September 24, 2025 • 44 mins
In this heartfelt episode of Love Like Crazy, hosts Jay and Stacey Coleman sit down at home with longtime friends Steve and Sara to talk about the beautiful, challenging, and deeply purposeful journey of foster care and adoption. From welcoming sibling groups on short notice to advocating for teenage boys who were often overlooked, Steve and Sara share real stories, practical steps, and the faith that carried them through.
You’ll hear:
Helpful next steps:
Don’t forget to:
Like, subscribe, and leave a comment with future topic suggestions Share this episode with friends or anyone facing a tough season
Join us next time as Jay and Stacey share more insightful and family based content.
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Podcast Produced by Hi Hello Labs Website: hihellolabs.com
You’ll hear:
- What foster care training really looks like and how long certification can take
- How to choose age ranges or placements and what “group homes” look like today
- The reality of reimbursements, clothing allowances, and immediate needs when a child arrives
- Why CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) volunteers are vital and how to get involved
- The powerful adoption stories of Brooklyn and Reese, and how God answered a long-held prayer
- Honest conversations about trauma, mental health support, and the role the church can play
Helpful next steps:
- Pray and talk it through as a family if you feel called to foster or adopt
- Contact your local child and family services office to learn about training
- Look into becoming a CASA volunteer in your community
- Support a local foster care nonprofit with donations or time
Don’t forget to:
Like, subscribe, and leave a comment with future topic suggestions Share this episode with friends or anyone facing a tough season
Join us next time as Jay and Stacey share more insightful and family based content.
------------------------------------
Podcast Produced by Hi Hello Labs Website: hihellolabs.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Love Like Crazy Podcast.
We're your hosts, Jay and Stacey Coleman, and we're here
in our home today. We have some very special guests
with us that you're just going to love. They're going
to share with us their story, their experience and with
foster care. And we're so excited about this conversation today
and we appreciate you tuning in.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Yeah, We've got some very dear friends with us today,
Steven Sarah Easterling, and we're about to get into a
pretty end depth conversation. Got a lot of great things
that I think are going to really encourage you. And
as we're prepare to do that, I just want to
take a moment to thank all of our listeners for
being a part of this podcast. As always, if you
would make sure that you like, you subscribe, you share,
(01:06):
and let all your friends everybody know about this podcast.
Because we are all about building a stronger marriage and
a stronger family. So we today we have with a
Steve and Sarah Easterly and it's that this is a
couple that have been in our lives now what Steve
seventeen years you guys, Actually when we launched the church.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Y'all.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Y'all came and have been a part of the church,
been stable, solid apart, served, helped, coached, I mean, just
been a tremendous source of encourage, not just to me
and Stacy, but to so many people throughout the church.
And we're just blessed to have you today as part
as our guests here for an episode of Love like
his podcast, So do me a favorite greet. Everybody, tell
(01:46):
me a little bit about you yourselves, that story about Sarah.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
All right, we're Steve and Sarah Easterling. Like Jay pastor
Jay whatever you call him, says whatever you call, whatever
you call it. We've been friends for We've been friends
since we met each other, and of course we started
our journey at Journey seventeen, almost seventeen years ago. Next month,
(02:14):
Sarah and I have been married twenty five years. This
past December December what December fourth?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
OKAYNT know if you're married on Christmas Day.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Or now December the fourth, And I know that because
Sarah's birthdays is seventeenth, and then we have Christmas the
twenty fifth. Just to get it exactly, getting this out
the way, there are no separate gifts are separate gifts.
I'm sorry, there is no one big gift, is what
I'm trying to say. That's all separate.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
You have to honor every every everything. I probably would
have married her right around Christmas that we only got
to do one gift.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
So well, Sarah and I. Sarah and I met many
years ago as I was sharing a story about my
ten year high school reunion. That was our first date,
and Sarah and I had a conversation and as we
were dating, if we could do anything in the world
(03:06):
with our lives, what will we do? And the one
thing that we looked at each other and said was, hey,
give a child a home that doesn't have a home,
that needs a home. At the time, and it was
just amazing that we were both on the same page
with that, And I knew at that point in time
that that's who God intended for me to be with.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
You said, y'all had that conversation when y'all were dating.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
When we were dating, Okay, And little did I know,
but Sarah. Sarah had told me later on that she
had she had received a prophetic word in her life
when she was younger that she would be a foster parent.
And you know, it just you know, the Lord knows
what he's doing when he matches two people together and
(03:50):
brings two people together. And Sarah and I opened our
home from the very beginning after we got married. I
actually went to work one day and come home and
had had a group of brothers in my home from
thirteen months old to eight And I'm like, what in
(04:10):
the world's going on here? And uh, Sarah had decided
decided that, you know, we had finished foster care training
and we decided to be foster parents and back up
a little bit, and I come home and there's all
of a sudden, there's kids in our home with little
means you know that that we had. But and Sarah
(04:30):
can attest to this, it doesn't matter what you have
these you know. One thing we've learned throughout the years
is that these kids need love and they just want
somebody to assure them that it's going to be okay.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Well, let me ask you this. You talked about the training,
foster care training. What does that look like.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
I'm sure it's much different now for what we did it,
you know twenty twenty five years ago.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
Go ahead, Well, it was every Saturday for out several months.
They come to your home, they pretty much look everywhere
under your bed and your closet. They want to make
sure that your home is a safe environment for children.
And they pretty much talk about everything. They talk about
anything that can happen, could happen, has happened, may happen,
(05:19):
and you kind of you feel like you're prepared, but
you're not prepared until you do.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
It, especially as as young as and I say, we
were still young. Everybody knows I'm a little bit older
and Sarah and Sarah will remind everybody of that. But
you know, you you come home one day and you
have an instant family and you're not prepared for what
these children are in your home because of you know,
(05:45):
and you hear stories and you're like, that's unreal. It
can happen. And you know, going back a little bit,
just to share some of my childhood, you know, I
grew up. You've heard me talk about my story before
with with a father that it was pretty much he
was not involved in my life and you know, told
(06:06):
me one day when I was a teenager that I
would never amount to anything in life, you know, and
just just the trauma from that, and you know, going
through a broken home and watching my mom remarry and
being raised by a man that you know, believed in
me after a time, but that was later on in life,
and he kind of taught me how to be an adult.
And I always said that I didn't want children to
(06:29):
have to deal with what I had to deal with
as a as a child, and the mental trauma, and
you know, wasn't when we have we've had, you know,
cases of physical trauma. And but in coming home and
finding those group of boys in that home, it was like,
what in the world is going on here? And our
(06:51):
whole lives just changed from that moment. You know.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Well, now, let me ask you this. So you that
was your first experience with foster care coming home with
those boys? You said there were three for four? Okay,
so how many over the course of how long? Because
I know now y'all are kind of like us, you're
moving towards that empty nesting season. You know, how long
of a period of time did.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Y'all foster for.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
We started?
Speaker 3 (07:17):
But several years? Yeah, two and up until we took uh,
we adopted Reece, until we adopted Reece our youngest who
is eighteen now.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
Probably two thousand, yeah, but eight maybe whenever we were
done with her case.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
So over that that period of time, how many kiddos
did y'all foster? How many y'all have in it through that?
Speaker 4 (07:40):
About thirteen? Some would stay.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
We've had, We've had, We've had some short term as well.
We always say eleven boys and four girls. We had
an instance to where we, uh, we got a call
in the middle of the night and had to go
to District one police station on Plank Road and baton
rouge and pick a pick a young lady up that
ran away from Georgia, ran away from home, and we
(08:05):
housed her for a while, and that, you know, it's
just different experience. But Sarah and I made a conscious
decision somewhere along the way. We did some studies about
foster care and who got the worst rap with foster care,
and we figured out real quickly that it was teenage
(08:25):
boys because nobody wanted them. I mean, they were already teenagers.
Nobody wanted to house them. And you know, we we
were we were youth pastors at the time, and the
Lord just kept dealing with us about you know, as
we've seen teenagers come in our youth group and he's like,
(08:47):
these boys get a bad they just get a bad rap.
