Anna’s House Foundation

Speaker 1: James Chapter 1 verse 27, “Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world”.  

One of the questions that we get asked a lot is how did we know God was calling us to foster care? We heard four sermons in one month over that one verse.  I brought the subject up with Matt and I said I really feel like the Lord is calling us to orphan care and he said, “yeah me too”. 

[No audio: There are hundreds of children each day waiting for a loving and supportive home.] 

Matt: I remember someone make the statement: Who’s gonna take care of all these kids? And I just think…I just remember going “I think we could”

Speaker 2: Do it through an agency that you can get that support. It makes a world of difference when you know that you’ve got somebody in your corner. 

Speaker 3: Anna’s House has been wonderful, it’s been amazing they’re always there.

[No audio: The Anna’s House Foundation exists to provide families with support during their foster care journey.] 

Speaker 4: As someone that works in foster care, there’s great joy in seeing families stretch. Families that have said, “no, no, no I could never do that I could never say yes to that behavior or that age” and they get a little bit in and find themselves seeing how great the need of children actually is in care and they’re able to say “Hey! I think we can do this”.  And it’s just a really beautiful thing to watch. 

[No audio: Often times, sibling groups split up when they enter foster care. ]

Speaker 2: Knowing that you’re able to give a loving home to these kids who need it more than anything, it’s an amazing experience. 

Speaker 1: We had two older children when we signed up to be foster parents and when he came into our home our kids just adored him. He just fits perfectly with us. 

Speaker 5: What I would like to tell a family that’s thinking of fostering is don’t be afraid of loss. If reunification comes up, you know that you have done everything that you could possibly do to love that child in every way, and that their time in your home has been a time of absolute healing.

Speaker 1:  The biggest difficulties in fostering is seeing this side of the world that is just broken and kind of feeling like you can’t do anything about it. We can’t always make the right choices for their parents. We can’t shelter them from what has already happened in their lives. A lot of that is just trusting in the Lord and His plan.

Speaker 6: The biggest joy would be just them saying things that I’ve taught them and singing songs that they’ve learned in church.

[No Audio: While many people may not be able to foster, there are still ways to directly affect a child in care.]

Speaker 2: The most important thing people can do to support a foster family is just being there for them. Offering to bring dinner over, that’s one of the things that really helped us. 

Speaker 1: Some of the most helpful things that people did for us was prayer.

Speaker 6: If you can’t foster, whatever your gift is and you love to do, just share it with the families and share it with the kids. 

Matt: Once you’ve been involved in this, you can’t just drop it and turn away, it becomes part of who you are.

[No audio: Foster. Donate. Volunteer. Get involved today! www.annashousefoundation.org]