Shiphrah DirectivesBiblical directives drive Shiphrah
Dennis and Jeri Gunderson began the Shiphrah Birthing Home ministry in their home in 1990.
Having come to the Philippines in 1986 to do evangelistic crusades, the family’s ministry focus turned toward women and children after Jeri started helping an American midwife in Metro Manila deliver babies in 1988.
Jeri was a history teacher, Dennis a rancher. Neither had any formal medical training. “The idea was that I would never lead,” Jeri says.
But when their friend became ill and returned to the U.S., the Gundersons suddenly found themselves heirs to a ministry with 75 clients. With about 60 births’ worth of experience, Jeri and her daughter, Debra (14 years old at the time), took over.
The Gundersons have since helped to deliver thousands of babies and trained many Filipino midwives to do the same. They moved to their current location in 1994 after four years virtual nonstop traffic through their home and having to barricade themselves in their bedroom to steal some privacy.
“People would come 24-7,” Jeri says. “We could not maintain that level of insanity. Our kids got tired of going into their bathroom and seeing placentas in trays.”
The Gundersons run Shiphrah and the adjoining orphanage, the little children’s home (started in 1991), under two guiding Bible passages -- Genesis 1:26 and Luke 4:18.
The first recounts God’s decision to make human beings in His image and likeness.
In the second, often called the Nazareth Manifesto, Jesus says, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, and recovery of sigh for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Jeri says if that was Jesus’ mission statement, it should be for all of his followers, too. God never meant for people to spiritualize the Gospel by separating the spoken message from the physical message.
“If we believe that, what are the implications for us?” Jeri says of the Genesis verses. “We respond to women of poverty on the basis of the fact that they are created in the image and likeness of God.”
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