God sees us when we are brokenhearted and when we are crushed in spirit, and He remains close to us (Psalm 34:18). Although we cannot see Him or we might feel like we are all alone, there is hope. “For no one is cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to anyone,” Lamentations 3:31-33. Lakot Beatrice has experienced much grief in her life, but the Lord did not abandon her to suffer. He opened a door for her to know Him and to find refuge in Him through the Women’s Refuge Center (WRC) at Abaana’s Hope.
The WRC is a three-year program designed to provide discipleship, counseling, Biblical truth, shelter, and vocational training to women in need and their children. Before Beatrice entered the WRC, she had never heard the gospel.
Beatrice was born in 1991. She’s Acholi by tribe from Gulu, Uganda. She was raised by her grandmother because her parents died when she was a young child. Her elderly grandmother did all she could to help the family survive, but they faced many difficulties. Beatrice did not have the opportunity to receive an education.
As a teenager, Beatrice married her first husband and gave birth to a baby girl. Shortly afterwards, this husband abandoned Beatrice, so she and her baby returned to live with her grandmother. She married a second time and had three more children. Two of these children were born with sickle cell and the oldest child died from the disease at the age of four years old.
After facing abuse from her second husband, he also abandoned Beatrice after their oldest child passed away, saying there was no reason for him to stay. Beatrice and her children, again, returned to the care of her grandmother who had gone blind.
Then another man came to ask Beatrice for her hand in marriage. She told him that she couldn’t leave her grandmother because of her declining health and because there was no one else to care for her. He told Beatrice that he would come and stay with her and her grandmother. They eventually got married and had two children. Beatrice’s grandmother passed away while she was pregnant with the second child.
During this pregnancy, Beatrice had complications. She went to a hospital in town and the doctors told her the baby wasn’t breathing and was no longer alive. They gave her some medicine to help push the baby out. That day, Beatrice’s husband took their stillborn child and buried the baby near his family home.
The following day, Beatrice was discharged from the hospital, and she stayed in town with her mother-in-law while her husband returned to Kimora. One day later, Beatrice received word that her husband was found dead inside their home in Kimora, and no one knew why. Beatrice’s third husband was buried next to their child in town.