And uh, we decided to start taking working with the
foster care system and start taking young men out of
group homes. And we would take one out of a
group home and we'd bring him in for a few
months and we would ask him, hey, if you could
bring another one out of that group home, who do
(09:07):
you think would thrive best in this environment? And they
would tell us and we'd go back and get the
next one. And we would raise those boys from thirteen, fourteen,
fifteen years old into adulthood and then they would go
on their way. We weren't always successful with each one
of them, you know, because some of them decided to
take a different path. But for the majority during that
(09:30):
time that we fostered kids like that, you know, they
got the gist of living in a family environment, and
that's what we wanted to give them.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Want to give them, give them the field what a
normal family, what a normal family would be. When I shared,
go ahead, what.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Did you feel like even in your training of foster
care that were you able to say, well, I only
want to foster this age or and so that most
people when they do you train for foster care, they
want the babies and the little ones, because obviously teenage
years are a lot rougher in general in a family
(10:11):
that's you know, together, but then when you are presented
with so many different backgrounds and traumas, it is, it
makes it more complex is and.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
I honestly feel and we'll talk about the adoptions, I
guess in a little bit, but I kind of feel
like that because we were we were obedient and listening
to raising the teenage boys. That prepared us for later on,
and we were rewarded in a sense with you know,
(10:43):
younger children that we could adopt. And I mean, that's
just how I've always felt.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
But to answer your question, you can select andes, and
you can select to only do adoption, and you can
select to only do foster care. We were kind of
open to whatever. We were zeroed eighteen and we you know,
we were like, we'll do whatever if it works out,
it works out, you know, But yeah, I'm glad we
(11:11):
did the teenage boys. That was the best experience.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
I know that in Louisiana specifically, you know, we've heard
of the shortages of foster parents, like you've got there's
more foster kids than there are places for them to go.
Do you know some of the numbers on that.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
Currently, there's about four thousand, two hundred and some chains
foster kids active in the state of Louisiana. Those are
children that are in state, in the custody of the state,
and there's less than two thousand certified foster homes in
the state of Louisiana, So that is a deficit.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
So roughly about fifty five to sixty percent of those
kids don't have a place to go.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
Well, they may. Some foster homes can accommodate more than
one child, but you kind of run into a problem
when the state has some rules, right, so if you're
adopting a child through foster care, they don't want you
to disrupt that by taking in another child, so they
might temporary close you know, not close it, but not
allow you to take any more children in. And we
(12:13):
actually experienced that for a little while too, whenever we
were going through adoption.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Okay, uh so when it comes to are you telling
me that there are actually like these group homes?
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yes, is that?
Speaker 2 (12:25):
And I don't mean to be croube when I say this,
is that What we used to refer to as orphanages,
modern day modern day orphanages.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
So if there's not a home then that can take
I was thinking, where where are all of these extra kids.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
The orphanages anymore?
Speaker 3 (12:44):
They still do? I think there's I think there's one
in Monroe. There's a Baptist boys home in Monroe. Still,
I had no idea. You know, there's quite a few.
And well, I'm not sure what it is.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
I'm racket but I'm pretty sure it's do they do
they do more just girls and just boys, or do
they try to keep the siblings together.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
That's tough.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
That's a tough one.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
It just depends on the situation.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
Most homes are are coat well let me rephrase, they
do have all boy and all girl, but like some
of the bigger group homes will be co ed, but
they'll be separated, like have a girl's area and of
boys area.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
And some foster homes will only take boys, and some
foster homes will only take girls. So and then there's
some foster homes that will allow the the siblings to
be placed together.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Let me ask you this now, if somebody says, Okay,
I'm hearing this, and with the shortage we got it
hard to be foster parents what's the process looked like
for them to foster.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
Well, I would say really pray and see God about
that because it is a divine calling because these children
have been through some stuff that we don't we haven't
faced most of us, you know, and be prepared for
the ugly because it comes out. And if you feel
like that that is a calling you have, then you
(14:08):
can reach out to a local DCFS office. They will
connect you with home Development, which is another little part
of the agency, and then they will set up you
with training. And for a while, because of COVID, they
were offering the training virtually, which was very convenient for people,
but I'm not sure that they're still doing that. Definitely
(14:29):
something to find out more about it.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
I would encourage anybody that has, you know, that thinks
that they want to do uh, you know, foster care,
and number one, do your homework on you know, the
foster care system. Make sure that you're prepared for it because,
like Sarah says, you never you don't know what's going
to walk in your front door. Nobody's ever really prepared
for it. But they do their best to get you
through you know, training to give you real life situations
(14:55):
that you're going to be faced with. But they may
they may not see the child that's coming into your home,
and they may have a whole different situation than what
you're prepared for. And we've run I've been to court
with kids for bringing you know, most of the time
I just share this. They show up with a with
a garbage bag with clothes. We've seen that probably at
(15:19):
least some time.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
Thankfully that has been fixed.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
That has I thought that I had read somewhere that
they had fixed that, which to me, it's it's insane
that the foster care system would provide a kid with
a trash bag with their stuff in.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Well, it's not so much the kid, it's what the
kid left with exactly. They had to be removed from
their home all of a sudden, and all they could
grab was was certain things, and that's you know, that's
what they could do. But thankfully the system has to
fixed that. And but we had we just to share.
(15:55):
We had a child show up one time with four suitcases.
I'm like, man, that's wild. This kid's had all kinds
of stuff he had, he had plenty of time to pack.
Next thing, you know, I'm in West Baton Rouge Paris Court.
I just kind of defending being a defendant because he
took some video games from the last foster he was.
That's what was in the suitcase. Oh my goodness, so
(16:18):
uch I got to take on. But I mean, it's
just one. It's one instance. You know, you I shared
with you about the shoes. You know, every foster child
that came in our home would always get a brand
new pair of shoes. That was the first thing that
we did, was by the by the kids pair of
shoes because as I was, you know, I shared with
(16:41):
you about when I was younger, my mom couldn't afford
a pair of shoes when we were coming up and
my dad was not present, and well known individual bought
me a pair of tennis shoes for basketball because we
all had to have matching shoes. And he just he
asked me, said when you can pay it forward, and
that was my goal was to pay it forward.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
You've been doing that ever since.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Ever since, you know. I mean, it's just it's just
who I am.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Okay, our listeners don't know this, but Steve has actually
bought me two pairs of shoes.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
It's just it's habitual.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Air Force ones, Air Force ones that are great. So
and I'm must say I'd never buy those for myself
because uh, I'm too cheap.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
He had a good friend who takes care of me.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
He's actually been renamed my stylust.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
So I tell you, it's it's been fun. You know,
it's been it's been fun watching you wear because somebody
last Sunday took a picture of him walking.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Across the stage and the preachers and sneakers.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Preachers and sneakers.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yeah, but goodness, I want to ask Sarah this so
that the process of somebody says, Okay, I've prayed about it,
we're gonna foster from that point to where a child
actually enters the home. What's what's the average times three months,
six months, a year?
Speaker 4 (17:59):
What's the For us it was it was kind of gosh,
but it took us a lot to go through the
training because we opted for the Saturday training they do
offer like sometimes during the week. Of course, this was
almost this is twenty plus years ago, so I'm probably
a little little off. I hadn't trained in a while,
but you can what was the question, I'm sorry, timeline, Okay,
(18:23):
for us, it was it was like a year. It
took a while for us to get certified. They want
to you to go through all the training. You have
to do a certain number of hours. I think it's
somewhewhere around twenty five. I think it's I think that's
the number. And then every year you have to do
a certain number of hours to make to maintain. And
(18:43):
I think after you finish the training and after they've
come to your home and they run a background check
with the FBI and with all of that, so once
they've cleared you as someone who can who can be
a first appearent, then they would certify your home and
then you're you're open. And I gotta tell you, once
they know you're open, they're going to send you a child.
(19:05):
And because the need is so great, because the need
is great, and just to.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Be prepared, so there's possibility not just going to send
you one, They're going to send you numerous children.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
It could definitely happen. Now if you have stipulations, like
if you only want you know, some people want a
younger child because they're hoping to maybe adopt that child.
Maybe they walk through infertility. I don't know their story,
but some people might pick zero to like five or
something like that then you're limited. So they're only going
to bring you children.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
In or they may already have other children in the home, yeah.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
Or they may Yeah, they may already have children in
the home, so they might be restricted that way.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
I got a question for you that I know everybody
always has on their mind, but nobody's ever going to
ask it. I might ask it today. Do you take
care of these children out of your own pocket? Or
is this something that's the state. Actually, that is.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
A great question. Okay, I will tell you have to
You have to for a while to of them out
of your own pocket. The state does provide reimbursement. It's
somewhere it used to be somewhere around twenty twenty one,
twenty two dollars a day to take care of that child.
Was it that much If it was even that much,
depended on the age that.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
I think it was somewhere around ten dollars a day.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
Like it wasn't a lot of money.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
It wasn't you're not getting so you're not in it
for the fund.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
No, you're not in it for the fund.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
If we don't have anybody who does this and says
this is gonna be my full time job, well, you know,
if you look at it, yeah, we did and at
the time and if you if you look at it
like that, then I would say that you're probably for
the wrong reason. Yeah, your heart's not the right nice
and you know.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
We we we've actually got to talk to several people
at the church have come to us and talked to
us about, you know, the same process. You know, what
do we do? You mentioned infertility. It's something that you know,
Sarah and I struggle with, you know, at the beginning
of our marriage. But we already knew that, you know,
this was what I called us to do. And it's
(21:01):
just is we let him take care of all the details,
you know, the ten dollars a day or twenty dollars
a day, we never missed. We never missed anything, you know,
because we.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
Knew, right, I think it was more like ten.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Though, because we were we were you know, we we
actually had we actually had a a worker or or
one of a worker for our for our four boys
that we first got. Came in our home and she's
looking around. She goes, yeah, I can take more kids.
