He Heals the Brokenhearted

Losing family is never an easy thing to walk through. It is even harder if it comes in the form of a terrifying genocide that ravages your community and home. Yet, it was in the midst terrors and trials of this magnitude that God met Patricia Mukankwiro.

Patricia, a student in the current class at Divine Providence Training Center, was born in western Uganda in 1970. When her father passed away, her mother moved her and her two younger siblings to Rwanda. In 1994, genocide wrecked the nation, and Patricia lost her entire family.

Following the genocide, Patricia moved herself to Kenya and found a place to live in Kibera slum, where she still lives today, and began to search for a way to make a living and support herself. God made a way for her to attend a dressing and tailoring school at the institute of tailoring and cutting in Nairobi, and ever since, this has been her trade. Stitching together the fabrics, she says, is a constant reminder of how this craft helps keep her body and soul together.

In 1999, Patricia was in a road accident that badly injured her leg, and the doctors recommended amputation. As she sat in her wheelchair at the hospital desperately wanting her leg to heal, there was a certain pastor who would visit her regularly to pray for healing for her body and soul. It was through his guidance that she came to a saving faith in Jesus Christ, and later understood her own calling to minister to the sick in the hospital.

Starting in 2006, Patricia began visiting hospitals to preach to and pray with the sick and hurting. Beginning at Mbagathi Hospital, she later expanded her ministry to other hospitals in the city, including Kenyatta National Hospital and Mathari Hospital. She still visits these hospitals today and will proudly pull out her stack of images to show you of all the people she has prayed for over the years as they lay in their hospital beds.

Though her leg did get better, God had still more healing to do for Patricia and her story. Patricia’s chaotic and challenging life had made it so that she could not attend school at a high school level, and when she had the opportunity to join the Divine Providence Training Center class of 2018, she did not know that the program would minister to her in more ways than one. Upon starting class at DPTC, Patricia felt wounded and alone. Most of her life had been spent crying and blaming herself for the things that had gone wrong. Throughout the early classes, she would often begin crying out of frustration that she could not understand much of what was communicated during the lectures.

By God’s grace and faithfulness, she made a friend, Anne Mwagiru, another student in the class. Anne took in Patricia and they became family very quickly. During their first year, Patricia had to have a small operation on her stomach, and Anne took her into her home, cared for her, and nursed her back to health. Through the students and community she has gained at DPTC, God has begun to heal Patricia’s heart. Now, instead of finding her crying during a lecture, she is one of the most outgoing and jovial students in the class of 2018! God brought her to DPTC for more than school, but to remind Patricia and all of us who He really is. He is a Father who heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds, and sometimes He does this through the hands or prayers of a friend.

Now Patricia, by the grace of God and the faithfulness of friends and donors, will graduate this November with the Divine Providence Training Center’s Class of 2018. To make this training possible for other individuals like Patricia, please consider supporting a pastor today!