My desire to work with a ministry like Young Lives began several years ago.  My heart has always had a soft spot for young women, especially within the society in which we live. Women in our society are bombarded with various images of who they should be, what they should look like and all of these are impossible and harmful standards.  I strongly believe that if we invest in young people, we can help them change our world. God has been drilling these ideas into my heart for months, and I knew I needed to find a way to serve Him in a ministry directed toward young women.

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to work in a crisis pregnancy center In Southern California. As a nurse, I not only performed pregnancy tests on their clients, but I began to begin counseling these women on pro-life options available to them. While I enjoyed this opportunity immensely, I was regularly frustrated that I could not always know the outcome for these women. I also somehow knew that the options we were discussing were much easier to say then actually carry out. I used to think about how challenging motherhood must be, especially when someone is so young and may not have a great support system. Fast forward a decade… I became a mother of two children, now 3 and 6. With my kids getting bigger, I knew it was time to find a ministry in which to become involved. Each week when I was at church, I would see something that mentioned YoungLives. After running out of excuses to not get involved with “one more thing,” God worked out about a hundred obstacles to allow me to be involved. He even provided a bigger car to my family which comes in VERY handy for driving girls and their babies to YoungLives’ monthly club meetings.

Since signing up to be a mentor, I have been exponentially blessed! I love being able to talk through the blessings and challenges of motherhood with my mentee and the other girls that I get to interact with. One of the awesome things about motherhood is that we have so many things in common, regardless of age or stage in life. We can learn and grow together constantly as we watch our children grow as well. It melts my heart to watch each of these young women love on their littles, and I love watching them grow as mothers. They do such a great job with their kiddos, regardless of the other circumstances in their lives. I am so blessed to get to be a cheerleader as I hear about the steps they are taking towards higher education, job goals, and future goals with their significant others. God is showing me so many things about His vast love and grace, and I love watching it play out in these ladies’ lives. I’m excited to pray for and with them about what the future holds, as well as to be able to live just a little bit of life with them.  As always, with any ministry opportunity, I wonder if I am the most blessed one there because I get to be a part of it!

-Jolie Hultner