2023 Impact Report | Trauma Healing Gains Momentum

In 2021, CBS introduced Bible-Based Trauma Healing in Canada. In 2022, it became known as the “Caring for the Wounded Heart” program and 30 multi-week groups were conducted, bringing healing to people’s hearts.

The Bible-based curriculum includes basic mental health concepts. The group sessions and personal work help participants to identify their pain, share their suffering, bring their pain to the cross of Christ for healing, and, for cases where the trauma was caused by the actions of another person, learn to forgive their oppressors.

• The program depends on well-trained facilitators, who move in status from “Apprentice” to “Certified” to “Master”
• By the end of 2021, CBS trained 153 Apprentices, 15 Training Facilitators and one Master Facilitator.
• At the end of 2022, CBS had 255 Apprentices, 27 Training Facilitators, two Master Facilitators and three more on their way to completing that highest level

“We just don’t want to leave; we are so full of blessing.”

Recently, Tuk folk had an opportunity for an amazing experience through the Canadian Bible Society “Healing Workshop” held in Tuktoyaktuk. All who participated were Indigenous, except me.

Each day addressed a theme, such as wounds, suffering, or grief. A story was read aloud, and we were given time to reflect. Then the team guided us to ponder one or two questions. What might so and so in the story be feeling?

What might make things worse or better? Did you ever have feelings like these? Then we had more time to ponder, maybe write, maybe have a skit, maybe share. And a final invitation was to bring our heart and its wounds to God in various guided ways. It was amazing how we gradually got in touch, opened up, went deep, or had a laugh or a tear. It had been powerful, bonding and freeing.

Twice with two different groups, at the end of a three-hour session, mostly with elders, no one wanted to leave. They were savouring the amazing thing that seemed to have taken place. Finally, one of the elders said, “We just don’t want to leave, we are so full of blessing…”

The brilliance of the program is not only in its grounded content (psychological and Biblical) but in its methodology and the fact that it is held locally, in small communities. The workshop was six days, for approximately four hours a day, and we ran it twice. And the material has been adapted for both teenagers and for prison ministry. This workshop has great potential!

With deepest gratitude, I thank CBS and Stacey and Debra for the amazing gift you have given us here in Tuktoyaktuk, on the Arctic Ocean and with a view to the future…! —Sister Fay Trombley, Pastoral Leader, Tuktoyaktuk