Idea for Foster Children - Foster Bags

Growing up I had two little brothers. I begged and begged my parents to adopt a girl so I could have a little sister to no avail. When I was 25 I knew a teacher that in her 30's had never married but decided to adopt a daughter from China. She now has three. So when my dad asked me where I thought I'd be in ten years, my reply was simple. I told him that by age 35 if I wasn't married I would try to adopt a child. Just because I couldn't be a wife didn't mean I couldn't be a mother. (I wanted to honor God by not having sex outside of marriage.)

So here I am at age 35. I am married but we have not yet had any children. We have thought that even if we did have one child of our own we would still adopt. Having 3-4 kids total would be hectic but nice overall. Since I have talked of our thoughts of adopting and that we are very open to the idea, I have found many female friends that are adoptive mothers or have been foster mothers. Now like most couples, the idea of fostering a child, growing attached to them and then having to let them go and perhaps not knowing what becomes of them may be too much to bear. That's why it is such an extremely difficult thing to have enough foster parents and why it has to be such a specific calling, perhaps even more so than adoption itself. One of my friends through the Baptist Student Ministries Alumni is an adoptive mother. I did not know her in school but was contacted by her when it was decided to have an alumni luncheon to raise money for mission trips for current BSM students. So we became Facebook Friends.

A few days ago she shared a blog of a friend of her's starting a ministry called "Provisional Love" http://provisionallove.blogspot.com/. The idea is that this family (that includes adopted children that have been in the foster care system) wants to collect items for children just entering what can be be a scary experience of foster care. They point out that when children are placed in foster care for the first time, they often have no belongings of their own but the clothes on their backs. Imagine as a child, going from the only home you have ever known, to being taken by one set of complete strangers to go and live with another set of complete strangers, leaving everything familiar behind.

This got me to thinking: what if churches and women's groups could come together and make "Foster Bags" for foster children. The idea would be to buy or make bags - perhaps just canvas bags that could be decorated and fill them with a few toys, a stuffed animal, toothbrush, toothpaste, a pad of paper, crayons and pencils. Older children might receive bags with journals. These could be kept at CPS or a foster agency to give to a child. It would be a way of saying wherever you are and wherever you go this belongs to you. I don't know if you could add children's or teen bibles or not. Now I don't have much money right now, but this is a very real need that could be filled for not too much money per bag. A sort of Operation Christmas Child but for local foster kids that are normally poor, neglected, abused, abandoned, or had something happen to their parents and have no one else to care  for them.

My husband, Ray, pointed out that similar bags might be beneficial to the Red Cross to hand to children devastated by disasters.

Hmm, something to think and pray about.

James 1:27

Pure and lasting religion in the sight of God our Father means that we must care for orphans and widows in their troubles, and refuse to let the world corrupt us.

Mark 9:35-37

He sat down and called the twelve disciples over to him. Then he said,"Anyone who wants to be the first must take last place and be the servant of everyone else." Then he put a little child among them. Taking the child in his arms, he said to them,  "Anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes my Father who sent me."