and mental (literacy/income skills classes) needs. The women and their children will receive biblical trauma counseling from Ugandans, many of whom were also former abductees. The counselors have undergone their own personal healing and have been trained with the necessary tools to love these women through their pain and into freedom.
"We hope to introduce them to the healer, who can free them from their shame and the prison they have been locked inside,” said Janet Shaver, founder of New Life Center. She said the center is called “New Life” because in Christ, the broken-hearted are healed, ashes turn to beauty and mourning becomes dancing. Christ’s wounds and resurrection prove that these abused and crushed women can be given new life. And in that, there is great rejoicing.
No longer will violence be heard in your land, nor ruin or destruction within your borders, but you will call your walls Salvation and your gates Praise. Your sun will never set again, and your moon will wane no more; the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of sorrow will end." (Isaiah 60:18, 20)
The first group of women and their children arrive this month. God’s faithfulness is evident and beautiful in how this center came into being, and His passion for redemption is alive and true. We are overjoyed to witness what the Lord will do and is doing through the New Life Center and all the programs Food for the Hungry is blessed to carry out in Northern Uganda.
"We thank the Lord for what He is doing. He is here"
Janet Shaver, Founder, New Life Center
