Editor's Note: There are currently 1,067 foster children in Jefferson County and more than 1,100 throughout the state of Alabama. Birmingham is one of the five most churched cities in the nation. If one family from a third of the churches in our city would engage in foster care, there would be no more foster children in Jefferson County.
We're in the midst of Shades' Orphan Care Ministry's annual Backpack and Christmas Wishlist drive supporting the foster care systems in Jefferson and Shelby Counties. This is a guest post by Shades members, Eric and Monica Moses, who write about their interaction with orphan care.
Fostering and possibly adopting has been something that Monica and I have always had an open dialog about and something we have both considered. We just feel like there was no greater representation of the gospel in our own lives than taking care of “the least of these.”
I guess our first exposure to the foster system was through Monica’s work. She was an attorney in private practice and was involved a lot in the juvenile court system. Advocating for these children was the thing she enjoyed the most. She wanted to be the one to fight for them when no one else would. About a year-and-a-half ago she was presented with an opportunity to practice with DHR for the state of Alabama. This new opportunity would afford her the opportunity to advocate these children on a daily basis and fight for what is best for them.
Things really started hitting close to home last year when Shades did the Christmas wishlist for the Orphan Care Ministry. We always loved doing the backpack drive for DHR so we decided that we would participate in the Christmas wishlist drive last year.
As the service ended, we made our way out to the Christmas tree in the lobby where the names were. We finally made it up to the tree and when we got there, it was empty. As we walked away slightly disappointed, another couple offered us one of the tags that they had gotten. As we were walking away, Monica looked at the name and stopped right where she was. This person had given us the name of a child that Monica was in court for just the week before. What are the chances? 100%!
We viewed this as God opening the door for us to take advantage of this situation and possibly move forward in our journey. We are not sure where this road may take us, especially with the role that Monica plays in DHR, but we are excited to see where God will show up and guide us as to what he wants from us.