Promise686

Today's post is excerpted from a letter written by Jeanne Sheahan, member of Perimeter Church and volunteer with the ministry Promise686.

"I became involved in mentoring through our Community Outreach ministry and answered a call for mentors at a group home for teen girls in Cumming. I was assigned a fourteen year old named Raquel. We clicked instantly. Raquel sparkled, had a sarcastic sense of humor and loved doing just about anything we did. I learned that after being separated from her brothers for a year, she ran away from a group home and joined them in their gang, doing what she now calls “everything wrong.”

As I was getting to know Raquel, I began looking to God to answer my questions. Why did He let a child be taken from her family? Was He protecting her? Will He watch over her if she runs away again?

And then she was gone. Three years passed and I had no idea what happened to her, no contact whatsoever. This could not be good, I thought. God please let her be alive, I prayed. Don’t let her be sold in sex slavery or caught up in gangs, I asked. It was you who placed her in a messed up family, I blamed.

“Dependency and trust, that’s what I want,” was the answer I heard in return.

As this same time my heart was drawn stronger and stronger to God’s call to care for orphans. I eventually received a call from the group home in Cumming asking me to mentor one last child. “She never talks and I know you can talk to a tree,” the counselor begged me. How could I resist?

Within the year we were fostering that girl and her younger sister too! Two teenage girls added to a three bedroom house already full with two teenage. Was I Nuts?! Yes, if I answered my question according to my own comforts. No, if I remembered His promise that I could do anything through Christ.

Soon it was prom season and the girls were excited. I attended the event with them thinking I was only going to enjoy their evening watching from the sidelines. But instead the real reason for my attending the prom suddenly walked through the door.

It was Raquel! Oh thank you God! We both screamed. I was so happy to finally know that she was ok. Sort of ok; she was living in a group home for teen moms; Raquel was struggling to raise her own two year old son. How could you be watching over her if she is a teen mother? I asked God. How is she going to rise above poverty in this condition? I demanded to know.

But He was looking over Raquel and His plan is always good; He sees beyond the scope of our little world. Raquel became a mom at fifteen. She was learning English and had been working part-time while in staying in high school. Now eighteen, she was about to graduate high school. I was so proud of what she was accomplishing.

God’s plan became more clear as I listened to Raquel tell me about all that had happened during the three years since I’d last seen her. God’s plan was her baby, Izzy. He, through her baby, gave Raquel a reason to turn her life around and stay away from the people that kept her in trouble. He kept her in school, at work and thinking about a career.

What a joy it was to have Raquel over to our house again, to be able to play with Izzy, and to meet her new husband. All this confirmed to me that Raquel had trusted in God’s plan, as messy and tiring as it was, to receive the blessings He had been waiting to pour on her. And then there was God’s blessing to us – the opportunity for our own teen foster girls to see a success story, a girl who came out of foster care happy and strong.

Raquel admits she could not have done so well without all the people who cared for her during her foster care: volunteer tutors, mentors, transporters, lawyers, the various foster parents who took she and Izzy in, the communities who raised money to buy her Christmas gifts, school supplies … it took a kingdom to raise this child … it took God’s kingdom.

We can all serve. We have been given different gifts to bring together to care for His children. We are all in this kingdom to help children like Raquel, to restore them and break their chains of destruction."

Promise686, named after Psalm 68:6 and God’s promise to set the lonely into families, seeks to expand God's kingdom by mobilizing and supporting families to serve the needs of orphans here and abroad through community outreach, education and financial assistance. We believe that every child deserves a loving home and our ministry serves to raise up covenant families for these children.

Within ten miles of Perimeter Church there are 500 foster children and only a 100 homes open to them. We want to support parents who are called to expand their families through adoption and foster care and to engage volunteers in a community of care for these families.

Promise686 is hosting two meetings at Perimeter Church on September 27th to introduce its goals, needs and serving opportunities to our congregation. For more information, contact Tim Rider at timrider@earthlink.net