Empower recently facilitated a training for the staff of Sonrise Ministries in Jinga, Uganda. Sonrise started as a home for orphan babies in 2009. It has since grown into a Baby Village, a Children’s Village, a Home for street girls, and three community schools. Running all these ministry operations is a work of love for the staff, many of whom were themselves orphans in Jinja—orphans with positive stories of the love they received in the local Christian home where they grew up. Here is a report on our recent training there from Linda Ikeda, Director of Created to Belong for Empower.
By Linda M. Ikeda, RN, MFT
Director of Created to Belong
Four years ago, I was invited by Dr. Janelle Aby to present trainings from the Created to Belong and Healing from Trauma workbooks, to the 120 Sonrise Ministries staff members in Jinga, Uganda. We made plans, secured funding, but then the Covid pandemic shut everything down.
Fast forward to the fall of 2023 when Janelle and I met for coffee and started to dream again. During the previous three years, my health status had changed and travel to Africa was no longer a possibility for me. We discussed possible alternate options, given the current realities, and a light bulb went off….
The vision of Empower International Ministries has always been to equip leaders in developing and historically non-Christian countries to become positive change agents in their own communities. There were no Ugandans adequately trained in Created to Belong or Healing from Trauma to teach the curriculum. We wondered if anyone else was experienced and well trained enough to conduct the trainings?
The light bulb idea….
Pastor Arnold Mphulupulu Phiri was first “discovered” by Dr. Sally Bryant in 2010 when he translated her training in the New Man, New Woman, New Life curriculum in the country of Malawi. Over the years since, he and Sally have taught together throughout Malawi and even developed new teacher training curriculum among other projects. In 2014, Sally began encouraging me to begin taking the CTB/HFT curriculum to Malawi. During my five subsequent trips there, Arnold was a key translator and eventually became a trusted facilitator in his own right of all of Empower’s materials. In fact, he has been on our African Staff as the Director of EIM in Malawi for nearly five years.
With EIM’s blessing, Janelle and I asked Arnold if he would be willing to take a team of other Malawian facilitators trained by him to Jinga, to do the training for Sonrise. He was willing to take on the challenge, though he had never flown on a plane, didn’t know the Ugandan language (Lugandan) or anyone at Sonrise, and had his own family and ministries to leave behind in Malawi.
In April of 2024, this dream became a reality as Pastor Arnold and his colleague Daniel Phiri Blackson flew to Uganda to conduct a five-day training equipping 100 Sonrise orphanage, ministry and school staff members, as well as a few area pastors, to better understand the needs of traumatized children and adults, as well as the importance of attachment relationships.
Those who attended learned about God’s plan that children be well cared for by their parents as a beginning window into understanding the nature of God’s unconditional love for them; and how when infants and young children are traumatized by separation and other trauma, it actually impacts their brain development; as well as their understanding of God’s love, grace and mercy. Additionally, the attendees also gained practical tools to help children begin to heal from their early losses so that they can become all God intended for them.
Damali Mirembe, Director of Sonrise, and her capable team did an excellent job of organizing a conference center, meals, transportation, translators and other practical aspects which helped the training run smoothly.
Damali had this to say about the training in her follow up evaluation:
“The discussions that were held were helpful. In African society, most people never talk about their own feelings and mental health. By having these conversations together in groups, it really helped us to heal ourselves so that we can go back to the homes/schools and help children who need the same healing. It also helped us to all have a better mindset to help our children when dealing with mental struggles due to trauma of some kind.”
Stateside, Dr. Carrie Miles, President and CEO of Empower International Ministries, facilitated the translation and printing of the workbooks, as well as flight arrangements for the team, a painstaking and invaluable help to the entire process.
The training seemed to bring one miracle after another, including:
- Pastor Arnold and Daniel successfully traveled to Uganda and spent the week teaching, training and responding to the questions of the participants.
- Damali Mirembe and her Sonrise team facilitated the attendance of so many staff and leaders.
- God working through this fabulous group to empower and equip those “on the ground” aiding in the healing and education of the precious children under Sonrise’s care.
As is so often the case, those caregivers who attended personally benefited from the material. They came to understand and make sense of their own traumas and early lives, and began their own healing process, which will help them in their work of guiding children to heal from theirs.
It turns out that the translation of the workbooks into Lugandan was not ideal. So Arnold and Daniel, who speak Chechewa and English, taught in English, and some of the SonRise team translated from English into Lugandan, plus a few other Ugandan languages. That the teaching was so well received and life changing, is yet another example of the hand of God at work. Many participants hope to take the tools they learned to equip their own villages.
And Arnold and Daniel had the awesome experience of their first plane flight, trying to get their minds around how this huge object could stay in the air; an unforgettable experience for them.
Please keep all these folks in your prayers as they seek to use these tools to assist those under their care who have been impacted by separation and other trauma, to become the flourishing, contributing and God honoring individuals God intended.