She sits alone, conflicted and in a family way. On the one hand she’s elated by the prospect of caring for a life born of the love she shared, but on the other, she is terrified.

“How could this happen,” she asks no one. “What will we do? How will I ever finish school? Where will we live? What will my parents say?”

She sees her choices to be limited and she is overwhelmed.

A small, but dedicated group of Sisters of Immaculate Heart of Mary, Mother of Christ are working in Freeport to provide answers to those questions and they are very close to providing a response that will allow young women to choose dignity and life when faced with the unthinkable.

“As a religious order the core reason of our foundation is to uplift women,” said the society’s regional superior Sister Mary Theonilla Chukwu, IHM. “Wherever we serve around the world our major apostolate is in doing something for women.”

Sister Mary Theonilla  and seven sisters of the order live in one of the buildings attached to the old St Francis school and hospital on South Walnut Avenue in Freeport.

They have undertaken renovation of the long-unused facility with the intent of transforming it into the Madonna Renewal Center, a safe haven for young pregnant women and their infants.

“Initially all that we thought about was to get rid of the building because it was kind of a liability, but gradually, as we prayed and discerned we felt the Lord calling us to change it into something worthwhile,” said  Sister Mary Theonilla.

Over time the sisters became aware of a growing number of young women facing monumental decisions about their pregnancies with nowhere to turn.

“They have problems and needs and you cannot just tell a woman it is not good to get rid of her baby,”  Sister Mary Theonilla  said. “If she has no support system how can we expect her to live through the problems and do the right things?”

There are pregnancy centers in the Freeport area. They offer a range of services including help with health care and nutrition and more. They also provide abortion education and abortion recovery services, but  Sister Mary Theonilla  says the Madonna Center is a step out of the darkness, a step forward.

“We want to establish a home, a presence, a place they can feel safe beyond their pregnancy so they understand the dignity of their own persons,” she said. “They can begin to see they are not hopeless.”
The work begins

Their building is in disrepair. The roof has been redone to stem further damage, but there is mold and asbestos to be removed and that project alone will cost $200,000 and the sisters have raised less than half of that amount.

“We are seriously trying to raise our funds here and there,” said  Sister Mary Theonilla . “We thought the parishes would respond more by now because we wrote letters across the diocese and the bishop also wrote a letter asking them to support us how they can, but people we talk to say Freeport has no money.”

And she said people told them the project would attract bad people to the community.

“Pregnant women are not bad people,” said  Sister Mary Theonilla. “They can come from any kind of family, poor or rich. It could be that the parents don’t want this and only pressure their child to get rid of her baby.

“She may have made a poor choice or she may have been manipulated, but there is a baby at stake here and a mother’s life and she has years to live with any decisions she makes,” she said.

The sisters work in support of life, and while they recognize aborting or giving away a baby is accepted as an all too common choice; they have seen the wounds and shattered lives that result from those processes, and they are determined instead to offer a real and viable alternative.

“We want the center to be more like a family than a shelter,” said  Sister Mary Theonilla . “They will cook. They will do chores. They will do whatever needs to be done. It is not like we are going to be giving hand outs. We want them to feel responsible. They are going to work hard while they are here and they will learn by working and living with each other. We will have support for them so they are able to deal with crisis situations or relationship conflicts and more.”

She said there is a small army of volunteers waiting to provide those support services, but they are on hold while the building is made livable.

The goal is to open the center in August 2016, and the sisters are confident of their ability to care for the mothers and children who come for help.

“We feel two years will help them be able to start life anew,” she said. “We don’t want to create dependence. That wouldn’t be healthy. We simply want to instill good values and help these women find their way back to independence.”

Coleen Feen decided to become involved with the Madonna Renewal Center after participating in a Light of the World retreat. She said she gave her thoughts of commitment considerable prayer before jumping in, but since beginning she has never looked back.

“In this community there are so many women that get faced with circumstances that are beyond their control,” said Feen. “They feel that well, I’m pregnant, I want to go to college, I already have a child, I don’t know what to do, I’m single, my boyfriend is very abusive or whatever. There are always reasons and this project sounds really feasible and is desperately needed in our community.”

It didn’t take long for Feen and a group formed during the retreat to take on the center as their central project.

She said they’ve just uploaded their information to host a Paypal site which will allow for on line donations to the center’s web site at http://madonnarenewalcenter.com/ and are planning on hosting a weekend at the Freeport Cub Foods brat stand this summer.

“This is a God driven mission and it is going to happen,” Feen said. “Things happen all the time that tell us God is working.”