Trauma Care Training: Equipping Banyamulenge Leaders for Healing in Louisville

Monday, February 17, 2025, a Trauma Care Convening Session was hosted by Pioneer Bible Translators from 9:00 am to 4:30 pm at Southeast Christian Church, Louisville, Kentucky, USA. Sixteen Banyamulenge participants joined missionaries from Pioneer Bible Translators to learn how the community can heal from trauma. 

The Trauma Care program uses scripture to assist a community in healing from various kinds of “heart wounds.” Pioneer Bible Translators utilizes materials developed by the Trauma Healing Institute to address the effects of trauma and loss with resources that integrate biblical and mental health principles. This program is not a replacement for professional counseling. It is a way for a community to come together in a safe and protected space, working with a facilitator to begin to understand: 

• what trauma is

• how it impacts our lives

• how bringing our pain to Jesus can help us to heal. 

Pioneer Bible is committed to teaching these principles to the Banyamulenge community so that leaders can be trained and healing groups can be formed. 

To begin this process, Trauma Care Directors for Pioneer Bible and the Diaspora Group traveled to Louisville to hold a Convening for Banyamulenge Leaders from the Louisville area. Although the process of healing and training is beginning in Louisville where the KB&L team is based, Pioneer Bible desires that it soon be available in every area where Banyamulenge live.

At the convening session, participants (mostly pastors) experienced an overview of the Trauma Care ministry along with a few sample activities from the program.

As a result of the convening session and further conversations, the following concerns have been noted:

• Pastors and other leaders in the Louisville area agree that all Banyamulenge have suffered trauma and that this program would be useful in their community.

• Trauma experienced within the community varies across generations and genders; because of this, there is a communication gap.

• Older and younger generations have difficulty relating to what the other is suffering or has suffered. 

  • The younger generation understands a little about the losses of the older generation, but they have experienced it on a different level.

  • The older generation has difficulty understanding the things that the younger generation considers traumatic.

• There’s a third group - the generation of children born in the US - who are experiencing a completely different kind of trauma. The older generation has difficulty recognizing this at all.

Another aspect that is not yet specifically covered by the material from the Trauma Healing Institute surrounds Family Reunification. This is something that desperately needs to be addressed in all refugee communities. The process of resettlement comes with its own complicated set of traumatic events that further complicates the trauma that was initially suffered from the reason for resettlement. 

• Families experience the trauma of fleeing their home country, often leaving extended family members behind.

• They often then experience the trauma of living in a new country (with a new culture and language) from within a refugee camp.

• Many will experience the trauma of their family unit being separated for many years waiting for visas until they can be reunited in their new host country.

• They will then experience the trauma of adjusting to their new home country’s culture and language, and

• They experience the trauma of learning to live together again as a family unit with all of their combined and individual traumas.  

Pioneer Bible Translators recognizes that the trauma experienced by the Banyamulenge community is complex and has occurred over decades. It is not just a single event, but it involves multiple, repeated, and continuing traumatic events. Living in a different country does not shield the Banyamulenge from experiencing the continuing impact of repeated traumatic losses occurring on a regular basis within the community residing in refugee camps and for those still residing in the DRC

At the end of the convening session, a participant commented that their trauma had been buried deep, but now it had been “thrown up onto the table.” Participating in this introductory session was brave of the participants. Some things that had been deeply buried are now sitting right at the surface waiting to be dealt with, while new traumas are being added from the current situation in the DRC.

Pioneer Bible plans to hold the first trauma care groups in April. Please pray for this ministry of Scripture Impact through Trauma Care and for God to be working on the hearts of those who will participate.