Despite boasting one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, Zambia is one of the world’s poorest countries. With over sixty percent of the population living under the poverty line, the needs of the children are great. In His goodness, however, God began preparing Barbara for equally great works she never could have dreamed of.
About thirty years ago, Barbara’s husband, Edward, felt the call to ministry, and in 1997, the couple planted Church on the Rock in their home country of Zambia. As a pastor, Edward befriended a missionary who was searching for a woman to take the crisis pregnancy ministry of Silent Voices overseas. But not just any woman would do; this missionary wanted to find a woman who could empathize with those she served. A woman who had lost children of her own.
Barbara had carried nine children. Three of them lived, four died naturally, and two she aborted. Despite coming to a saving faith in Christ and receiving His total forgiveness, Barbara still bore the spiritual scars of these losses. Nevertheless, in faith and with her husband’s enthusiastic support, she traveled to the United States in 1998 to receive training from Silent Voices. During this time, Barbara found the spiritual healing she needed and began her ministry that has allowed her to love and nurture far, far more children than she has lost. “God spoke to me,” she said. “Hey, this is what I [God] have called you to do: to go and help many women.”
The Sara Rose Children’s Foundation (SRCF), named after one of her lost children, is a partner with GlobalFingerprints and has four wings of ministry: the Silent Pregnancy Centre, an orphanage, a feeding project, and a boy’s ranch.
In 1998, crisis pregnancy centers were unheard of in Zambia, but whenever Barbara and Edward felt uncertain, God reassured them. “God empowered us,” Barbara explained. “There was that voice that was just encouraging us to just do it.” This meant not only moving ahead with launching the pregnancy center, but also becoming open about her past abortions, using her own experiences to offer pro-life counseling to pregnant women as young as twelve years old. The center offers ultrasounds and help especially for the many homeless teenagers who turn to them.
Five years later, thanks to the generosity of a stateside church, Barbara and Edward opened an orphanage to take in the children that so many of these homeless mothers were unable to care for. Because of the severe poverty in the area, the orphanage was soon flooded with children, many just dropped at the door without a note. Many were orphans due to the AIDS epidemic, others had living parents who were simply too poor or drunk to care for them, and still others only had other minors as their guardians. Seeing the desperate needs of these endless children led SRCF to begin a feeding program to meet the greatest need of these malnourished children. Since then, Heartbeat International has sustained this program.
Breaking the cycle of teenage parents who are unable to care for their children, however, takes more than offering pregnancy help. To get to the root, promiscuity has to end, and that end begins with a loving, Christian father figure. Alfred, the program manager for the boys’ ranch founded by SRCF in 2010, serves as that father figure to boys as young as five who would otherwise find themselves on the streets: unloved, demonized, and with little to do but to sow their wild oats. But life on the ranch is different. “They were not valued in the streets,” Alfred stated. “Every life is valuable. We have given hope to these children, and I know we’ll share more as we go on.”
Finally, fourteen years after its inception, SRCF partnered with GlobalFingerprints, bringing the EFCA’s discipleship, training, and humanitarian programs to Zambia as well. In addition to sponsoring individual children, GlobalFingerprints has funded projects like constructing a well, providing generators, equipping pastors, and building churches. This work, made possible by our sponsors, has brought transformation to the church, foundation, and community, according to Barbara. “[SRCF and its work with its partners] wasn’t my plan, or Edward’s plan, or anyone’s plan, but God’s plan. Even to this day, we are shocked at what God’s done,” she said.
SRCF is still expanding. “In all that we do, we want to preach Christ to the children so we are ministering to the children in different ways,” Alfred explained. Through sharing the Gospel, food, and education in connection St. Michael’s school, SRCF is reaching not just the children, but their parents as well, starting a church nearby that has seen eight converts already.