Vida Medical Clinic’s new initiative unites members of the Northeast Wisconsin Christian community with prayer and a common mission
By William Van de Planque | On Mission
APPLETON, WI — Vida Medical Clinic, a non-profit that provides medical services, material support, parent education and more to families and expectant mothers across Northeast Wisconsin, began a new initiative in January called Vida Prayer Warriors.
Vida Prayer Warriors, an online program that allows users to sign up for and commit to an hour of prayer for specific intentions, was launched in collaboration with PlanHero and Friends of Vida, a non-profit that supports the work and ministry of Vida Medical Clinic through volunteering, prayer, financial gifts and more.
“People can go and sign up for an hour, not unlike adoration, and just offer up their time in prayer for an hour,” said Anne Tretinyak, executive director of Vida Medical Clinic. “Our goal is to get every single one of those spots filled so that we can say to a mother in the maternity home in the middle of the night who needs help with her little one from a staff member, ‘Someone is praying for you right now.’ Or a nurse can say to a woman in the medical clinic who is contemplating an abortion, ‘There are people praying for you right now.’”
Originally founded as Mother and Unborn Baby Care in 1983, Vida Medical Clinic launched the Vida Prayer Warriors project in the midst of recent significant growth in clients and need for Vida’s services.
“With the growing need in the community and what’s happening now with chemical abortions (being done) in the home, we felt like we needed to take a knee and just really pray for God’s protection over this ministry and over everyone we are serving,” Tretinyak said.
Over the years, Vida Medical Clinic has expanded from providing material support only to providing educational support to both dads and moms, along with fellowship opportunities and playdates, and now community spiritual support.
“Originally, with pregnancy resource centers, the main objective was to really support, encourage, and lift up young women who are facing an unexpected pregnancy with just material support,” Tretinyak said. “As time passed, we got a lot more sophisticated and expanded our services.”
Roughly six years ago, the Appleton location was serving about 20-30 women in a month. Now, 250 individuals are served every month. With the influx of need, Vida Medical Clinic has also expanded through new locations, the most recent in Green Bay, which opened in late February of this year.
“This is the Church’s response to the question of, ‘If I make a life decision, who will be there for me; who will help me?’” Tretinyak said. “We are going to walk with you as long as it takes for you to stabilize your family and your life.”
As a Christian organization, “prayer forms the very heartbeat of Vida’s ministry,” she said. “We start every day in prayer with the team. We pray for all of our donors, all of our clients, residents and patients, and we pray for all of our volunteers and their families.”
All the locations, including the maternity home staff, call in for the morning prayer.
Another example of Vida keeping prayer at the heart of its ministry is its annual banquet, at which Vida invites different pastors from a local parish or church to lead a prayer service. Bishop David Ricken led the prayer service a couple of years ago, Tretinyak said.
“Every time we can take a knee and say, ‘Lord, we need your protection, and we need the Holy Spirit to come and inform all that we do here,’ we do,” Tretinyak said.
Vida Medical Clinic partners with Catholic parishes and other Christian churches in Northeast Wisconsin to spread awareness about and gain support for its mission. More recently, its 130 church partners were invited in a new way to support Vida Medical Clinic with prayer.
“I think that’s what makes this Prayer Warriors project so powerful, is (that) we’re uniting the Church in prayer for protection for the smallest cell of the Church, the family, and the smallest cell of the smallest cell being the preborn,” Tretinyak said.
Megan Kugel, a volunteer of Vida Medical Clinic who currently works as the social communications and IT coordinator at St. Raphael the Archangel Parish in Oshkosh, sees Vida Prayer Warriors as an opportunity for Christians to unite in defense of the family and human dignity.
“One of my largest motivations for offering prayers for Vida is the recognition that we need to pray for our families,” she said. “We need to pray for moms and dads, for those who are dating, and those who are in different aspects of family life. I very much agree with Pope John Paul II when he mentioned the ‘culture of life and the culture of death.’”
Vida Prayer Warriors is an opportunity for Christians to advocate for the pro-life cause peacefully, Kugel said.
“Participating in the Vida Prayer Warriors is a peaceful way,” she said. “So much of the pro-life and pro-choice debate leads to division and anger, and being a prayer warrior is a way of peace and surrender; it’s a way of offering your prayers and allowing God to do the rest.”
A few years ago, Kugel became involved with Bella, a medical clinic in Oshkosh that recently merged with Vida, as a volunteer photographer and videographer.
“I still do photography, now that Bella partnered with Vida,” she said. “But, it has been a gift to help in other ways, like Vida Prayer Warriors.”
The Vida Prayer Warriors project began with conversations between Kugel and Tretinyak when Vida Medical Clinic offered an event where community members had the opportunity to have coffee with Tretinyak.
“I attended the event because I just really wanted to let Anne (Tretinyak) know that she and Vida were being prayed for,” Kugel said. “We ended up discussing the story of Moses’ arms being held up by Aaron and Hur, and from that discussion, we began having more conversations on Vida Prayer Warriors, and that’s how it really started to take shape.”
Kugel’s Catholic faith and prayer life have always been important to her, and she recognizes the importance of action to follow times of prayer.
“Being involved in my faith is very important to me,” she said. “I believe we do need to take time to sit and be before Jesus, and then from that time, we know that prayer can bear fruit. Oftentimes, the actions that we do are 10 times more fruitful because we’ve sat in the silence and we’ve sat with Jesus and truly listened to him and what he is asking.”
Vida Prayer Warriors is a great way for people to give hope to the staff at Vida Medical Clinic “as they share hope with mothers facing an unplanned pregnancy and provide resources for families,” Kugel said.
“People might ask, ‘Can’t I just pray? Why do I need to sign up?’” she said. “Signing up to pray is like sending Vida a card or email saying ‘I’m praying for you.’”
Those who sign up with PlanHero receive a monthly notice that highlights the specific prayer intentions for that month, Tretinyak said.
Those who sign up can also submit their phone numbers to receive text updates and even sync their PlanHero prayer commitments to their mobile phone calendars.
To learn more about Vida Prayer Warriors, visit: onmiss.io/vidaprayerwarriors
To learn more about the services of Vida Medical Clinic, visit: onmiss.io/vida