TRANSCRIPT:
We are Scenic Church, and we were fortunate to receive a grant from The Foundation for Evangelism. Our proposal was to begin offering respite care for fosters families in our area. Respite care nights are times where the foster parents can bring their foster, adopted, or biological children to our church and drop them off for up to four hours. We provide this on the 3rd Friday of each month. This provides a much needed break for parents when they are on call 24 hours a day with foster care. We realized that no other church or agency was offering this service to foster families. We partnered with a local foster agency and they have been helpful in promoting these times of rest for foster families. It has been an immediate success! Since starting our respite nights we have averaged 20 kids on a Friday night, ages from 4 months to 16 years old. There is a meal, games, movie time and every child hears about how Jesus loves them through a Bible lesson. Here is what one of the foster parents had to say about the respite care.
“My family was so blessed to take part in your respite night. As foster parents finding respite is next to impossible. We have four littles and it’s been over a year since my husband and I have gotten to enjoy a quiet dinner. Honestly I wanted to fall asleep in my car in your church parking lot for the four hours and catch up on my lack of sleep! Seriously though, thank you so much for welcoming our girls and accepting us as family. It truly does take a village to raise a child and we are so thankful for the much needed rest your church has provided us. Our girls were a little disappointed that we picked them up early since they were having so much fun, and begged that if there is a next time, to not pick them up until the last minute.”
Besides providing a needed break, we are providing the families with care and compassion. This is Hazel. She is 5 months old and has been in foster care since she was 4 hours old. She was born addicted to drugs and had health problems because of her biological mother’s drug use during the pregnancy. When the family came they shared that Hazel had a heart murmur and was going to see a cardiologist. We prayed for them there at the respite care but we told them we would pray for them as a church. Three weeks later the parents came to church to tell us that Hazel had no murmur at all. She was healed! The family is making Scenic Church their home church because we do more than talk about Jesus, we SHOW it. We would not have been able to provide this service without the grant from The Foundation for Evangelism. It has helped us to open doors, to touch people with the love of Christ. It is our prayer that these stories not only happen at Scenic Church but at your church as well.
