How Heartbreak, Shame & Rejection Birthed a Powerful Ministry

She was in her early twenties when she discovered she was pregnant. Being an active member of her church, she felt overwhelmed with guilt. So many people looked up to her and now she had disappointed them. Making matters worse, the father of her child wanted little to do with her or the baby she was carrying. The rejection was devastating…

This article is a condensed version of her story. My full interview with her (Part 1 & 2) can be viewed on YouTube (Link at bottom).

Today, Pastor Sandra Baingana is in full-time ministry, a mother of six and married to an amazing man, Mr. Innocent Baingana, whom she co-owns an engineering firm with. Her ministry, Road to Redemption Ministries, has catapulted to success within just two years of its existence and drawn nearly 50,000 followers from around the world on Facebook alone, and her church services are broadcast on TV and radio.

“I’ve done things that people who have been in ministry for 40 years have never done,” Pr. Baingana told The Weight She Carries. “I think there is a hunger for the Word and I believe God is raising the right people who have been wounded and have become testimonies to show others that victory is very possible.”

One of the things that draws so many to Pr. Baingana is how transparent she is about the pain, guilt and humiliation she experienced as a young woman rejected by the father of her child. I reached out to her after coming across a YouTube video where she shared her testimony. There is so much to admire about Pr. Sandra. She has a heart for those who are hurting because she knows how it feels to be broken.

Tell us about your childhood. How was your upbringing?

I come from a very humble background. We grew up in a family of six. My mum and dad were together. My dad happened to be the richest man in the village and then one day he went bankrupt and became among the poorest. He lost his job as a banker and was blacklisted because of some mess that was done in the bank. He was innocently but because he was the manager of the bank, he was held accountable as to why things like that happened without him knowing. It cost him his entire career.

Mommy, in her brokenness, found Jesus. She went to church. Dad’s brokenness led him to drinking. So I grew up being raised by a drinking father and a mother who was broken but found Jesus. She told us about Jesus at a very young age. She taught us how to transition from being kids in a very rich school to being in a very poor school. The beauty in it is I found Jesus along with Mommy.

When did you become a mother?

After university. I happened to be dating this young man for six-and-a-half years. We were friends from high school and continued to be friends on campus. He proposed to have a relationship with me. I was very serious about my studies, so I was attracted to intelligent men like him. We dated for nearly seven years. Along the way, I got pregnant. That’s when I got to know his true colours.

How old were you when you fell pregnant, and what was your immediate reaction?

I was 23. It was a mixture of emotions. First of all, I came from a church background. I was very active in youth ministry, so everybody looked up to me. I was looked at as a church girl who was a virgin and knew not to have sex before marriage. The guy I was dating knew about this, but as time went on, he was telling me, ‘You know, I’ve been waiting to have sex with you for long, and I think I’ve waited long enough.’ I remember telling him no because I was a born-again Christian. He kept insisting so I stopped talking to him.

About a month later, he showed up at my place. The entire time we were dating, he never knew where I stayed because we always met in public. Unbeknownst to me, someone showed him where I lived and he surprised me there. One thing led to another and I fell pregnant.

I was already feeling guilty that I had messed up before God as a Christian girl. As if that weren’t enough, I was now pregnant. What was running through my mind was my pastor, my parents, the people at church…it wasn’t even about me. I cried for two days. I talked to a few friends who advised me to abort. Even the father of my child said he would do the abortion for me.

I talked to my spiritual dad and told him about the pregnancy. He broke down crying (I was also crying) but then he embraced me and told me to make a confession in front of the whole congregation. It wasn’t about me being shamed before them, it was about wanting to be accountable to those who believed in me. Before coming to the pulpit to apologize, I had repented before God the previous night and I knew he had forgiven me. Knowing that God had forgiven me, going to church was not about the church forgiving me because forgiveness comes from God. I wanted to own up to my mistake.

When I told the church, the question was, ‘Where is the man?’ He was gone by then, so I began dealing with that stigma in church and pressure from my community. And the father of my child was rejecting me after giving him all those years. It was really painful.

I struggled with how to tell my mum. It took me two weeks to tell her. What kept me going was the fact that she embraced the fact that I had been a good girl. I had graduated with good grades and gotten a job. She didn’t judge me. She said we should just pray that this man comes to his senses. She led me down that road to redemption, and so did my spiritual dad. The two of them made it possible for me to become who I am today.

How were you able to pick yourself up from that low point?

Church was a different world, and then home was a different world. When I’d come back to my house, I would be coming back to this empty house where it’s me and my pregnancy. At church, I had to put on a mask; at home I would remove the mask and break down because throughout the pregnancy, I kept fighting with this man.

‘You can’t leave me, we’ve been together, we are friends,’ I would tell him. But he kept withdrawing. I would break down in the night and wonder to myself, ‘What have I become?’ because I was this very assertive girl. I knew what I wanted, I was very smart, but I felt I had reduced myself to nothing.

I was very, very afraid of becoming a single mum because I grew up in a home where there was a mother and a father. Irrespective of my father’s drinking, he loved me. That was just his weakness. Growing up in a complete family, I didn’t know how to do it alone. So I was fighting to make the relationship work. I did everything I could to keep this man, but the more I pushed for us, the more he hurt me. So I withdrew. Meanwhile, I was praying and fasting with my mum for him to accept me.

After six months, he apologized and began visiting me again. I think God bringing him back to me was for Him to reveal the truth about him. I find out he wasn’t actually a born-again Christian. He had been lying. I found out he drank and smoked, and that he was sleeping with so many girls. He had eight girlfriends and was actively sleeping with all of them. That was very alarming. I broke up with him for two months, but then I was afraid of being a single mum, so I went back to him and said I was sorry.

