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By Mark H. Hunter, Regional Reporter
BATON ROUGE – More than 300 children in Louisiana state foster care are waiting for adoption and almost that many people attended a “Wait No More” conference to do something about it.
Dewayne and Sharon Smith of Slidell want to foster and/or adopt a little girl while Billy and Tessie Grigg of Gonzales want a baby. Buford and Lisa Quick, also of Gonzales, are praying about an older child or a teenager.
The Smiths and Griggs and Quicks were just three of more than 100 families and couples who attended the “Wait No More: Finding Families for Louisiana’s Waiting Kids,” conference, sponsored by the Louisiana Baptist Children’s Home and Family Ministries, Focus on the Family, the Louisiana Family Forum and the state Department of Children and Family Services and hosted May 10 by Istrouma Baptist Church.
Testimonies from two women who grew up in foster care, a man who has adopted several children and a woman who grew up in a family who fostered other children moved the audience to both applause and tears. Reports from several officials detailed the long and complicated processes while encouraging the potential parents to not get discouraged with the wait.
“We had 25 families start the process of adoption from foster care on Saturday,” reported Katie Overstreet, program director of Focus on the Family’s Adoption and Orphan Care. “Our biggest prayer is that families will continue to pray about what role God may have for them in caring for vulnerable children in the community.”
Approximately 4,000 children are in foster care at any one time and more than 300 of them are available for adoption, according to Kaaren Hebert, a policy advisor from the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services.
“During the course of a year we serve over 7,000 children,” Hebert said. “We work very hard to find the children a safe home in a safe and timely manner.”
Istrouma’s Senior Pastor Jeff Ginn reminded the audience, “Psalm 68:6 says ‘The Lord sets the lonely in families – God places the lonely in families – and, of course, He did that with us – He took us as sinners and adopted us into his family. We’re thrilled to host a conference here to help the lonely find families.”
Dewayne Smith, 51, a retired US Army Sergeant First Class, said since three of their four children are now grown, “we have some empty rooms and are looking at adopting a little girl. We’ve been blessed our entire lives with our children and we want to share that with some more kids coming up.”
Billy and Tessie Grigg have three children of their own, ages 12, 10 and 7, and are praying about an infant. “God has been putting it on our hearts for about eight months or so and now it’s time to step forward and trust God and believe in him,” he said.
Buford and Lisa Quick have six children and are praying about more.
“My heart was really moved toward the older children today,” Lisa Quick said. “I’ve never really looked at that standpoint – we always looked at adopting babies.”
Speaker Shannon Vander Ark, now a worship pastor’s wife with two children, described how she was abused by her mother’s boyfriend and was removed from her home at the age of seven. “I went from foster home to foster home with all my belongings in a black garbage bag.”
At the age of 10 she was taken in by a Christian foster family, “who cared about me, prayed for me and took me to church. I had no concept of who God was. Slowly, very slowly, love joy and peace began to overcome the bitterness and anger that I held onto for so many years,” and at 13 years old she became a Christian.
Speaker Tiffany Jorgenson, told how her young life was filled with physical and sexual abuse, drugs, alcohol, and the senseless death of her baby sister. The state removed her and her siblings and fostered them separately.
“I had lost everything I had known – but fear. My perspective on life was shattered,” she said, daubing away tears. She and her siblings were eventually adopted together.
“I personally do not believe that adoption is an accident or a way to fix a system that God did not plan for,” she said. “I believe He uses our brokenness to show the world how he brings us into his own family. The love an adoptive family shows to a child is the same love He shows to us.”
John Moore told how he and his wife have adopted seven children through Los Angeles County foster care, and Amy Perry, a member of the Selah singing group, told how her parents fostered more than 100 children as she was growing up.
Sharon Ford, of Focus on the Family and retired manager of Permanency Services for the Colorado Department of Human Services, explained government workers “work on behalf of the citizens of the state and the children. It is our job to protect them.”
“Government was never meant to parent,” Ford said several times, and explained that while the paperwork seems endless, “We need that information. We want to let go – we want to find them a forever family.”
Ford reminded the audience that while we get impatient waiting for the traffic light or the line at the grocery store to move faster, “some of these children are waiting for years. Our kids don’t deserve to wait.”
During the conference, the Louisiana Baptist Children’s Home unveiled Connect 1:27, which offers individuals and churches a toolkit to be a “helper to the orphan.” The toolkit includes an orphan ministry guide, the theology of adoption, an orphan care sermon, Bible study and prayer guides, adoption options, a foster care and adoption parent guide and “Fields of the Fatherless” by Tom Davis.
Churches will have access to online resources available only to Connect 1:27 Network members and will receive a monthly Connect 1:27 e-newsletter. Connect 1:27 is based on God’s command of James 1:27.
Rev. Gene Mills, president of the Louisiana Family Forum, said, “We’re excited we have parents and organizations from all over the state cooperating in a common goal to connect children who are currently in the foster care system with permanent families. Having made the connections – I believe a lot of these families will be connected.”
This is the second year of an ambitious program kicked off last year with the Over the Edge event and repeated this year. The initial goal was to connect 100 families in 100 churches with foster care children and so far, Mills said, 92 churches have gotten involved.
“The process of adopting a child through foster care is a steeper climb than we understood initially – and that’s the reason we came back for the second year,” Mills said. “I know dozens and dozens of families have been connected and are either fostering now with the hopes of adoption or who have completed their adoption.”
The day before, Mills said, at the Over the Edge rappel event downtown Baton Rouge, he met a young lady who although she had “timed out” of the foster care system, was still following through the adoption process with a North Shore family to make their relationship permanent.
“Now she will have a family to fill that hole in her heart,” Mills said. “She will have someone she can call on – it IS working.”