Her Mother Chose Life; Now She’s Helping Others Do the Same

As a young mom weighed her choices, her overwhelming fear and uncertainty made continuing a pregnancy feel impossible. However, she persevered and bravely placed that baby in the loving arms of Highlands Child Placement Services, now Highlands Adoptions and Maternity Services . That baby, Megan Yturriaga, has grown into a voice for the unborn and a vessel of hope for women facing unplanned pregnancies or struggling to raise a child on their own.

For eight years, Yturriaga has been the executive director of Alternatives Pregnancy Center, growing the non-profit from a single center in Waterloo, Iowa, to a multi-site ministry that helps over 500 individuals every month.

Yturriaga, an ordained minister with the Assemblies of God, spent 13 years serving in full time youth ministry alongside her husband, Oscar, who is also an ordained AG minister and lead pastor at Christian Life in Des Moines, Iowa, before joining the pregnancy center.

“When I got there, I could see that we needed to grow. We needed more buildings in the communities we felt called to serve and God brought along the right partners at the right time,” she says of the center.

The pregnancy care center team quickly grew to eight staff and over 80 volunteers annually, expanding in just a few years from one to five locations. Of the five locations, two are housed inside AG churches, a unique opportunity that allows the churches to minister to the community “beyond the pulpit.”

“The need is great, especially in a college town,” Yturriaga says, “so I approached a lead pastor who had bought a middle school as a church and asked him to give us space for a center.”

Not only did the pastor agree to giving them the space, the church also completely renovated it and provided volunteers to aid in its operation. Services at each of the centers include ultrasounds, pregnancy tests, STD tests, fatherhood support, community classes, material resources, counseling, and more. To make sure no one in the culturally and ethnically diverse town is without access to their resources, all classes are offered in a variety of languages.

Upon arrival, clients are given a needs assessment, and their care plan is specifically tailored to “fill in the gaps,” all while offering prayer and sharing the gospel. Parent mentors are also assigned to each client, and they walk alongside that client for as long as they stay with the program. If a client chooses not to parent, Alternatives Pregnancy Center helps connect them with a local adoption agency to make an adoption plan.

“They know when they walk through the doors that we are here for them, we want them to grow in their parenting journey and also in their spiritual journey, and we offer what they need for both of those things.”

Yturriaga says her burden for helping those facing an unplanned pregnancy or struggling with the trauma of broken sexuality or a past abortion comes from her own testimony and the story of her birth mother’s heroic choice despite desperate circumstances.

After her birth, Yturriaga was adopted by a loving, Godly couple from Greenwood, Indiana. Her grandfather had over six decades of pastoral service in the Assemblies of God. She states that her desire is to take away the shame and desperate feelings that women have who find themselves facing an unplanned pregnancy.

“If we can slow the process down and help them deal with things that make pregnancy feel overwhelming, we can help lift the tremendous weight that makes it seem unbearable,” she says.

“I feel blessed to have a front row seat to God’s restorative work every day. I love the church but there is nothing like seeing people who would likely never walk into a church encounter the love of Jesus in their most broken moments.”

The Dream Center Des Moines is a strategic partner with Yturriaga and the pregnancy center, housing one of the locations inside its ministry building. Jeffrey Ostrander, director of the Dream Center Des Moines says, “The work they do is a testament to the strength of their faith and dedication to making a tangible difference in the lives of those they serve.”

One of Yturriaga’s favorite memories is of a woman they ministered to that had decided on abortion due to what felt like overwhelming life issues. The team at Alternatives Pregnancy Center helped meet her needs to bring stability, but she was hesitant to receive the help because she was determined not to choose life for her unborn child.

But help came without an agenda. After she was given critical support to stabilize her life, the team lost touch with her and assumed she had carried through with an abortion. Months later they found out she had chosen to continue her pregnancy and placed her twin babies for adoption.

Ostrander calls the compassion and dedication of the entire Alternative Pregnancy Center team “nothing short of inspiring.”

Loving people at their most broken, Yturriaga says, takes a supernatural kind of love. She encourages individuals and churches to look around their communities and pray about what they can do to meet the needs of vulnerable men, women, and children, “even if they have made or are making choices that are not the ones we would have prayed for.”

She says that by re-defining “the win,” the focus shifts from a fight for control of someone’s choices to demonstrating Christ’s unconditional, supernatural love in the midst of their mess.

“If a baby is saved, that is, of course, a win. But showing Christ’s love to someone who has had an abortion or isn’t living the way we would want them to is also a win. At the end of the day, did we show Christ’s love?”

The Yturriagas are also serving vulnerable children as foster parents and have adopted four kids under the age of 10 after becoming empty nesters several years ago.

Of their ministry, Yturriaga says, “If we aren’t supernaturally loving people, we’re missing it.”