This past weekend I attended the two-day training to be a counselor at the Crisis Pregnancy Center!

The training was phenomenal and I enjoyed every minute of sitting in class. I had not sat in a class, as the student, in over five years and it was fun to be learning new information that I will apply soon at the Center.

The director had given me a copy of the Manuel weeks ago and had asked me to read two of the chapters. I didn’t stop with those two chapters and at the training last weekend, I was so glad I had already familiarized myself with the majority of the material because a lot of material was covered in those two days.

Now, I am so excited to actually get started as a counselor! I feel I have all the head knowledge I could possibly need and it is time to jump in and apply what I have learned to actual counseling sessions with clients.

It is a little nerve-wracking to think about talking to a client on my own, but I know I won’t ever feel comfortable doing this unless I just start doing it!

I will now go through Orientation at the specific Center I will be volunteering at and then once that is complete, I can start to counsel women one-on-one.

There is a program for clients who choose adoption. Once a woman decides she wants to make an adoption plan for her baby, she is paired with a counselor who walks that journey with her. The counselor is involved in every aspect of her adoption process – from doctor appointments to delivery – and I would absolutely love to eventually get into volunteering in that program.

One aspect of the training over the weekend that I enjoyed most was really gaining a better understanding of the overall focus of the Center: it is to show God’s love to others.

The Center is there to meet women who may find themselves in a crisis pregnancy and in loving, compassionate ways, educate them on their options so that they can make a decision they can hopefully live with for the rest of their lives.

We are not there to judge them or to persuade them to make a particular choice for their baby.

We are there to demonstrate God’s love to them while educating them on a decision that will affect the rest of their lives.

I also particularly enjoyed the last two sessions of the training because the instructor taught us step-by-step how to counsel a woman on her first visit to the Center.

It is very important that the counselor be sensitive to her immediate needs and address those immediate needs before diving into deeper issues at hand.

If the client is open and in an emotional state to be able to take in and begin processing information about abortion and adoption, we can begin to educate her on these topics through our words and brochures.

What happens after that visit is the Lord’s work. We are just the vessels He uses to hopefully make these women aware of abortion procedures and that adoption is completely different than what it was two and three decades ago.

After the initial visit, we hope the client will return again for an ultrasound to be able to see her baby (90% of women do not choose abortion once they have seen the baby on ultrasound) and for further counseling sessions as the woman processes information and makes a decision about what she wants to do concerning her pregnancy.

I feel tremendously blessed that God has called me to this place. I am somewhat nervous getting started, but I know that is just a matter of needing to get my feet wet and start actually counseling women as they come into the Center.

I know the Lord goes before me in this work. He has been preparing me to do this work for the past five years as I walked through my own crisis in life.

I am now as ready as I’ll ever be to just get started!

- Elaine