Good evening District 27. Last Thursday I attended the Black Hills Pregnancy Center’s 2024 Life Dinner in Rapid City with over 400 people in attendance. It was a great event to attend. I am grateful for the invite as it is a great way to actively promote a culture of life in Western South Dakota. The funds raised from this event will support all the great work the staff are doing at the Black Hills Pregnancy Center (PRC). Since January, the pregnancy center has been responsible for saving the lives of 36 children from abortion. The PRC has no income requirements. It is a welcoming place with a support team that fosters a positive experience filled with encouragement, hope, faith, and love. To learn more about the Black Hills Pregnancy Center, I invite you to check out their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/BlackHillsPregnancyCenter
The Black Hills Pregnancy Center has a goal of purchasing a new building since they have outgrown their current space. The PRC will use the funds from the Life Dinner to support the ongoing programs offered at the PRC including the purchase of their new building.
One of the programs that were highlighted at the evening dinner was the Fatherhood Program which promotes a generational change, or paradigm shift, in making better choices. Expectant and new fathers are expected to actively attend and participate in classes that provide them with the necessary parenting skills to provide for the infant’s basic needs as the child matures. The PRC showed a brief video presentation of a family that had benefitted from the Fatherhood Program.
The main presenter of the evening was Pastor John Bornschein. Pastor John’s 27 years of ministry include his “time as a missionary, senior pastor and service with Mission of Mercy (now One Child), Focus on the Family and the National Day of Prayer Task Force (NDP)” (1). Pastor John provided the audience with five reasons why we should support the good work that is being done at the Black Hills Pregnancy Center including:
The PRC provides a holistic approach to pastoring to a woman with an unintended pregnancy. The center focuses on the whole person: body and soul and how the person of Jesus Christ loves each person right where they are.
The PRC upholds the sanctity of life and promotes the Christian value that each human being is made in the “image and likeness of God” (Gen 1:26). Each human being is cherished and beloved by God.
The PRC protects the most vulnerable, especially the unborn and those who are coerced into having an abortion. Pastor John said, upon having a child, you are “A mom for life.”
The PRC support team is the “boots on the ground” to provide the necessary emotional, physical, and spiritual one-on-one support that is needed during this vulnerable time when the unborn child’s life is at risk.
The PRC, like the pregnancy center in the Bay Area that helped Pastor John’s mom, is a safety net for women with an unplanned pregnancy.
As Pastor John said, “My mother would cry herself to sleep,” because of the shame and guilt she experienced as a woman who was traumatized from the many years of living a lie after having three abortions before choosing to keep her fourth child. As Pastor John said, “No child is an accident.” Pastor John described in his testimony how it was providential that his mother was driving and heard an infomercial on the radio about a pregnancy center located in the Bay Area. His mother chose to follow her instinct to check it out and there she would be offered an ultrasound and hear her child’s heartbeat. The pregnancy center offered her hope and love. The center provided her with the necessary assistance with the pregnancy and provided her with assistance after John’s birth.
Pastor John would go on with his story as to how he and his mother were sent to Texas where he was raised in a Christian community and later became a pastor. John mentioned that his mother carried the wounds of shame for 40 years which affected her walk with God. She would later be reconciled with the Lord by attending “Bridges of Hope” classes offered at a nearby pregnancy center. Here John’s mother was able to offer up her traumatic life experience by turning it into a greater good by working as a trained volunteer at a pregnancy center to provide emotional support for expectant mothers. By assisting at a pregnancy center, John’s mother finally found the healing and peace that she needed and no longer suffered from the emotional pain and guilt that she had experienced in her earlier years.
Pastor John then shared with the audience another providential witness to faith when he received a phone call from his stepsister. Pastor John did not know he had a stepsister, but she had learned about Pastor John through her father – Pastor John’s biological father. Pastor John then described how he flew out to the Bay Area to meet up with his stepsister and his biological father before he passed away. Pastor John shared with the audience a photo of this reunion with his biological father.
As if God was not done in revealing his plan, Pastor John then shared with the audience that he got married, and to this marriage, he and his wife would have five children. Pastor John also said he has three grandchildren. Pastor John mentioned in his speech that he and his wife would be faced with the ultimate decision of their life: to abort one of their children. Pastor John mentioned how he and his wife were expecting their child and the doctors recommended that she have an abortion since she had already been stage four with cervical cancer. Both Pastor John and his wife decided that they would not abort their child and turn it over to God in prayer. Pastor John shared with the audience the miraculous conclusion that his child was born healthy and his wife was free of cervical cancer upon having the baby. To close out his presentation, Pastor John said that we are to provide hope by being “Watchmen on the Wall” as revealed in Ezekiel 3:17 “to remain vigilant, watchful, and dedicated to the spiritual journey” (2).
After the dinner and presentation, each audience member prayed asking for the Holy Spirit to guide and to place upon their heart what would be considered an appropriate dollar amount to donate to the to the Black Hills Pregnancy Center. I left the center with my heart (and tummy) filled with joy knowing that many people are called upon to do God’s work in his vineyard to provide the hope, care, and compassion that is so desperately needed in today’s world. Knowing that, I obliged to make a considerable donation and have no regrets because I know, it will save the life of a child, like it saved Pastor John's life. God bless.
Sources:
2. https://www.christianity.com/wiki/bible/what-does-the-bible-say-about-the-watchman-on-the-wall.html
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