I can put up a wall here, and we can
put the State of pay for it. And I'm like,
(21:33):
I'm good. You know, we got four let me let me,
let me figure out these four twenty kids in your house.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Yeah wait, I think they were going to make you
a group home that they.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
I think that was the intention. But uh, you know,
talking about those first four boys, two of them actually
came back about what a year later. The two younger
ones came back about a year later, and we got
them again, you know, after their their mother at the time,
uh did her case study, and uh, you know they
(22:06):
have they have their parents. You know, it's a lot
of things not talked about in foster care with the
with the parents of these kids. As a falster parent,
you have to you have to accept that those are
their parents, regardless of what they're going through at the time.
And you know, you can't talk you can't talk about
(22:28):
their parents. You know, you can't say, well, I wonder
why your mom did that, or this is why you're
here or something like that, because you know that's the
last thing they need in a foster in a foster
home situation.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
I guess bes what to look at as you're not
there to bring correction in that area. You're there to
help be a healing.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
You're there to love them through the process of whatever
they're going.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
In most situations, aren't they trying to maybe reunite?
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Reunification is a big thing in the court is always
the goal in the court system.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Well, I want to say this. The reason why I
asked that question is because I wonder if a lot
of people say, well, you know, I would, I wouldn't
mind fostering, but I don't I don't know if I
can afford to do that. And for I think for
people to know, you know that the state will reimburse
you somewhat or help you with that, yes, it might
would help people realize like that this is something we
can do. Because if you've got a young couple, even
(23:16):
if they're dealing with infertility, but you know, a young
couple struggling financially and it's like, we love kids, we
want to adopt potentially, but man.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
You know afford it?
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Can we afford this? And so that that's kind of
why I asked that question, because I think a lot
of people want to.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Know, well, don't they now have It's like some certain
I don't know if it's a separate organization or our
ministry that helps to provide maybe some some things for
when you when you suddenly take a child in I
know now that they come to you, not necessarily with
a trash bag, but like a duffel bag and maybe
(23:55):
some some supply, some toletries or things like that that
they would need immediately, because if they're taken from their
home suddenly and they don't have anything. There are there places.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
That have times when we were we were helped to
go get clothing and you know, we didn't have a crib.
We had thirteen months old. We didn't have a crib.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Right, you need a lot of it depending on the
age of the child.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
There are like nonprofit agencies. The foster Village is one
year in our local community. I'm sorry, it's called the
Family Village now family. Yes, they they provide a lot
and a lot of people make donations to them. However,
when a child first comes into care, into the state custody,
the state does provide them with a clothing allowance and
(24:37):
an incidental allowance and they provide them with luggage so
that child when they're when they come to you should
have at least the essentials, right, yeah, they should come
with that.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
All right.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
So you guys, actually you were able to come to
the place where you adopted, right, so you know you
talked about some younger ones that came into your care
that you were able to to adopt.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
We had after all these boys, I you know, I
did not. I didn't know what it was like to
be a girl dad. I didn't. In fact, I didn't
want to be a girl dad. We only we only
took boys by design because you know, it was it
was easier, uh, And it was you know, it was
(25:21):
fun for me because and Sarah was the only female
in the house. And I'd always tell them, hey, look,
she she belongs to me. You better respect her because
if you don't respect her, then we're gonna have an issue.
And I never had I never had an issue because
that was that was the queen. You know, you didn't
(25:44):
mess with the respected. They'd respected that understand that.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Being outnumbered Sarah.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
Right, you should. Yeah, you're the queen, you know. But
we had a we had a social worker call us
and say I have a seven year old, uh you
little girl that needs a home. And Sarah approached me
and said, hey, social worker which we knew, called and
(26:13):
said she has a seven year old that thinks she
would fit good and we still had two boys in
the home at the time. And uh, I said, no,
absolutely not. And I guess it was about what two
weeks that I would toss and turn, and I toss
(26:33):
and turn at night. I tossed and turn at night,
and I kept getting subtle reminders that hey, this is
what I called you to do. You need to listen
to me and do it. So I remember waking up,
I'm telling Sarah, I say, hey, Sarah, go ahead and
call her and tell her to bring that little girl,
(26:54):
bring her to the house, and let's meet her and
go from there. Yeah, and uh, uh, I'll never forget
my tiny little Brooklyn walked in the door, stood in
the stood in the walkway of my living room with
tears in her eyes. She was scared, and she was
scared half to death. And I just gently looked at
(27:15):
her and I said, hey, come sit down. And I
didn't know what to do. Jay, I was boy dad,
you know. And she came and sit down and I
looked at her and I said, are you scared? She say,
because I'm not a little guy. I'm not a petite Brooklyn.
You know, I'm a big guy. And I said, are
you scared? And she goes, yeah, and I said, me too.
I said, because I have no clue what I'm about
(27:36):
to do bringing a little girl in my house. I said,
I'm a boy dad. You know, I like my guys.
You know, I like to play football, and you know.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
You became a girl dad pretty pretty easy.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
So well, you know, the moment she looked at me,
she said, can we go get a baby doll? I said,
get in a truck, let's go get a baby doll.
And I did. I drove her and I bought her
a baby doll. And Brooklyn has been our child since
that day.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Now your grandparents now.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
Now, now she has a little boy. It's almost five
years old, Grayson. Yeah, and he is just he is
our heart. I mean he is. He is quite y'all
met him. He's quite the character he is. Now Grayson
is not our only grandson. We have two of the
two of the boys that we raised out of group
homes have have sons who are actually they actually named
(28:32):
their kids after me. Allo. It was it is an honor.
And uh, you know, they both call me Poppy, and
they'll call you know, periodically and we'll go watch them
play sports, and you know, we're we're very involved in
their lives. Even though they don't have our last name,
we're still Mimi and Poppy to that.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Yea, So.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
We got we got to talk about Reese because Reese
was when we met, y'all, she lived, she was.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
A little over a year old.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
Yeah, and she's an eighteen year old soon to be
high school graduated, going to Nichols.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
I cannot believe she's going to graduate high school.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
It's crazy.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Reese's Reese is an amazing story and all that. Sarah,
Oh gosh, I tell you the story.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
Oh lord, that'd be hard. Okay, all right, well, okay,
I think that for us, I think we had kind
of we didn't really do a lot of infertility testing
or any of that, but nothing was happening. So but
our plan had always been to raise foster children and
have a family like simultaneously. But when that didn't happen,
(29:47):
we're like, well, we might need to look at this,
you know, And so we were kind of trying starting
to make plans I guess to you know, make those
appointments and do all the stuff. And oh my god,
I was in church on Sunday and it was November
the nineteenth and I'll never forget it. And the Holy
(30:08):
Spirit spoke to me during worship and he's like, ask
me for a baby, and I'm like, oh, no, I'm
not going to do that because you know, I've been
doing that for a long time and it doesn't seem
to be working. But anyway, I did it. Anyway, I'm like,
you know, and I think it's kind of I'm embarrassed
even admit this, but my prayer was something like, Lord,
I still want that baby, you know. Like and so
(30:29):
I say this to anybody that that's dealing with infertility,
just a little shout out there, a little ten to
surrender it to God, and to surrender that to the Lord,
because I think for me, he went, oh God, okay,
I need a minute.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
It's okay, take you down.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
Excuse me. Once I surrendered it to the Lord, I
felt like that that was you know, that I was
able to heal.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
You know.
Speaker 4 (31:02):
Anyway, the story gets much better. Okay, So the very
next day is November twentieth, and our daughter was born
that day. And they called me the next day.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Hold on, you're saying that Reese was born.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
There was born November twentieth, Wow, And which I've just
lost my pops, the man that took over raising me. Yeah,
six months earlier. That was also his birthday, really, so
that's who she gets her name out of. Her name
is Lee Anne. His name was Robert Lee, so we
(31:36):
she has uh and the Anne park comes from Sarah's sister.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
I'd lost sister a few years before, a couple of
years before in two thousand and five, and Reese was
born in O six.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
God gave you a baby, oh he did.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
He gave me a baby. And that was the week
of Thanksgiving. So you know, everything happens. You know, we
have to pick up this baby.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
We meet them at Walmart.
