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October 2005 NM Prayer Letter | |
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And
hope
does not disappoint us, | |
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Dear Praying Friends, Sitting down and catching you up on what has been happening around here is often a precious luxury. Today is that kind of day and I have something very particular to tell you. We have been watching a miracle of Jesus unfold … which we are calling Hope House. | |
| Hope House … Research and Christian Family Care | |
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We have been on a journey toward residential homes for our homeless youth for over three years. The realities of the lives we love who, when hitting adolescence become even more unstable have been driving this seeking. Though these same kids are being tracked by our many diverse programs, their tough home environments often make it impossible to stay “hopeful” and they start to sabotage the good things they once believed were theirs. We have been hoping for a solution, a permanent solution to the chronic cycle we watched happen to our most at risk youth.
These three would be for our OWN kids, those who are growing up in our ministries and are being loved and cared for already, who are wrapped into our family arms. We began to describe these three as discipleship houses, one for girls, one for guys and one for teen moms. Another one of our own college students finished some of the project leg work as it pertained to securing the right licensure for these houses; under state requirements we wanted to have protection for this type of very serious work. She reunited us with our dear friends from Christian Family Care Agency, who though they license foster homes, do not ordinarily license group homes, yet have come alongside us with shared vision to provide the professional oversight and licensing we need. | |
| Hope House … The Girls | |
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When we began this process, we didn’t actually know which house would come first. But as the stories of our teens settled, most were girls and we decided the first house would be a girl’s house. What is interesting about this is that youth homelessness is at crisis numbers in the state of AZ and most are females. One of the girls (LuLu) who has been driving this vision lately was talking to me about the house to come. This was almost 9 months ago, so you can see, she herself has been waiting a good long time. I asked her to pray with me about it all coming together, asked her to help us name the house. She gave it just a day of prayer and came back and told me it should be called Hope House because it was already giving her hope. |
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Another girl, I’ll call her S. By telling her story (one we are facing today) it gives us a glimpse of the other stories that have been inside our ministry for years, some of whom my husband Wayne and I have tried to directly rescue and others who fell by the wayside, girls became pregnant, boys became fathers, went to jail and many died. S. is now just past pre-teen. When she was pre-teen some nights (when she went out with friends) she looked eighteen. She was just twelve. She is a kid in our program. I bet she was 6-8 when she began coming weekly to Kids Life, our weekly outreach. She went to camp in the summer. One summer, we found out her mom was in trouble with CPS and the kids had to be removed quickly, or the mom would lose them permanently. She quickly signed over temporary custody to me and Wayne and I got two of them. One of them was S. We found her a marvelous tutor, entered her into our I Can Do It program, where she was tracked aggressively to stay in school. She spent most of her grade school years at Pappas, the school for homeless children. She went on trips with us, had loving mentors, has good friends at church. But we couldn’t invade the eroding processes of life, drugs, gangs, abandonment, broken promises and the like that were her everyday life.
We dreamed of three loving homes where our kids could be together, sharing their life experiences, knowing the love of God practically, protecting them from a destructive future, most don’t want. They are ready for more independence, we see them looking for rescue in relationships with boys or girls that hardly ever last. And these teens want to grow in Christ, they are frequently at church, happy to have this surrogate family to love them daily. As of today, almost 10 girls have approached me to live at Hope House. We will begin with just 5, although, as learning curves allow for more stability, our licensure will allow for all 10. | |
| Finding and Purchasing Hope House | |
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For quite a while now we have “cast the vision” of these houses. And so some dear friends have begun to help us find just the right house. Last spring, we had a house we liked, in fact we were under a deadline to find one within a few days due to some funding opportunities. We got up to the last minute and the house fell through. We were disappointed, because of the need in the ministry, but it clearly was not what God had for us. Then our dear Katy, was found to have a brain tumor, we were distracted from the house hunting page, and summer hit and house hunting came to a dead halt.
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So here we are today. The house miraculously became available, the owners never put it on the market because they wanted us to have it, and then an amazing donor came forward, willing to purchase it for the purposes of God, trusting us for its use. The handprints of God are all over this. Our three years of homework have led to today. About a month ago, I said to S. at church that God is doing something beautiful that is for her rescue. She cried as I asked her, “How hard is it for you right now?” This tough teen just sobbed out right as I asked her to not give up but to hope again, to be patient, that God was doing something right now just for her. She agreed to not give up … hope, I asked her to have hope. | |
| Staffing, Rehabbing and Moving in | |
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Two groups of close friends have walked through Hope House with us. There is deliberation as to who can and will do certain things, like refinishing the old 1880’s floors. Who will rehab the kitchen and put in a laundry shed. Who will help with the purchasing of furniture and household resources. We are waiting for those people to hear from the Lord about their role.
Meanwhile, we have been interviewing some of our loveliest younger adults who have been in our ministry world for quite a while. They have particular interest in this type of work. A few are praying about taking the job of Hope House Director. Driving our timeline for moving in is the rehabbing and the licensure. Somewhere between March and May, the house may be open. March is very optimistic. | |
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Prayer Requests for Hope House (thank you for praying for us!) 1. For the right primary staff 2. For interim staff to help during licensing process 3. For speedy rehabbing 4. For funding for the annual house budget 5. For God’s pick for the first five girls | |
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So thank GOD for his marvelous love, Psalm 107:8 | |
October
31, 2005
A
few years ago we enlisted a graduate student from ASU to do his
masters thesis on the possibility of Neighborhood Ministries
owning and operating three residential homes, one day. We
asked him to design these houses, considering licensure,
liability issues, and programmatic pieces unique to these young
people and staffing. This past year we have completed our
internal homework. We have a document that considers the
practical realities of running homes such as I’ve described.
Our board voted to go ahead last March. 
Kids
like S. are underneath the dreaming of three discipleship houses.
For years we have done aggressive work to help our kids while they
are living at home in destructive environments. And then we jury
rig the young teen years watching sometimes helplessly as our kids
flounder. We knew that our ministry and its relationships held the
safest landing place, but we didn’t have enough personal homes for
them all. And some homes were tried, that didn’t work. The suburbs
were sometimes too much of a culture shock.
Lulu
who was standing in prayer for these houses let me know that her
stepmother who had to move to Minnesota for her health, needed
to sell her house. This mother wanted us to have the first
opportunity to buy the house for “Hope House”. She said this
because we have loved her kids so well all these years, that she
wanted us to have the first opportunity. On the open market we
would have had quite a fight for this semi-restored old
Victorian seven-bedroom home. We couldn’t believe it! If you
had asked me since this process got rolling, to close my eyes
and pick a house in our neighborhood that would be the PERFECT
house for “Hope House”, the ideal home to own, even if it wasn’t
for sale … I would have picked this house, but said, I know, it
will never be available, or even if it was, we could never
afford it. 