Hope crisis pregnancy center changes lives
- Sep 6, 2007 - comment
Felicia Gonzales* is all smiles as she opens a huge pile of presents for her new baby girl, scheduled to be born in less than a week. The baby shower is a first for the young mother of three.
Gonzales is one of many women in the Pine Bluff area whose lives have been changed by the ministry of Hope Women’s Resource Center (HWRC). The crisis pregnancy center is featured in this year’s Dixie Jackson Offering for State Missions promotional information.
Baby showers are just one of many ways HWRC ministers to women.
In addition to providing free pregnancy tests, the center also counsels the women to choose life for their unborn children. “When the test is positive, we try to show [the mother] the blessedness of her child,” says Debra Burchfield, HWRC director.
If the pregnancy test is negative, counselors talk to the women about living a life of purity. “We also use the opportunity to share Christ with them,” says Burchfield.
Recently, Burchfield launched a new program called “Women of Integrity,” which is designed to help the women who have decided to carry their unborn child to term. Through this program, expectant mothers meet once a week for life skills and spiritual training. When participants attend classes, they receive “Mommy Bucks” to “spend” at the center’s store for baby clothes, formula, diapers, toys and other necessities.
HWRC also offers post abortion counseling, mentoring and sexual purity training in churches and schools.
The battle for the lives of unborn children is “a war we’ve been called to fight in,” says Burchfield.
“We have become apathetic in the church,” she continues. “Most people don’t know there’s one abortion every 24 seconds here in the U.S.”
The clinic needs volunteers to do a variety of tasks like administering pregnancy tests, teaching classes on purity and other topics, taking care of children for women in the “Women of Integrity” training program and driving a van.
Burchfield is no stranger to hardships in her life. Following a failed marriage and the death of her two-month-old child to sudden death syndrome, she and her second husband became involved in drugs. Both were eventually sentenced to 25 years in prison. During the trial, she tried to commit suicide but failed.
When she was on her way to prison, Burchfield says God asked her, “Where will you turn now? Where will you run?”
Through the ministry of prison chaplains like Christina Gates, Burchfield began to learn “wonderful things from the Word of God.”
In 2004, Burchfield was released from prison 15 years before her sentence was finished. She began working at HWRC. When the former director resigned, Burchfield was asked to take over the position.
“I now have a life I never dreamed possible,” she says. “My children and other family members have a brand new Debra.
“My children will tell you they are grateful for my prison stay, that two-and-a-half years was a small price to pay for the life we have now.
“Prison was a blessing for me.”
*name changed
This article is reprinted from the September 6, 2007, issue of the Arkansas Baptist News, the newsjournal of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention.
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