Speaker 4 (31:56):
We met Chalbrotextan Services at Walmart, and we had to
buy everything for a baby. We had nothing for a baby.
The financial situation that we were in, just everything kind
of aligned perfectly for us to be able to do this.
It was like all God. And we picked her up
(32:21):
and we brought her home and then we had Thanksgiving.
We were hosting Thanksgiving, and I was very ill prepared,
not going to lie for a baby or for Thanksgiving
at this point. But I had to take Fmla from work.
I mean, it was all happening really quick, and I
think it was that Saturday. Afterwards. I was sitting there
holding her, and I think Steve walked in and I
(32:41):
was boo crying, and I'm like, the Lord just reminded
me that this is the baby I prayed for, you know,
And I'm boohoo crying, And you know, I never doubted
that she would be our baby, you know that we
would be able to adopt her. But she did come
through the foster care system, and we had her from
thirty six hours old till wow eighteen. And I mean,
(33:05):
her stories, but it's her story now and I have
to put telling it right. I have to let her.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
But she's she's awesome when she tells her story. And
I got to tell you Reese is Reese is an
advocate for adoption. Yeah, and just to hear her talk
about how she was blessed with a family and the
family she was blessed with and the siblings you know
that she's got to experience over the years that she
(33:32):
may not have had. You know, her story is very unique.
All of them story is very unique. But we adopted
through the foster care system with Brooklyn and Reese.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Well, it's it's been pretty cool to watch Brooklyn, you know,
growing to the woman she is. But to see Reese
as a baby, Yeah, and it makes me feel old
to know that she's eighteen years old.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
Right, Oh gosh. Everything that we've done is foster parents
and you know, adopting you know, the girls has been
you know, it's been a stepping stone to you know,
the next chapter in life or the next the next
thing that He was preparing for us, because then e
j and Deshauna came along, very very unique, very unique
(34:19):
couple of individuals who have been in our lives their
whole lives. And little did we know that the need
would arise for them to have to have a family
after they lost both of their parents, one being Sarah's sister,
and then their father passed away all of a sudden,
these these you know, two well loved kids are homeless
(34:46):
and they're part of our family, you know, and and
our home was built for those individuals. And I know
that you know along the years that he, you know,
the Lord prepared us for that time to be able
to say, hey, the this is a natural fit. You know,
you were and we took them in and you know,
(35:07):
have raised them. And you know, when we adopted EJ
and to Shauna Reese and Brooklyn looked at us and said,
we just have one question because we didn't know how
they would react. You know that that was their siblings,
but it was their cousins as well. And I was
like what And they were like, why don't we wait
so long the adult? Well?
Speaker 4 (35:28):
Did we adopted them when they became adults?
Speaker 3 (35:30):
Right?
Speaker 4 (35:31):
You know? They they still had the benefit of their parents,
which wasn't huge, but they deserved it.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
It was theirs.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
How were they when they came to when Shaun was
what eleven?
Speaker 4 (35:42):
No, No, the Shauna would have been fourteen, her dad
was about twelve, fourteen or fifteen and was about twelve.
And then there's a whole story with that too. The
whole family was grieving and dealing with so much when
all that came to play. But at the same time,
that was when I decided to Acasta because we we
had after we adopted Reese, we stopped doing foster care.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
So tell us about that.
Speaker 4 (36:09):
Well, Acasta is a court appointed special advocate And if
you this is for people that don't feel like they
can be foster parents. Acasta doesn't take children into their home,
but you advocate for that child, so you would spend
time with that child a couple hours a month, you
would spend time like if the child as school age,
(36:29):
you might visit them at school or something like that.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
But that's a big need nowadays, it.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
Is there almost every case that comes through the court
system that's a foster care case gets assigned a costa
and there's definitely not as many costas as there are
children in foster care.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
And that's something when we first started fostering that was
not prevalent.
Speaker 4 (36:52):
Yeah, we didn't have.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
One of our one, yeah, but it was something that
the state has brought on that really, you know, advocates,
it has helped because you know, as much as we
can do is foster parents in our home and try
to help and try to try to you know, teach
and try to you know, these advocates are you know,
(37:16):
come and meet with them and they're able to take
them off. And sometimes a child will talk more to
an individual that they're not around every day, right, you know,
and you talking about you know, foster care, and I
know we'll get back to takasa, but things like going
to church, that's you know, that's that's unfamiliar to some children.
In this world. You know, we're church going people.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
We kind of take that for granted, right, yeah, you know,
but never been accustomed to that, raised in that right,
or even taught about Jesus, Yeah exactly.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
And you know, we we were we were youth pastors,
and I know we were sitting in the congregation one
time one of our boys went missing. He hadn't been
in churches hardly any in his life, and all of
a sudden, out of the baptistry up top above the
choir loft, here he comes flying out.
Speaker 4 (38:01):
Oh my God.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
And I mean, we're like, he was so much fun.
We have we have great stories exactly. But but you know,
one thing about one thing about being a foster parent
is that I found that when we didn't know, somebody
else knewing your you're you're there's a lot of things
that you're gonna be unfamiliar with. There's a lot of
(38:27):
things you're not gonna know. And that's okay because there's
a lot of things that they don't know about you,
and there's a lot of things that's going to take
get them getting accustomed to you and your house because
your house looks totally different than what their house does.
And I found that church family is the best family
when you foster.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
You know well, you know, I know that with the
shortage that we see in the state, they need more
foster parents, and in my opinion is to see the
church step up and fill that role. With talk about
all the time about being the hands and feet of Jesus.
Inwhat better way than to be the hands and feet
of Jesus to a child who has that need within
(39:08):
their life for stability and safety.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
Scripture calls us to take care of the widows and
the orphan ye exactly.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
Very hard of God right will take care of those
so well? I have a question like when whenever I
know that there's like we talked about the the ministries
that provide, you know, for their physical needs and stuff
like that, what about like for the mental health for
the trauma that they may have occurred. Does the foster
(39:37):
system provide like counselors and do they do? They say
that is I have to you know in most cases
or it just it just depends on the case.
Speaker 4 (39:50):
Most judges will order psychological evils, especially for teenagers and
for children. They will recommend some type of counseling and
you it can be done in school if they're school age.
For younger children, sometimes they will recommend programs like Early
Steps that kind of come in and just kind of
assess the child and see where they are. I think
(40:12):
that goes up to maybe three years old. I'm not positive.
And then there are other programs that the pediatricians and
things can recommend if a child has behavior issues. But
some of these kids will come in with just because
their lives have been turned upside down and they have
ABA therapy and there's so many things available now that
(40:33):
we're even available twenty years ago. You know. Yeah, it's
there's a lot of resources. And I will tell you this,
a child that has ACOSTA will be more up to
get those yes because we will advocate for those things too.
And that has been I've loved my role as ACASA.
(40:54):
I've done it for eleven years. I'm a volunteer and
don't get me wrong, it gets me very nervous. I'm
goen I have to testify. But it's been amazing. It's
been a good journey.
Speaker 3 (41:04):
Well, let me say this.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
I just want to thank you guys for your heart
to love on kids and to as I said, be
the hands and feet of Jesus to those kids, because,
as you said, Sarah, it's the heart of God to
care for the widows and the orphans and so many times.
You know, I think what we've done here today is
to be able to answer a lot of questions that
maybe people have because you know, I've never I've talked
(41:28):
about foster care, but I've never really thought about or
had the answer some of the questions. You know, We've
been friends with you guys forever and ever, and we've
talked about foster care, but just some of the practical
questions that people might have. And so I appreciate you
guys just coming to being able to share your heart
to me.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
We appreciate you having us, and we're always available for
you know, for people that have questions about the you know,
what we can help them with. I mean, you know,
it's it's changed a lot over the years, but I
tell you what thing that hasn't changed, and that's how
Jesus loves his children and people, you know, and you know,
(42:05):
if we can show you how to do that through
the foster care system, then we've done it. We've done
what we were called to do, you know, and we're
just we're very blessed and very thankful, very blessed to
have you guys in our lives because y'all have seen
our family and our family transition many times we've seen
and vice versa.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
We've watched your family. Y'all been a blessing to us.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
You guys have us.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
Thank you for your heart to serve and especially sir kids.
Speaker 3 (42:29):
Absolutely, it's such.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
A powerful story and testimony. You know of God's faithfulness
in your own life, and how you know the seeds
that you've sown to help all of these children in need,
and then you know your prayer for a baby and
ugly crying, but just just how faithful the Lord is
to answer you know our our hearts cry, and and
(42:51):
how we can turn around and be the hands and
feet of Jesus. It's it's a very powerful story.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
It's been fun, thank well, it's been a blessing to
day to be able to have these dear friends with
us today and to talk about something that is so
near to the heart of God. And if you've got
a desire to foster, to help with children, to be
a cassa, to advocate for children, then I would encourage it.
