We are Umberto and Jacquie Benucci – married since March 1983.
We have a daughter, married to a Raglan dairy farmer and happily enjoying the NZ country life. We grew up, met, and got married in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia), and then spent our adult life around the globe – South Africa, Germany, Australia and then here in beautiful NZ – home. We have our own story to tell as regards marriage and feel strongly about helping others reach their best potential in their relationship journey.
 
We have been using Prepare-Enrich and running the Marriage Ministry for the past 14 years through Prepare-Enrich NZ and also LIFE Church as their dedicated trainers and facilitators – that is training couples to use the program with other couples, as well as taking couples through it ourselves; running and putting together marriage courses during the school terms; as well as going out to other community groups around the North Island, and training their facilitators to conduct Prepare-Enrich sessions.
 
We now do this full time and have dedicated ourselves to help resource all churches and their respective communities that want to do so, as well as any other groups that may reach out to us seeking help and training.
 
We want to help turn around the statistics of divorce in NZ. The statistics for healthy marriages in New Zealand and around the world are at an all-time low, and we believe much of this stems from unhealthy relationships that are driven by unrealistic and unmet expectations and couples who have not been taught the right skills and ways of how to go about having a healthy relationship. Their examples are higher divorce rates, comparison to an unhealthy culture obsessed with self and influencers/celebrities that look at marriage as a casual relationship rather than a serious and committed one. We believe that the current issues facing New Zealand (and the world) are from a breakdown in the family structure, which stems from unhealthy and broken marriages/relationships.
 
To us, marriages are the fabric of community – unhealthy marriages lead to broken relationships and family issues, and
develop into broken communities and youth problems and abuse. This may seem a little simplistic, however we firmly believe that a healthy marriage would go a long way towards curbing many of the systemic issues we are facing in society today.
 
Our main aim is to educate, equip and impact couples and families and to be able to deliver concrete and foundational marriage principles based on sound guidelines. We achieve this by equipping and empowering facilitators, churches and communities to achieve a multiplication factor not otherwise possible in our or their own strength, by training up their own people to conduct these sessions.
 
We believe that marriage is a co-operative partnership and that the two people within it need to work together to achieve the best outcome for their marriage. Our process is one of teaching couples how to achieve this outcome so that both, and each individual, is working at their best for the other and as a team and therefore achieving more than each individual would have or could have on their own. This will in turn feed back into their family and whanau and their overall community network. Our program is fully inclusive and can be used across all cultures and ethnicities. Once trained, a facilitator can use it to assist and educate couples from any background and make-up.
 
This vision is much, much bigger than “us”, however we feel if we can begin to create a ripple, that will eventually turn
into a wave which will make itself felt throughout our families and friends in Aotearoa (and beyond). We have been
inspired by the results we have personally had and experienced over the years with this program – relationships and marriages turned around and restored, healthier families and couples enjoying life more because they are in sync with their spouse and have become more constructive and conciliatory in their relationship rather than combative and obstructive or critical.
 
We fully believe that we can turn around the wave of negativity surrounding marriage and in this way have healthier
families and communities that look out for each other and support their whanau and friends. We love working with the Church community in Aotearoa to help strengthen the marriages in God’s house to exemplify His love. We feel that if the Church is to be the light on the hill to the world, then we need to ensure we are living out God-breathed marriages.