Mercy Moment
Caring for God’s Children in Chula Vista
Victory Resource Center in Chula Vista, Calif., provides for the physical and spiritual needs of young families in the community.
Containers of baby formula are stacked on shelves behind the front desk. Grab bags of diapers line one wall, ready to be handed out. In a storage room, gently used children’s clothes have been neatly sorted by size and gender into plastic tubs. At the back of the building, an industrial refrigerator holds food from the San Diego Food Bank, and bags of fresh fruit, donated from a local public high school’s cafeteria, are stored on a table nearby.
Here, the needs of the body are freely met, and mercy is freely given, in Christian love of neighbor.
Victory Resource Center in Chula Vista, Calif., is a ministry of Victory Church, a Lutheran church in the suburbs of San Diego. The work of the center grows out of the church’s desire to share Christ’s mercy with others in this underserved community.
Each month, the pregnancy resource center serves roughly 300 families — from mothers in crisis pregnancy situations to young parents with small children who are struggling to get by. Diapers, formula and food go so fast that staff can hardly keep them stocked on the shelves.
Concordia Publishing House brochures on the basics of Christianity are also in high demand. Darlene Chier, who runs the center, said they are constantly having to replenish the rack on the front desk. Their clients are seeking to be fed, both physically and spiritually.
The center is widely supported by its community. Victory Church covers the cost of rent and electricity, and high schoolers at the church’s K–12 school, Victory Christian Academy, regularly pack bags for individual mothers, intentionally praying for each mother and baby. The local nursing home supplies handmade crocheted baby blankets. A nearby Catholic church holds a baby shower for each new mother so that she can have some new items just for herself and her baby.
Some days, the line of clients goes out the door, as young fathers holding their toddlers’ hands or mothers with babies on their hips wait to be warmly received by Joana Aguirre, who helps Chier with administrative work, coordinating volunteers and caring for clients.
Just as the families they serve depend on the center for necessities like diapers, the center is dependent on donations, which tend to ebb and flow. Yet Chier and Aguirre don’t look upon this dependence as a source of frustration — rather, it’s an occasion to depend all the more on God and His mercy.
“God always makes a way. That’s one of the things I love about working here,” said Aguirre. Daily, their prayers are answered, whether those prayers are for a donation of a specific diaper size that had been running low or for new volunteers.
A major way in which God provided recently was through a Million Dollar Life Match grant from LCMS Life Ministry. Victory Resource Center will use the grant to increase operating hours and food distribution, as well as to develop training programs to assist parents.
Volunteering at the center often means caring for people who are going through some of the most difficult times of their lives, so Chier encourages volunteers to be continually, constantly praying for the babies, toddlers, mothers and fathers they serve. And as volunteers go about this life-affirming work — that every child is a gift from God, and that every mother and father is also a beloved child of God — their joy is palpable.
One of the greatest joys is when former clients come back to the center to volunteer or donate items.
“I had a client when we first opened, Evelyn, who was pregnant. She had left an abusive spouse and also had a daughter who was 10 or 12 years old,” said Chier. Though Evelyn had been working on her undergraduate degree, she had to drop out of the program when she became pregnant.
After she had her baby boy, Chier worked with Evelyn to help her get a scholarship so she could go back to finish her degree. Now, Evelyn often comes back to help at the center, assisting Chier with translating announcements into Spanish or dropping off diapers and toys.
“I just love watching that transition from client to volunteer,” Chier said.
The name of the center itself — Victory — is a good reminder that Christ Himself is the Victor over all sin and death, trial and suffering. He makes all things new (2 Cor. 5:17); in Him alone hope and forgiveness are found. By God’s great love and mercy for us, we are all made alive together with Christ (Eph. 2:4–6).
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Sarah Hjulberg
Staff writer and editor for LCMS Communications.