Reach out to Steven Sarah, reach out, talk to Department
of Family Health and Services in the state, because this
(43:18):
is a need. You've heard some of the statistics they've
talked about, some of the numbers states to step out,
reach out and see if you can help fill that need.
And it's been a great conversation today answering just a
lot of practical questions about foster care and hearing about
y'all story. And so I want to thank everybody once
again for being a part of this podcast once again,
(43:41):
Like if you're watching on YouTube, hit that subscribe button,
leave us a comment, leave us a review, and help
us push this podcast forward and help us help it
grow each and every days because we really want to
build stronger marriages, build stronger families. And as always, I'm
Jay and I'm Stacy and this is lovel like raced
(44:08):
old
Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Love Like Crazy Podcast.
We're your hosts, Jay and Stacey Coleman, and we're here
in our home today. We have some very special guests
with us that you're just going to love. They're going
to share with us their story, their experience and with
foster care. And we're so excited about this conversation today
and we appreciate you tuning in.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Yeah, We've got some very dear friends with us today,
Steven Sarah Easterling, and we're about to get into a
pretty end depth conversation. Got a lot of great things
that I think are going to really encourage you. And
as we're prepare to do that, I just want to
take a moment to thank all of our listeners for
being a part of this podcast. As always, if you
would make sure that you like, you subscribe, you share,
(01:06):
and let all your friends everybody know about this podcast.
Because we are all about building a stronger marriage and
a stronger family. So we today we have with a
Steve and Sarah Easterly and it's that this is a
couple that have been in our lives now what Steve
seventeen years you guys, Actually when we launched the church.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Y'all.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Y'all came and have been a part of the church,
been stable, solid apart, served, helped, coached, I mean, just
been a tremendous source of encourage, not just to me
and Stacy, but to so many people throughout the church.
And we're just blessed to have you today as part
as our guests here for an episode of Love like
his podcast, So do me a favorite greet. Everybody, tell
(01:46):
me a little bit about you yourselves, that story about Sarah.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
All right, we're Steve and Sarah Easterling. Like Jay pastor
Jay whatever you call him, says whatever you call, whatever
you call it. We've been friends for We've been friends
since we met each other, and of course we started
our journey at Journey seventeen, almost seventeen years ago. Next month,
(02:14):
Sarah and I have been married twenty five years. This
past December December what December fourth?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
OKAYNT know if you're married on Christmas Day.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Or now December the fourth, And I know that because
Sarah's birthdays is seventeenth, and then we have Christmas the
twenty fifth. Just to get it exactly, getting this out
the way, there are no separate gifts are separate gifts.
I'm sorry, there is no one big gift, is what
I'm trying to say. That's all separate.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
You have to honor every every everything. I probably would
have married her right around Christmas that we only got
to do one gift.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
So well, Sarah and I. Sarah and I met many
years ago as I was sharing a story about my
ten year high school reunion. That was our first date,
and Sarah and I had a conversation and as we
were dating, if we could do anything in the world
(03:06):
with our lives, what will we do? And the one
thing that we looked at each other and said was, hey,
give a child a home that doesn't have a home,
that needs a home. At the time, and it was
just amazing that we were both on the same page
with that, And I knew at that point in time
that that's who God intended for me to be with.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
You said, y'all had that conversation when y'all were dating.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
When we were dating, Okay, And little did I know,
but Sarah. Sarah had told me later on that she
had she had received a prophetic word in her life
when she was younger that she would be a foster parent.
And you know, it just you know, the Lord knows
what he's doing when he matches two people together and
(03:50):
brings two people together. And Sarah and I opened our
home from the very beginning after we got married. I
actually went to work one day and come home and
had had a group of brothers in my home from
thirteen months old to eight And I'm like, what in
(04:10):
the world's going on here? And uh, Sarah had decided
decided that, you know, we had finished foster care training
and we decided to be foster parents and back up
a little bit, and I come home and there's all
of a sudden, there's kids in our home with little
means you know that that we had. But and Sarah
(04:30):
can attest to this, it doesn't matter what you have
these you know. One thing we've learned throughout the years
is that these kids need love and they just want
somebody to assure them that it's going to be okay.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Well, let me ask you this. You talked about the training,
foster care training. What does that look like.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
I'm sure it's much different now for what we did it,
you know twenty twenty five years ago.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
Go ahead, Well, it was every Saturday for out several months.
They come to your home, they pretty much look everywhere
under your bed and your closet. They want to make
sure that your home is a safe environment for children.
And they pretty much talk about everything. They talk about
anything that can happen, could happen, has happened, may happen,
(05:19):
and you kind of you feel like you're prepared, but
you're not prepared until you do.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
It, especially as as young as and I say, we
were still young. Everybody knows I'm a little bit older
and Sarah and Sarah will remind everybody of that. But
you know, you you come home one day and you
have an instant family and you're not prepared for what
these children are in your home because of you know,
(05:45):
and you hear stories and you're like, that's unreal. It
can happen. And you know, going back a little bit,
just to share some of my childhood, you know, I
grew up. You've heard me talk about my story before
with with a father that it was pretty much he
was not involved in my life and you know, told
(06:06):
me one day when I was a teenager that I
would never amount to anything in life, you know, and
just just the trauma from that, and you know, going
through a broken home and watching my mom remarry and
being raised by a man that you know, believed in
me after a time, but that was later on in life,
and he kind of taught me how to be an adult.
And I always said that I didn't want children to
(06:29):
have to deal with what I had to deal with
as a as a child, and the mental trauma, and
you know, wasn't when we have we've had, you know,
cases of physical trauma. And but in coming home and
finding those group of boys in that home, it was like,
what in the world is going on here? And our
(06:51):
whole lives just changed from that moment. You know.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Well, now, let me ask you this. So you that
was your first experience with foster care coming home with
those boys? You said there were three for four? Okay,
so how many over the course of how long? Because
I know now y'all are kind of like us, you're
moving towards that empty nesting season. You know, how long
of a period of time did.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Y'all foster for.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
We started?
Speaker 3 (07:17):
But several years? Yeah, two and up until we took uh,
we adopted Reece, until we adopted Reece our youngest who
is eighteen now.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
Probably two thousand, yeah, but eight maybe whenever we were
done with her case.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
So over that that period of time, how many kiddos
did y'all foster? How many y'all have in it through that?
Speaker 4 (07:40):
About thirteen? Some would stay.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
We've had, We've had, We've had some short term as well.
We always say eleven boys and four girls. We had
an instance to where we, uh, we got a call
in the middle of the night and had to go
to District one police station on Plank Road and baton
rouge and pick a pick a young lady up that
ran away from Georgia, ran away from home, and we
(08:05):
housed her for a while, and that, you know, it's
just different experience. But Sarah and I made a conscious
decision somewhere along the way. We did some studies about
foster care and who got the worst rap with foster care,
and we figured out real quickly that it was teenage
(08:25):
boys because nobody wanted them. I mean, they were already teenagers.
Nobody wanted to house them. And you know, we we
were we were youth pastors at the time, and the
Lord just kept dealing with us about you know, as
we've seen teenagers come in our youth group and he's like,
(08:47):
these boys get a bad they just get a bad rap.
And uh, we decided to start taking working with the
foster care system and start taking young men out of
group homes. And we would take one out of a
group home and we'd bring him in for a few
months and we would ask him, hey, if you could
bring another one out of that group home, who do
(09:07):
you think would thrive best in this environment? And they
would tell us and we'd go back and get the
next one. And we would raise those boys from thirteen, fourteen,
fifteen years old into adulthood and then they would go
on their way. We weren't always successful with each one
of them, you know, because some of them decided to
take a different path. But for the majority during that
(09:30):
time that we fostered kids like that, you know, they
got the gist of living in a family environment, and
that's what we wanted to give them.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Want to give them, give them the field what a
normal family, what a normal family would be. When I shared,
go ahead, what.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Did you feel like even in your training of foster
care that were you able to say, well, I only
want to foster this age or and so that most
people when they do you train for foster care, they
want the babies and the little ones, because obviously teenage
years are a lot rougher in general in a family
(10:11):
that's you know, together, but then when you are presented
with so many different backgrounds and traumas, it is, it
makes it more complex is and.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
I honestly feel and we'll talk about the adoptions, I
guess in a little bit, but I kind of feel
like that because we were we were obedient and listening
to raising the teenage boys. That prepared us for later on,
and we were rewarded in a sense with you know,
(10:43):
younger children that we could adopt. And I mean, that's
just how I've always felt.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
But to answer your question, you can select andes, and
you can select to only do adoption, and you can
select to only do foster care. We were kind of
open to whatever. We were zeroed eighteen and we you know,
we were like, we'll do whatever if it works out,
it works out, you know, But yeah, I'm glad we
(11:11):
did the teenage boys. That was the best experience.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
I know that in Louisiana specifically, you know, we've heard
of the shortages of foster parents, like you've got there's
more foster kids than there are places for them to go.
