As a pediatrician, Dr. Maria Hendrickson is passionate about both medicine and helping children in need. So, when her church partnered with World Help for a mission trip to Uganda in 2022, Maria knew she had to go.
Little did she know how much this trip would change her life.
The Trip of a Lifetime
When Maria first signed up to travel to Uganda, she was excited to do God’s work and use her God-given skills to help others. She had gone on several mission trips in the past where she used her knowledge as a pediatrician to help impoverished children and their families and always found the experience to be incredibly rewarding.
“It is so fulfilling for me to be able to use the skills that God has given me to provide medical care to people in impoverished parts of the world who don’t have access to any medical care,” Maria said. “Doing mission work has been such a blessing to me to know that God is using me to help take care of His children around the world by being His hands and feet.”
Maria is passionate about helping men, women, and children in need worldwide
Going to Uganda with World Help was a natural next step. On their trip, Maria and her church team visited the Good Samaritan School in Kampala. There, they met many students who were part of World Help’s child sponsorship program.
When Maria returned home, she knew her work in Uganda was far from over.
Becoming a Sponsor
As a pediatrician herself, Maria felt called to help children with similar career goals. She found three teenage girls from Uganda on the World Help website and decided to become their sponsor!
“I picked three of them because I raised three daughters of my own and wanted to also have three Ugandan ‘daughters’ to be a mentor to through their education process,” Maria said.
In 2023, Maria had the opportunity to return to Uganda and meet Peruth, Moreen, and Marion in person! Maria loved talking to them about their dreams in person and felt the trip helped deepen their relationships. Maria said she would encourage all sponsors to try and meet their sponsored children in person if given the opportunity.
Sponsorship allowed Maria to provide help and hope to three girls in Uganda!
Now, Maria regularly connects with Peruth, Moreen, and Marion through letters and can’t wait for another opportunity to visit them again. She is so thankful for the opportunity God had given her to help them with their education, just like she had with her own three daughters, and she knows her love and support will help them pursue their goals of going into the medical field.
“My long-term hope is that they will be able to continue their education with my financial support so that they will be able to pursue careers in the medical field and then work in the clinics and hospital that our church has helped to establish in Uganda,” she said.
Sponsorship Makes a Difference
You can transform a child’s life through sponsorship, just like Maria!
Being a child sponsor has allowed Maria to help her three sponsored girls financially and spiritually by providing aid like food and educational opportunities, as well as giving them the chance to learn about God. She knows that meeting their immediate needs and helping them pursue their goals is important, but Jesus Christ is the only One who can change their lives forever.
“Ultimately, it is my faith in Christ that motivates me to want to continue to participate in more mission trips in the future to hopefully impact more people’s lives and bring them to Christ, so we’ll all be together in eternity someday,” Maria said.
Thank you, Maria, for your impact as a sponsor. You’re making an eternal difference in Uganda and around the world.
Want to learn more about how you can start changing lives, too? Click the button below to learn more about becoming a child sponsor!