Our Next Adventure

Although it was not our intent to continue this blog after returning from Guinea, We thought some of you may wonder where God has been leading us since returning to Indiana.

Several months prior to our return, a part time position opened up at the bank and I returned to the same chair I left two years ago. Brandon's boss saved him a spot at work where he now helps run the shipping department.

We've done some work to our house and it has taken on a little bit of an African flavor, including a few vintage West African maps. Fenley was, of course, thrilled to see us. We've spent a lot of time traveling to visit family and catching up with friends over the summer.

We've also gotten much more deeply involved at church: We serve on the missions committee and are leading a small group through a 12 week Bible study (we hope it continues beyond the 12 weeks). We're also helping with a "business plant" (like a church plant but a community/missions minded business instead). Our experiences with the curriculum research for GBU in Guinea have led us into a long-term project to help members of our church integrate faith and work.

Outside of church, God has called us to something a little more personal and challenging.

Jesus advocates for the cause of the broken, the disenfranchised, the hurt, the helpless and the defenseless. We are called to do the same. It's not the government's responsibility to care for these people, it's the church's -- ours. We are all called to it in different ways. But God asks all of us to reflect His amazing Glory to a dark and broken world around us.

Knowing that this marvelous task has been entrusted to us we are setting out on our next adventure:

Becoming foster parents!

This is both exciting and terrifying. And we will need constant prayers now, as we finish up the approval process, and later, when we get our first placement. We have been told that we could have a placement as early as Christmas!

For many people (us included before we got deeply entrenched in this), the term “foster parent” and all that it entails is pretty fuzzy. But for us, this is what it means:

We will be placed with either one child or a sibling set between the ages of 0 – 3 years old of either gender. The child could stay with us for a short period of time and then be reunited with their parents or they could be with us for much longer, up to 15 months. There could be cases where the biological parent's rights are revoked and the child is then legally available for adoption. In those cases we would love for our home to be the child's forever home. But whether the child is with us for a short while or for life, we are delighted that for that season we get to be their parents.

We have received nothing but good news from my many visits with my OB/GYN and my hematologist, and they all seem optimistic that we will be able to have biological children in the future. Maybe God has sent some rough times our way to shift our perspective and put us together with a child who wants a family as badly as we do.

There are so many other aspects of becoming/being a foster parent that we are looking forward to sharing with you all. We know that it will be challenging. We know that it will mean regular meetings with biological parents and caseworkers. We know that it will mean having our own lives under the microscope. We know that it will mean only leaving our children with someone who has been fingerprinted, had a background check run on them and has been approved by the department of child services if we ever want a night out. We know it will mean sacrificing our free time, our own wants and our money. We know it will mean a whole shift in our current life and in some of our mindsets. We know it will mean facing challenges, having our hearts broken and seeing a side of the world that can be gut-wrenchingly sad.

We know all this, but we are still in it 100%...

Because Jesus came to rescue us when we were orphans and give us a family in Him.


-Hannah



Also, if you are interested in reading more about foster care, from some experienced foster parents, I highly recommend you go here.