Do you know some of the numbers on that.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
Currently, there's about four thousand, two hundred and some chains
foster kids active in the state of Louisiana. Those are
children that are in state, in the custody of the state,
and there's less than two thousand certified foster homes in
the state of Louisiana, So that is a deficit.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
So roughly about fifty five to sixty percent of those
kids don't have a place to go.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
Well, they may. Some foster homes can accommodate more than
one child, but you kind of run into a problem
when the state has some rules, right, so if you're
adopting a child through foster care, they don't want you
to disrupt that by taking in another child, so they
might temporary close you know, not close it, but not
allow you to take any more children in. And we
(12:13):
actually experienced that for a little while too, whenever we
were going through adoption.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Okay, uh so when it comes to are you telling
me that there are actually like these group homes?
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yes, is that?
Speaker 2 (12:25):
And I don't mean to be croube when I say this,
is that What we used to refer to as orphanages,
modern day modern day orphanages.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
So if there's not a home then that can take
I was thinking, where where are all of these extra kids.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
The orphanages anymore?
Speaker 3 (12:44):
They still do? I think there's I think there's one
in Monroe. There's a Baptist boys home in Monroe. Still,
I had no idea. You know, there's quite a few.
And well, I'm not sure what it is.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
I'm racket but I'm pretty sure it's do they do
they do more just girls and just boys, or do
they try to keep the siblings together.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
That's tough.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
That's a tough one.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
It just depends on the situation.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
Most homes are are coat well let me rephrase, they
do have all boy and all girl, but like some
of the bigger group homes will be co ed, but
they'll be separated, like have a girl's area and of
boys area.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
And some foster homes will only take boys, and some
foster homes will only take girls. So and then there's
some foster homes that will allow the the siblings to
be placed together.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Let me ask you this now, if somebody says, Okay,
I'm hearing this, and with the shortage we got it
hard to be foster parents what's the process looked like
for them to foster.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
Well, I would say really pray and see God about
that because it is a divine calling because these children
have been through some stuff that we don't we haven't
faced most of us, you know, and be prepared for
the ugly because it comes out. And if you feel
like that that is a calling you have, then you
(14:08):
can reach out to a local DCFS office. They will
connect you with home Development, which is another little part
of the agency, and then they will set up you
with training. And for a while, because of COVID, they
were offering the training virtually, which was very convenient for people,
but I'm not sure that they're still doing that. Definitely
(14:29):
something to find out more about it.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
I would encourage anybody that has, you know, that thinks
that they want to do uh, you know, foster care,
and number one, do your homework on you know, the
foster care system. Make sure that you're prepared for it because,
like Sarah says, you never you don't know what's going
to walk in your front door. Nobody's ever really prepared
for it. But they do their best to get you
through you know, training to give you real life situations
(14:55):
that you're going to be faced with. But they may
they may not see the child that's coming into your home,
and they may have a whole different situation than what
you're prepared for. And we've run I've been to court
with kids for bringing you know, most of the time
I just share this. They show up with a with
a garbage bag with clothes. We've seen that probably at
(15:19):
least some time.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
Thankfully that has been fixed.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
That has I thought that I had read somewhere that
they had fixed that, which to me, it's it's insane
that the foster care system would provide a kid with
a trash bag with their stuff in.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Well, it's not so much the kid, it's what the
kid left with exactly. They had to be removed from
their home all of a sudden, and all they could
grab was was certain things, and that's you know, that's
what they could do. But thankfully the system has to
fixed that. And but we had we just to share.
(15:55):
We had a child show up one time with four suitcases.
I'm like, man, that's wild. This kid's had all kinds
of stuff he had, he had plenty of time to pack.
Next thing, you know, I'm in West Baton Rouge Paris Court.
I just kind of defending being a defendant because he
took some video games from the last foster he was.
That's what was in the suitcase. Oh my goodness, so
(16:18):
uch I got to take on. But I mean, it's
just one. It's one instance. You know, you I shared
with you about the shoes. You know, every foster child
that came in our home would always get a brand
new pair of shoes. That was the first thing that
we did, was by the by the kids pair of
shoes because as I was, you know, I shared with
(16:41):
you about when I was younger, my mom couldn't afford
a pair of shoes when we were coming up and
my dad was not present, and well known individual bought
me a pair of tennis shoes for basketball because we
all had to have matching shoes. And he just he
asked me, said when you can pay it forward, and
that was my goal was to pay it forward.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
You've been doing that ever since.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Ever since, you know. I mean, it's just it's just
who I am.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Okay, our listeners don't know this, but Steve has actually
bought me two pairs of shoes.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
It's just it's habitual.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Air Force ones, Air Force ones that are great. So
and I'm must say I'd never buy those for myself
because uh, I'm too cheap.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
He had a good friend who takes care of me.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
He's actually been renamed my stylust.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
So I tell you, it's it's been fun. You know,
it's been it's been fun watching you wear because somebody
last Sunday took a picture of him walking.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Across the stage and the preachers and sneakers.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Preachers and sneakers.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yeah, but goodness, I want to ask Sarah this so
that the process of somebody says, Okay, I've prayed about it,
we're gonna foster from that point to where a child
actually enters the home. What's what's the average times three months,
six months, a year?
Speaker 4 (17:59):
What's the For us it was it was kind of gosh,
but it took us a lot to go through the
training because we opted for the Saturday training they do
offer like sometimes during the week. Of course, this was
almost this is twenty plus years ago, so I'm probably
a little little off. I hadn't trained in a while,
but you can what was the question, I'm sorry, timeline, Okay,
(18:23):
for us, it was it was like a year. It
took a while for us to get certified. They want
to you to go through all the training. You have
to do a certain number of hours. I think it's
somewhewhere around twenty five. I think it's I think that's
the number. And then every year you have to do
a certain number of hours to make to maintain. And
(18:43):
I think after you finish the training and after they've
come to your home and they run a background check
with the FBI and with all of that, so once
they've cleared you as someone who can who can be
a first appearent, then they would certify your home and
then you're you're open. And I gotta tell you, once
they know you're open, they're going to send you a child.
(19:05):
And because the need is so great, because the need
is great, and just to.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Be prepared, so there's possibility not just going to send
you one, They're going to send you numerous children.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
It could definitely happen. Now if you have stipulations, like
if you only want you know, some people want a
younger child because they're hoping to maybe adopt that child.
Maybe they walk through infertility. I don't know their story,
but some people might pick zero to like five or
something like that then you're limited. So they're only going
to bring you children.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
In or they may already have other children in the home, yeah.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
Or they may Yeah, they may already have children in
the home, so they might be restricted that way.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
I got a question for you that I know everybody
always has on their mind, but nobody's ever going to
ask it. I might ask it today. Do you take
care of these children out of your own pocket? Or
is this something that's the state. Actually, that is.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
A great question. Okay, I will tell you have to
You have to for a while to of them out
of your own pocket. The state does provide reimbursement. It's
somewhere it used to be somewhere around twenty twenty one,
twenty two dollars a day to take care of that child.
Was it that much If it was even that much,
depended on the age that.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
I think it was somewhere around ten dollars a day.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
Like it wasn't a lot of money.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
It wasn't you're not getting so you're not in it
for the fund.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
No, you're not in it for the fund.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
If we don't have anybody who does this and says
this is gonna be my full time job, well, you know,
if you look at it, yeah, we did and at
the time and if you if you look at it
like that, then I would say that you're probably for
the wrong reason. Yeah, your heart's not the right nice
and you know.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
We we we've actually got to talk to several people
at the church have come to us and talked to
us about, you know, the same process. You know, what
do we do? You mentioned infertility. It's something that you know,
Sarah and I struggle with, you know, at the beginning
of our marriage. But we already knew that, you know,
this was what I called us to do. And it's
(21:01):
just is we let him take care of all the details,
you know, the ten dollars a day or twenty dollars
a day, we never missed. We never missed anything, you know,
because we.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
Knew, right, I think it was more like ten.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Though, because we were we were you know, we we
actually had we actually had a a worker or or
one of a worker for our for our four boys
that we first got. Came in our home and she's
looking around. She goes, yeah, I can take more kids.
