Focus Brings Wait
No More to St. Louis
June 6th Event to Focus on Adoption and
Foster Care
By Jim Day
Joe, who is a fictional child but represents hundreds of children just
like him, lives in his sixth home in three years.
He keeps a bag of his favorite things packed at all times. At 9-years-old, 
Joe
wakes up every morning not knowing if he’ll be moved that day to a new and
strange environment. Joe is in foster care. His parents are addicted to drugs and not able
to provide him a safe family home. Their
parental rights have been terminated, so that Joe will have a chance at a
safe and happy life. Joe spent the
first years of his life left alone in a crib—dirty and hungry. He grew unable to trust or connect with anyone
around him. He was on his own. As he grew older, he was developmentally delayed
and struggled in school. No one seems
to stay in his life for very long. Joe
thinks it is all his fault. He is alone.
He is scared, and sometimes, he is really mad.
He has no permanent parents. He
doesn’t know what is going to happen to him.
Joe needs an adoptive family.
More
than 1,400 children and youth in Missouri’s foster care system are just like
Joe. Some are older, all have unique
needs and challenges and all are currently waiting for adoptive families to
call their own. They are America’s
modern day orphans. The Bible says “religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to
look after widows and orphans in their distress and keep oneself from being
polluted by the world.” (James
1:27)
So,
who will come for Joe and the others like him?
How long will they continue to wait?
With
8,000 churches in Missouri, Focus on the Family believes Joe and those like him
should wait no longer. “God is a Father to the fatherless and He
sets the lonely in families.” (Psalms
68) Focus believes Christians have a
scriptural mandate to care for children just like Joe, and they are taking
action in states across the nation.
An
upcoming Focus collaborative community event, Wait No More: Finding Families for Missouri’s Waiting Kids (WNM),
is designed specifically to recruit adoptive families for Missouri’s waiting
kids in foster care. It’s a clarion call
for Missouri churches to minister to the orphans in their own backyard.
The
Focus event, to be held Saturday, June 6th from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Calvary
Chapel Mid Rivers Campus in St. Peters, MO will bring together Missouri’s
government, faith-based and adoption agency leaders to recruit adoptive
families for Missouri’s waiting kids.
“Every
one of these kids deserves a family,” said Kelly Rosati, Senior Director of the
Sanctity of Human Life at Focus on the Family, “and they’ve waited long
enough. We want them to know we’re not
giving up on them. We want them to have
hope.”
At
the Wait No More event participants
will learn about the adoption process and about the needs of the children who
await adoptive families. They will hear different perspectives on both the joys
and challenges involved in the process of adoption and in parenting previously
maltreated children. They will also see
portraits of some of Missouri’s actual children and youth waiting for families.
After the program, participants will have the opportunity to interact
on-site with representatives from Missouri adoption agencies and ministries. They will also learn about next steps involved
with the process and who to contact for additional information. Most importantly, families will have the opportunity
to begin the process of adoption from foster care before they leave that day.
That 
means
kids like Joe will have a better chance of getting the families they have
been waiting for.
The event is free but attendees are
asked to register at icareaboutorphans.org.
Focus on the Family will provide registered participants with a
complimentary lunch and complimentary adoption-related resources.
Pastors
and church leaders will receive tools to know how to support the adoptive
families in their congregation, so they can walk this journey together.
The
conference in Missouri on June 6th will be the second Wait No More event since the program’s inception. The first was
held in November 2008 at New Life Church in Colorado Springs. By all accounts, the Wait No More launch event exceeded expectations. More than 1,300 people, representing 130
different churches and more than 700 families, came to hear about the needs of
Colorado’s waiting kids. The Colorado
Department of Human Services, 7 counties and 10 private agencies and
organizations joined Focus on the Family for this momentous event. “It was phenomenal,” noted Dr. Sharen Ford in
a subsequent Denver Post
article. “It’s never happened before
that we had faith-based groups, county governments, the state and other
agencies in one place at one time,” she continued. “Most importantly,” Rosati pointed out, “260
families started the process of adoption from foster care even after they heard
very difficult truths about the process and about the often-challenging
behavior of some of the kids involved.
That’s good news for Colorado’s waiting kids.”
Focus
hopes to bring that same good news to Missouri’s kids. Missouri was chosen by Focus as the site of
the second Wait No More event because
of an invitation by the Fostering Faithful Families (FFF) Coalition in St.
Louis. FFF is a group of six faith-based child welfare agencies in
Emily Nienhuis, director of
One Heart Family Ministries, the lead agency in FFF, along with Theresa
Williams, program manager for FFF, attended the Wait No More event in Colorado this past November. “After seeing the amazing success of the WNM
event in Colorado, we knew we wanted to host a WNM event in Missouri,” said
Nienhuis.
Focus
presented the Wait No More concept to
the Missouri Compassion group, a coalition of Children’s Division agencies,
pastors, churches and other family focused community resources. Those in
attendance were very excited about getting the additional boost in support and
resources. Nienhuis said, “Our
faith-based child welfare agencies realize that the
Rosati noted, “Our goal is
to assist those already laboring so faithfully in the local community. We are blessed to be able to bring our voice
and resources to help the local community succeed even further in what they are
called to do—find great permanent families for kids without them.”
Those
involved in the June 6th Wait No More
event believe Missouri is on its way to doing just that. For more information or to register, visit
icareaboutorphans.org.
The
following Missouri organizations are involved in the WNM event. Community Resources/Ministries including: Adoption
Exchange; Foster and Adoptive Care Coalition; People of Faith for Foster Care;
Fostering Faithful Families; One Heart Family Ministries; One Church One Child;
Kim Smith - Open Arms/Calvary Church. Children’s Division Agencies: St. Louis County
Children’s Division; Jefferson County Children’s Division; Warren County Children’s
Division; Lincoln County; St. Charles County; St. Louis City. Contracted Children’s Division Agencies including:
Missouri Baptist Children’s Home; Missouri Alliance; Lutheran Children and
Family Services; Good Shepherd and Children’s Services; Bringing Families
Together; Epworth Children and Family Services; Presbyterian Children’s Services.
