Josh and I have always thought we would eventually love to foster children in our home. We didn't know what that looked like for us, but we have kind have done similar things on a less-formal caliber and loved it.
Then 2017 our church held an informational meeting about different ministries we could get involved with and heard about a ministry called Safe Families. It is somewhat similar to the Foster Care system that the government has in place but the main difference is that the children are willfully given to a host family to help in a time of crisis. Safe Families Host Families literally walk WITH the family to get back on their own two feet while caring for the children while the parent(s) gets the help they need.
We LOVED the concept of the organization and decided that it might fit our family, especially after speaking with some of the Foster Care representatives that same night. Our family already maxed out the criteria and our home size/number of rooms just wasn't going to be practical for the regulations that program had.
We kind of sat on it and prayed about it for a few months with the kids. Alethia was the most reluctant, most likely because of her own story, and we wanted to make sure our whole family was on board, because it would effect each of us. Alethia began slowly asking questions and then each of the kids kept bringing it up and wondering when we were going to start.
Finally, after another meeting with our church we decided to dive in. Some of it was very similar to the things we had to do for our adoption like background checks, fingerprinting, training and a home study.
We finished up our training and checked the last paperwork boxes right before heading out of town for Via Vacation in September.
Not two days into vacation we received a call from Safe Families saying they had a child for us...what a whirlwind of a week it was trying to process away from home, especially with this being our first placement.
We had no idea what the next 5 months were going to hold for our family.
We got home from vacation, unpacked, set up the room as best we could for a toddler and anxiously tried to sleep because early the next morning we were headed to go pick him up.
He fit right into the groove of our family. He absolutely LOVES music, reading and playing anything the boys were playing. Alethia was like another mama to him. Everybody pitched in and changed diapers (I'm not even kidding!) and getting him dressed. What a blessing it was to be able to love on this little guy until he could be reunited with his mom.
We certainly kept up with ministry life and traveling (man was it a full fall!), but just about everything else on my plate was put to rest for a few months, and that's ok. Thankfully I can have periods to catch up on life like I'm doing now on the blog.
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| family devotions |
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| Josh giving a lesson on plumbing and how to unclog a drain |
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| after a full day of Christmas services we were all exhausted...and Homestar was passed out, lol |
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| Homestar and Uncle Ray really formed a sweet bond over the months |
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We traveled an abnormal amount during his stay,
but he gradually got better and better with the goodbye's |