I can put up a wall here, and we can
put the State of pay for it. And I'm like,
(21:33):
I'm good. You know, we got four let me let me,
let me figure out these four twenty kids in your house.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Yeah wait, I think they were going to make you
a group home that they.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
I think that was the intention. But uh, you know,
talking about those first four boys, two of them actually
came back about what a year later. The two younger
ones came back about a year later, and we got
them again, you know, after their their mother at the time,
uh did her case study, and uh, you know they
(22:06):
have they have their parents. You know, it's a lot
of things not talked about in foster care with the
with the parents of these kids. As a falster parent,
you have to you have to accept that those are
their parents, regardless of what they're going through at the time.
And you know, you can't talk you can't talk about
(22:28):
their parents. You know, you can't say, well, I wonder
why your mom did that, or this is why you're
here or something like that, because you know that's the
last thing they need in a foster in a foster
home situation.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
I guess bes what to look at as you're not
there to bring correction in that area. You're there to
help be a healing.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
You're there to love them through the process of whatever
they're going.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
In most situations, aren't they trying to maybe reunite?
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Reunification is a big thing in the court is always
the goal in the court system.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Well, I want to say this. The reason why I
asked that question is because I wonder if a lot
of people say, well, you know, I would, I wouldn't
mind fostering, but I don't I don't know if I
can afford to do that. And for I think for
people to know, you know that the state will reimburse
you somewhat or help you with that, yes, it might
would help people realize like that this is something we
can do. Because if you've got a young couple, even
(23:16):
if they're dealing with infertility, but you know, a young
couple struggling financially and it's like, we love kids, we
want to adopt potentially, but man.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
You know afford it?
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Can we afford this? And so that that's kind of
why I asked that question, because I think a lot
of people want to.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Know, well, don't they now have It's like some certain
I don't know if it's a separate organization or our
ministry that helps to provide maybe some some things for
when you when you suddenly take a child in I
know now that they come to you, not necessarily with
a trash bag, but like a duffel bag and maybe
(23:55):
some some supply, some toletries or things like that that
they would need immediately, because if they're taken from their
home suddenly and they don't have anything. There are there places.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
That have times when we were we were helped to
go get clothing and you know, we didn't have a crib.
We had thirteen months old. We didn't have a crib.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Right, you need a lot of it depending on the
age of the child.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
There are like nonprofit agencies. The foster Village is one
year in our local community. I'm sorry, it's called the
Family Village now family. Yes, they they provide a lot
and a lot of people make donations to them. However,
when a child first comes into care, into the state custody,
the state does provide them with a clothing allowance and
(24:37):
an incidental allowance and they provide them with luggage so
that child when they're when they come to you should
have at least the essentials, right, yeah, they should come
with that.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
All right.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
So you guys, actually you were able to come to
the place where you adopted, right, so you know you
talked about some younger ones that came into your care
that you were able to to adopt.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
We had after all these boys, I you know, I
did not. I didn't know what it was like to
be a girl dad. I didn't. In fact, I didn't
want to be a girl dad. We only we only
took boys by design because you know, it was it
was easier, uh, And it was you know, it was
(25:21):
fun for me because and Sarah was the only female
in the house. And I'd always tell them, hey, look,
she she belongs to me. You better respect her because
if you don't respect her, then we're gonna have an issue.
And I never had I never had an issue because
that was that was the queen. You know, you didn't
(25:44):
mess with the respected. They'd respected that understand that.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Being outnumbered Sarah.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
Right, you should. Yeah, you're the queen, you know. But
we had a we had a social worker call us
and say I have a seven year old, uh you
little girl that needs a home. And Sarah approached me
and said, hey, social worker which we knew, called and
(26:13):
said she has a seven year old that thinks she
would fit good and we still had two boys in
the home at the time. And uh, I said, no,
absolutely not. And I guess it was about what two
weeks that I would toss and turn, and I toss
(26:33):
and turn at night. I tossed and turn at night,
and I kept getting subtle reminders that hey, this is
what I called you to do. You need to listen
to me and do it. So I remember waking up,
I'm telling Sarah, I say, hey, Sarah, go ahead and
call her and tell her to bring that little girl,
(26:54):
bring her to the house, and let's meet her and
go from there. Yeah, and uh, uh, I'll never forget
my tiny little Brooklyn walked in the door, stood in
the stood in the walkway of my living room with
tears in her eyes. She was scared, and she was
scared half to death. And I just gently looked at
(27:15):
her and I said, hey, come sit down. And I
didn't know what to do. Jay, I was boy dad,
you know. And she came and sit down and I
looked at her and I said, are you scared? She say,
because I'm not a little guy. I'm not a petite Brooklyn.
You know, I'm a big guy. And I said, are
you scared? And she goes, yeah, and I said, me too.
I said, because I have no clue what I'm about
(27:36):
to do bringing a little girl in my house. I said,
I'm a boy dad. You know, I like my guys.
You know, I like to play football, and you know.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
You became a girl dad pretty pretty easy.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
So well, you know, the moment she looked at me,
she said, can we go get a baby doll? I said,
get in a truck, let's go get a baby doll.
And I did. I drove her and I bought her
a baby doll. And Brooklyn has been our child since
that day.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Now your grandparents now.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
Now, now she has a little boy. It's almost five
years old, Grayson. Yeah, and he is just he is
our heart. I mean he is. He is quite y'all
met him. He's quite the character he is. Now Grayson
is not our only grandson. We have two of the
two of the boys that we raised out of group
homes have have sons who are actually they actually named
(28:32):
their kids after me. Allo. It was it is an honor.
And uh, you know, they both call me Poppy, and
they'll call you know, periodically and we'll go watch them
play sports, and you know, we're we're very involved in
their lives. Even though they don't have our last name,
we're still Mimi and Poppy to that.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Yea, So.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
We got we got to talk about Reese because Reese
was when we met, y'all, she lived, she was.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
A little over a year old.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
Yeah, and she's an eighteen year old soon to be
high school graduated, going to Nichols.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
I cannot believe she's going to graduate high school.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
It's crazy.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Reese's Reese is an amazing story and all that. Sarah,
Oh gosh, I tell you the story.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
Oh lord, that'd be hard. Okay, all right, well, okay,
I think that for us, I think we had kind
of we didn't really do a lot of infertility testing
or any of that, but nothing was happening. So but
our plan had always been to raise foster children and
have a family like simultaneously. But when that didn't happen,
(29:47):
we're like, well, we might need to look at this,
you know, And so we were kind of trying starting
to make plans I guess to you know, make those
appointments and do all the stuff. And oh my god,
I was in church on Sunday and it was November
the nineteenth and I'll never forget it. And the Holy
(30:08):
Spirit spoke to me during worship and he's like, ask
me for a baby, and I'm like, oh, no, I'm
not going to do that because you know, I've been
doing that for a long time and it doesn't seem
to be working. But anyway, I did it. Anyway, I'm like,
you know, and I think it's kind of I'm embarrassed
even admit this, but my prayer was something like, Lord,
I still want that baby, you know. Like and so
(30:29):
I say this to anybody that that's dealing with infertility,
just a little shout out there, a little ten to
surrender it to God, and to surrender that to the Lord,
because I think for me, he went, oh God, okay,
I need a minute.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
It's okay, take you down.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
Excuse me. Once I surrendered it to the Lord, I
felt like that that was you know, that I was
able to heal.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
You know.
Speaker 4 (31:02):
Anyway, the story gets much better. Okay, So the very
next day is November twentieth, and our daughter was born
that day. And they called me the next day.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Hold on, you're saying that Reese was born.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
There was born November twentieth, Wow, And which I've just
lost my pops, the man that took over raising me. Yeah,
six months earlier. That was also his birthday, really, so
that's who she gets her name out of. Her name
is Lee Anne. His name was Robert Lee, so we
(31:36):
she has uh and the Anne park comes from Sarah's sister.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
I'd lost sister a few years before, a couple of
years before in two thousand and five, and Reese was
born in O six.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
God gave you a baby, oh he did.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
He gave me a baby. And that was the week
of Thanksgiving. So you know, everything happens. You know, we
have to pick up this baby.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
We meet them at Walmart.
Speaker 4 (31:56):
We met Chalbrotextan Services at Walmart, and we had to
buy everything for a baby. We had nothing for a baby.
The financial situation that we were in, just everything kind
of aligned perfectly for us to be able to do this.
It was like all God. And we picked her up
(32:21):
and we brought her home and then we had Thanksgiving.
We were hosting Thanksgiving, and I was very ill prepared,
not going to lie for a baby or for Thanksgiving
at this point. But I had to take Fmla from work.
