October 5th, 2015 By BBQ

5 men arrived at Louie’s Grill with coffee mugs waiting for them and the opportunity to dig into The Word. Monday morning doesn’t start much better than that. A day without rain is nice too.

Today’s question: What is your personal or family mission? Not bucket list items or short-term goals but how do you want serve those around you?

YHC shared the article: “What if the church destroyed the foster care system as we know it?” Take a few minutes to read the article and you’ll learn…

The U.S. had 401,000+ children in the foster care system in 2013. That number rose to 415,000+ in 2014. And of those:

• 50,644 children were adopted
• 22,392 teens aged out without being placed with permanent family
• 3/4 of children lived with foster family
• 14% of children in group homes or institutions
• 4,544 foster children listed as runaways

What if church rallied around families to adopt/foster?
If 1 family out of 3 churches adopted 1 child (and those 3 churches supported that family), there would be no more kids in foster care.
Have you seen these bumper stickers? 1+1+1=0 (1 child, 1 family, 1 church)

So what’s the significance of this article? It’s pretty timely for YHC and the M as they just received their foster care license in August and provided their first respite care to a child this past weekend. Someone providing respite care holds a foster care license and for lack of a better term “babysits” the child(ren) for a short period (2-3ish days). Amazing how God provides reminders the importance of caring for these children.

There was a lot of discussion around what does foster care/adoption look like, foster care’s shared parenting, taking a step of faith, costs, emotional distress, sacrifice, etc. etc. For YHC, it all comes down to LOVE. God loves us no matter what we’ve done, where we’ve been, or where we’re going. Many kids are lost, unsupervised, unurtured, malnourished, are tossed around from place to place. If YHC has the room in the house and can show at least one child God’s example of love, why not?

MOLESKIN:

• Really enjoyed the conversation this AM guys. Hope the discussion got you thinking a little bit.
• As YHC mentioned over breakfast, not everyone is called to foster or adopt. Nor should everyone’s mission be that but consider how can you support someone that is fostering or adopting.
• Awesome to hear some of you say you have/are considering possibly fostering/adopting/respite care in the future.
• Does anyone know the name of our regular waitress at Louie’s? She does an awesome job.

Endurance, Harrisburg

---