When you begin fostering you expect to help a child in need, but often they are helping you too.
Why Are Children Removed From Their Homes?
No one wants to have to tear a family apart. However, sometimes circumstances make it unsafe for a child to be at home, and the state has a legal obligation to ensure the child's safety.
When children can’t safely live at home, the court can give temporary legal possession to Child Protective Services (CPS). CPS is not the bad guy. CPS works with the parents to try not to remove the children. CPS assigns a case worker to the children and then the immediate goal is to find a safe home for the children to live…
Buy the Whole Field
As we sat down for devotional this morning, we realized that we might need a new conference table to fit all 14 of us comfortably. The Lord has blessed us with two new case managers and several more families and placements over the summer. We rejoice in the work the Lord has called us to do, and we ask Him to continue to expand His kingdom in San Antonio through the children we serve…
Be Filled with the Holy Spirit
Make Every Effort for Unity: How God is Glorified Even through Conflict
As we sat around the conference room this morning, our devotional leader asked us to shout out words we thought of when he said the word “conflict.” We immediately responded with words such as “anger,” “fighting,” and “shouting”; almost all the words we threw out were negative. To us, conflict is a frightening and frustrating problem that we dread addressing and go out of our way to prevent at all costs. We are terrified of conflict.
Wellspring in the Barren Place
Take a moment and picture a desert. Think of the sand, the rocks, the hazy heat on the horizon. As you paint your mental picture, do you see anything living or green? Maybe you see a lizard or a little withered plant, but probably nothing like a lush forest or grassy plain full of animals and signs of life…
Lord, Make Yourself Known
This morning, we gathered around the conference table and gave thanks for the families who continue to step forward and say yes to fostering and adopting. We praised the Lord for providing safe, loving homes for children rescued from trauma, and we prayed fiercely that God would bring to light each and every fact in these children’s cases…
Blessed Are the Merciful
“But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. He prayed to the LORD, ‘Isn’t this what I said, LORD, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.’” Jonah 4:1-2, NIV
A Good Tree Can’t Produce Bad Fruit
When one of our staff members was a little girl, she accepted Jesus as her savior, and a few months later she was baptized in front of her church congregation. Before baptizing her, the pastor asked the little girl if she had experienced any change in her life since accepting Christ. She replied very matter-a-factly that since being saved she had been a lot nicer to her sisters...
My Yoke is Easy and My Burden is Light
Choosing social work as a career field often means giving up other things such as the concept of weekends off or evenings without work phone calls. Choosing to be a foster parent comes with the same sort of mindset. Date nights now revolve around who is available for respite and family pictures can no longer be posted on Facebook for the whole world to see. Life is just different when you get involved in foster care...