I mean, it was all happening really quick, and I
think it was that Saturday. Afterwards. I was sitting there
holding her, and I think Steve walked in and I
(32:41):
was boo crying, and I'm like, the Lord just reminded
me that this is the baby I prayed for, you know,
And I'm boohoo crying, And you know, I never doubted
that she would be our baby, you know that we
would be able to adopt her. But she did come
through the foster care system, and we had her from
thirty six hours old till wow eighteen. And I mean,
(33:05):
her stories, but it's her story now and I have
to put telling it right. I have to let her.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
But she's she's awesome when she tells her story. And
I got to tell you Reese is Reese is an
advocate for adoption. Yeah, and just to hear her talk
about how she was blessed with a family and the
family she was blessed with and the siblings you know
that she's got to experience over the years that she
(33:32):
may not have had. You know, her story is very unique.
All of them story is very unique. But we adopted
through the foster care system with Brooklyn and Reese.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Well, it's it's been pretty cool to watch Brooklyn, you know,
growing to the woman she is. But to see Reese
as a baby, Yeah, and it makes me feel old
to know that she's eighteen years old.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
Right, Oh gosh. Everything that we've done is foster parents
and you know, adopting you know, the girls has been
you know, it's been a stepping stone to you know,
the next chapter in life or the next the next
thing that He was preparing for us, because then e
j and Deshauna came along, very very unique, very unique
(34:19):
couple of individuals who have been in our lives their
whole lives. And little did we know that the need
would arise for them to have to have a family
after they lost both of their parents, one being Sarah's sister,
and then their father passed away all of a sudden,
these these you know, two well loved kids are homeless
(34:46):
and they're part of our family, you know, and and
our home was built for those individuals. And I know
that you know along the years that he, you know,
the Lord prepared us for that time to be able
to say, hey, the this is a natural fit. You know,
you were and we took them in and you know,
(35:07):
have raised them. And you know, when we adopted EJ
and to Shauna Reese and Brooklyn looked at us and said,
we just have one question because we didn't know how
they would react. You know that that was their siblings,
but it was their cousins as well. And I was
like what And they were like, why don't we wait
so long the adult? Well?
Speaker 4 (35:28):
Did we adopted them when they became adults?
Speaker 3 (35:30):
Right?
Speaker 4 (35:31):
You know? They they still had the benefit of their parents,
which wasn't huge, but they deserved it.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
It was theirs.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
How were they when they came to when Shaun was
what eleven?
Speaker 4 (35:42):
No, No, the Shauna would have been fourteen, her dad
was about twelve, fourteen or fifteen and was about twelve.
And then there's a whole story with that too. The
whole family was grieving and dealing with so much when
all that came to play. But at the same time,
that was when I decided to Acasta because we we
had after we adopted Reese, we stopped doing foster care.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
So tell us about that.
Speaker 4 (36:09):
Well, Acasta is a court appointed special advocate And if
you this is for people that don't feel like they
can be foster parents. Acasta doesn't take children into their home,
but you advocate for that child, so you would spend
time with that child a couple hours a month, you
would spend time like if the child as school age,
(36:29):
you might visit them at school or something like that.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
But that's a big need nowadays, it.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
Is there almost every case that comes through the court
system that's a foster care case gets assigned a costa
and there's definitely not as many costas as there are
children in foster care.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
And that's something when we first started fostering that was
not prevalent.
Speaker 4 (36:52):
Yeah, we didn't have.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
One of our one, yeah, but it was something that
the state has brought on that really, you know, advocates,
it has helped because you know, as much as we
can do is foster parents in our home and try
to help and try to try to you know, teach
and try to you know, these advocates are you know,
(37:16):
come and meet with them and they're able to take
them off. And sometimes a child will talk more to
an individual that they're not around every day, right, you know,
and you talking about you know, foster care, and I
know we'll get back to takasa, but things like going
to church, that's you know, that's that's unfamiliar to some children.
In this world. You know, we're church going people.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
We kind of take that for granted, right, yeah, you know,
but never been accustomed to that, raised in that right,
or even taught about Jesus, Yeah exactly.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
And you know, we we were we were youth pastors,
and I know we were sitting in the congregation one
time one of our boys went missing. He hadn't been
in churches hardly any in his life, and all of
a sudden, out of the baptistry up top above the
choir loft, here he comes flying out.
Speaker 4 (38:01):
Oh my God.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
And I mean, we're like, he was so much fun.
We have we have great stories exactly. But but you know,
one thing about one thing about being a foster parent
is that I found that when we didn't know, somebody
else knewing your you're you're there's a lot of things
that you're gonna be unfamiliar with. There's a lot of
(38:27):
things you're not gonna know. And that's okay because there's
a lot of things that they don't know about you,
and there's a lot of things that's going to take
get them getting accustomed to you and your house because
your house looks totally different than what their house does.
And I found that church family is the best family
when you foster.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
You know well, you know, I know that with the
shortage that we see in the state, they need more
foster parents, and in my opinion is to see the
church step up and fill that role. With talk about
all the time about being the hands and feet of Jesus.
Inwhat better way than to be the hands and feet
of Jesus to a child who has that need within
(39:08):
their life for stability and safety.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
Scripture calls us to take care of the widows and
the orphan ye exactly.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
Very hard of God right will take care of those
so well? I have a question like when whenever I
know that there's like we talked about the the ministries
that provide, you know, for their physical needs and stuff
like that, what about like for the mental health for
the trauma that they may have occurred. Does the foster
(39:37):
system provide like counselors and do they do? They say
that is I have to you know in most cases
or it just it just depends on the case.
Speaker 4 (39:50):
Most judges will order psychological evils, especially for teenagers and
for children. They will recommend some type of counseling and
you it can be done in school if they're school age.
For younger children, sometimes they will recommend programs like Early
Steps that kind of come in and just kind of
assess the child and see where they are. I think
(40:12):
that goes up to maybe three years old. I'm not positive.
And then there are other programs that the pediatricians and
things can recommend if a child has behavior issues. But
some of these kids will come in with just because
their lives have been turned upside down and they have
ABA therapy and there's so many things available now that
(40:33):
we're even available twenty years ago. You know. Yeah, it's
there's a lot of resources. And I will tell you this,
a child that has ACOSTA will be more up to
get those yes because we will advocate for those things too.
And that has been I've loved my role as ACASA.
(40:54):
I've done it for eleven years. I'm a volunteer and
don't get me wrong, it gets me very nervous. I'm
goen I have to testify. But it's been amazing. It's
been a good journey.
Speaker 3 (41:04):
Well, let me say this.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
I just want to thank you guys for your heart
to love on kids and to as I said, be
the hands and feet of Jesus to those kids, because,
as you said, Sarah, it's the heart of God to
care for the widows and the orphans and so many times.
You know, I think what we've done here today is
to be able to answer a lot of questions that
maybe people have because you know, I've never I've talked
(41:28):
about foster care, but I've never really thought about or
had the answer some of the questions. You know, We've
been friends with you guys forever and ever, and we've
talked about foster care, but just some of the practical
questions that people might have. And so I appreciate you
guys just coming to being able to share your heart
to me.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
We appreciate you having us, and we're always available for
you know, for people that have questions about the you know,
what we can help them with. I mean, you know,
it's it's changed a lot over the years, but I
tell you what thing that hasn't changed, and that's how
Jesus loves his children and people, you know, and you know,
(42:05):
if we can show you how to do that through
the foster care system, then we've done it. We've done
what we were called to do, you know, and we're
just we're very blessed and very thankful, very blessed to
have you guys in our lives because y'all have seen
our family and our family transition many times we've seen
and vice versa.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
We've watched your family. Y'all been a blessing to us.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
You guys have us.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
Thank you for your heart to serve and especially sir kids.
Speaker 3 (42:29):
Absolutely, it's such.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
A powerful story and testimony. You know of God's faithfulness
in your own life, and how you know the seeds
that you've sown to help all of these children in need,
and then you know your prayer for a baby and
ugly crying, but just just how faithful the Lord is
to answer you know our our hearts cry, and and
(42:51):
how we can turn around and be the hands and
feet of Jesus. It's it's a very powerful story.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
It's been fun, thank well, it's been a blessing to
day to be able to have these dear friends with
us today and to talk about something that is so
near to the heart of God. And if you've got
a desire to foster, to help with children, to be
a cassa, to advocate for children, then I would encourage it.
Reach out to Steven Sarah, reach out, talk to Department
of Family Health and Services in the state, because this
(43:18):
is a need. You've heard some of the statistics they've
talked about, some of the numbers states to step out,
reach out and see if you can help fill that need.
And it's been a great conversation today answering just a
lot of practical questions about foster care and hearing about
y'all story. And so I want to thank everybody once
again for being a part of this podcast once again,
(43:41):
Like if you're watching on YouTube, hit that subscribe button,
leave us a comment, leave us a review, and help
us push this podcast forward and help us help it
grow each and every days because we really want to
build stronger marriages, build stronger families. And as always, I'm
Jay and I'm Stacy and this is lovel like raced
(44:08):
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