It has been two and a half years since I've sat down and wrote a blog post. It has been a busy and challenging 2.5 years but full of blessings and wonder. Since I last wrote, we have fostered several children, adopted a daughter and gave birth to another daughter. We moved into a larger home and I have gone back to work and then went back to being a full time stay at home mom. Lots of changes, lots of steps forward and some steps back but our cup overflows with blessing and gratitude for how God worked things out.
So after a two year hiatus, why start writing again? It's two-fold.
Funny thing is that years after stepping out in faith and beginning our journey as foster parents, beginning with one infant, eventually having three kids (including school age kids) we still feel God's call on our family to do more. Not only continuing to care for and love on children in our community but to speak about our motivation, to build stronger community support, and encourage everyone to get involved. At very least blogging helps me to continually collect my thoughts as I speak at more events and encourage more people to get involved with their local foster care program - either through fostering themselves or directly supporting a foster family. I really feel like I have a unique opportunity to open people's eyes to ways that they can be involved in helping children within foster care, even if they aren't called to be foster parents themselves. We may not all be called to do foster care but we are called to do something.
The other reason why I'm writing today is a bit more, well humbling in some ways. We were blessed to have found a huge house about 2 years ago. It has plenty of large bedrooms and living space and it fit our dream of being able to continue to foster more children over the years. Unfortunately, due to a dead transmission, we had to purchase a new-to-us van this past year. We weren't expecting to have this expense just yet but with an older van it was hard to justify the expense of repairing when it seemed this repair could be a foreshadowing of other major repairs. We had been hoping to stretch out the life of our faithful minivan and be able to save for our dream van, a low profile 15 passenger van. This dream van fits into our garage and will comfortably and safely seat more children while allowing some much needed storage in the back; double strollers are HUGE and as you may know, with kids come stuff! Right now we have a wonderful, newer reliable minivan and fits our current crew of 5 (4 in car seats/boosters) but with very little cargo space and no room for anyone else. That is our dilemma - no room for anyone else. Sadly, our local CPS has been overwhelmed with children, which often happens once school starts and all our emergency shelters are full but we are unable to help due to our lack of vehicle seating.
So, we are here, humbly asking for help.
It's humbling but I know and trust that God will provide in order for his calling on my life to continue and expand. It's a calling on our entire family and even our children have agreed that they would like to help more children. One of our sons asked me a couple days ago, "Momma, what happens if we get another foster kid since we don't have room in the van?" He doesn't understand that we have had several calls requesting our help that we have had to say no to. But I tell him that God will provide a new van in His perfect timing. I believe that He will but I also believe that we need to reach out to our community and tell people of our need. God uses other people to fulfill His will - He doesn't need to, He is able to do miracles, but He can use the generosity of people and fulfill an even large plan, one that we may not be able to completely see.
In order to give people the opportunity to partner with us in our family's journey as a foster family, we have set up a gofundme campaign. We have shared it on Facebook and we are asking you to share it too. Prayerfully share and prayerfully consider supporting us financially.
The van that we are looking to purchase is a special order model, which is why it is so expensive. It is low profile so it will fit into our garage. This is very important to us because we often take care of infants who often are medically needy and who need to be loaded/unloaded one at a time. Doing this in the safety of our garage, protected from the weather, is important to me as a mom who is juggling a lot of balls. We have some extra traffic on our road and if you have ever had a toddler in your home, you know how quickly they can dart the wrong way. My heart skips a beat just thinking about it. This model of van is also very new, which means it'll last us years but it also doesn't allow for getting a deal - unless any of you know someone at Ford that can hook us up. ;) $45,000 is an incredible amount of money for our family, for most families; I never imagined spending half that on a vehicle but if I break it down it feels more manageable. If 450 people donate $100 we are there - actually 446.5 people since we have already had some amazing friends pledge their support. Between Pete and I we have over 1300 Facebook friends and if even a fraction of our friends share, we are reaching out to thousands of people which means if only a fraction of those people support us even $50 or $25 we would be order this amazing van.
So here is the link for the campaign - https://www.gofundme.com/ep3aek - I ask you to first pray. Pray for all the children in foster care and their families. Pray specifically for your community and ask God how you can make a difference in the life of these children. And then, if you feel led, please consider supporting us financially.
Thank you for taking the time to read. I hope to continue to write about why we are involved in foster care and more ways for you to get involved in your community.
Blessings!
-Jenn
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