When the time came to give birth, I remember going to the hospital in labour and I wanting to jump through the window. He had refused to come to the hospital with me. How could rejection be to this level? I’d grown up in a home where I was loved. What did I do to be rejected? The emotional pain I was in surpassed the physical pain of labour. But I decided to push through the pain.

Three months after leaving the hospital, he came to check on me and was apologetic again. He began staying at my home. I had a maid by that time and I was back at work. I would go to work in the morning and leave him with the maid and our baby. One day, I found him trying to sleep with my maid. I told him to leave and we broke up again, but that wasn’t the end of us. It was hard for me to let go.

The last straw for me was when my parents began asking to meet him. They didn’t want anything from him, just to know who the father of their grandchild was. He stood my parents up four times. I ended up crying and talking to God.

I used to read the Bible, but not to understand it deeply. So I asked God, ‘Do you even know single moms? Do you even know we exists? I’ve grown up in church, I believe in you. I just want one scripture that is going to make me know that you are with me…apart from you saying in the scriptures you’re with me. Yeah, that’s general. I want something that talks about single mothers.’

I came across the story of Hagar. When she was sent away from Abraham’s house, and she was in a desert crying with her baby, and then God called from above and told her, ‘I’m with you. Take care of your child, here is a source of water.’ That picked me up in a way and I encouraged myself.

I understood that this was a new beginning for me and my baby. I said to God, ‘I don’t know what the future holds. But I’m choosing to trust in you. I’ve crammed your promises in church, but I’ve never seen them tangible in my life. I’m trusting you to walk this journey with me.’

Now you’re in a much happier place. How did you meet your husband?

I really thank the Lord that I didn’t stay long as a single mom. I got married to my husband when my baby was close to three years old. I had began growing stronger by then. Having heard people speak negatively about me, that I was a failure…I wanted to be better. I worked hard to look good. I was determined to buy myself a car and a house. So people began admiring my life. However, I never 100% believed that I would get married. I come from a family where no woman had ever gotten married.

Now, how I met my husband: I want to show you the power of prayer. I was planning to leave the country for Dubai. My spiritual mom had relatives who were prominent in Dubai that could help me once I arrived, but I needed money to get there. She told me to ask this one guy at church. He was a single dad but I’d never looked at him as someone I’d marry one day. He had lost his first wife as she was giving birth to their youngest son. One thing we knew about him in church was that he was the kind of guy who would help you if you had a problem. So I contacted him and asked him to help me.

I introduced myself as the young girl who had confessed her pregnancy in front of the church. As we talked, he was shocked to learn that I was single. God puts beauty in every situation. The day I stood on the pulpit, confessing to the whole church about how I had messed up…that’s the day he fell in love with me. He loved the woman in me. He told me he loved my character. He had been in church his whole life and said he had never seen a girl get pregnant and stand accountable to say, ‘here I am.’ They normally run away, give birth and then come back later. When you are looking at ugliness in a situation and then someone else is seeing beauty in that same situation, it’s only God.

But he didn’t approach me for years because he thought that I was still with the father of my child. When he had inquired about me from people in church, they told him I was engaged, which is what I was telling them so they wouldn’t laugh at me for not having a man. If I had been truthful about the true state of my relationship with the father of my child, maybe my husband would have approached me sooner.

Once we started dating, he was very intentional about marriage and God confirmed to me that he was my husband.

How was your ministry Road to Redemption birthed?

On my 6^th wedding anniversary, I shared my journey from single parenting to being married on Facebook. The post garnered over 2,000 comments. Many people fell in love with my story and began following me and asking questions. I saw it as motivational speaking. I was very busy because I was a CEO, had gone back to school, had six children…so I didn’t have a lot of time to engage with everyone reaching out to me.

I created a WhatsApp group in January 2019. I was fasting for the month and invited a few Facebook friends to join me. I was just preaching slightly and praying with people and that was it. As the month came to an end, I announced that I was going to close the WhatsApp group. They told me, ‘No, you can’t close it. We still want it.’ So I began sharing links. In two days, both groups were full. I opened a third and it also became full.

When we had our first meeting after lockdown, 50 people showed up from all parts of the country.  So I began preaching. Then 1,000 people came. The ministry kept growing and growing. It’s been two years and we are on TV and radio. We have people all over the world tuning in to our services. God has been using me, touching lives and delivering people. So that’s where we are today.

What encouragement do you have for single mothers?

I normally tell people that when you get broken, break towards God. The Bible tells us to go boldly to the seat of mercy. If you go to the world, the world will break you more. I know when you’re broken, you are crying and asking all these questions, but that’s why Ecclesiastes 3 says there is a time for everything. A time to cry, a time to smile, a time to break down, a time to build up, a time to hold on and a time to refrain. But stay in the presence of God.

You will have mixed emotions. Throw all the tantrums there, ask questions. He’ll give you a chance to ask all the questions you need. But after that, He expects you to pick yourself up and believe again. How do you pick yourself up? The Bible says the Word of God is a lamp unto your feet. So you need the Word to show you direction. You need faith to move from that pit.

It’s a day-by-day journey. The problem we have is we think that if we go to God, we should see results the next week or the next month. No, the Bible tells us to ‘be still and know that I am God.’ Choose to live each day as it comes.

Full interview:

Road to Redemption Ministries YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHUObPOKip_HIOsv3cpbcaA

Road to Redemption Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/123bainganasandra