Do you remember how you first became aware of the foster care community? Maybe someone close to you started fostering? Maybe your spouse invited you to pray about pursuing this? Or perhaps a certain statistic impacted your heart?

Ryan MacDonald attributes becoming aware of the needs within the foster care community through his wife's passion for the topic and a class he took in school about how as followers of Jesus we can engage society. Ryan describes it as his wife pulling on one arm and the Lord pulling on the other. (Maybe you can relate?) He is now involved in the foster care community at a variety of levels—at work, through the church he pastors, and within his own family.

Ryan is a follower of Jesus, husband, an adoptive, foster, and biological dad, pastor, and the Regional Director of Foster the City over Los Angeles and Orange County in California. He is a self-proclaimed coffee snob but believes there is a time and place for diner coffee. In his spare time, he loves spending time with his wife, all things theology, basketball, and playing with his kids.

In this episode, Ryan shares openly about his experience as a foster parent, the importance of celebrating reunification, the reality that foster parenting is a skill you get better at over time, and so much more. This was one of my favorite conversations I've had on the podcast!

Show Notes: https://theforgotteninitiative.org/ryan-macdonald-194/

Join Team 3:10: https://theforgotteninitiative.org/team310/

“Every kid, no matter what their circumstances are, should be celebrated and honored just like we do our children.”

Agency workers are the first responders of the foster care community. They are among the first to meet a child, they are keepers of that child’s history, and they know firsthand the needs that often go unmet. With many agencies experiencing unprecedented employee turnover, the challenges facing agency workers continue to increase as they experience secondary traumatic stress, lack of resources, and underappreciation.

Danika Briggs has been a close friend and worked with one of our TFI Advocates in Virginia for many years! She has been in social services for over 20 years and is the Assistant Director for Family Services at the Chesterfield-Colonial Heights Department of Social Services in Virginia. Danika plays a vital leadership role in overseeing child welfare programs at their social service agency she also helps resource and encourage agency workers overall.

In this episode, Danika shares how partnerships with organizations like TFI can have an impact on the agency workers and the current challenges they are facing.

I really enjoyed this episode, and I hope you will too!

(Don’t forget that through the month of July, a generous donor has offered a matching grant up to $20,000! Join Team 3:10 today.)

Show Notes: https://theforgotteninitiative.org/danika-briggs-193

“Being a foster parent was always something that had been on my mind…”

I am excited to have two of my favorite people on the podcast today: Jonah and Sarah Wilson! Sarah is part of our team here at TFI and grew up with foster siblings. So becoming a foster parent was always something she personally wanted to pursue.

When Sarah and Jonah got married, their conversations turned to when the “right time” was to become foster parents and biological parents. While they knew they wanted to be in a stable place for either, they agreed that becoming foster parents would come first.

In our conversation, Jonah and Sarah share the details of what it looked like to become foster parents, where the journey differed from their expectations, how they navigated both the good and the hard parts of foster care, their perspective as both foster and adoptive parents, encouragement they have for other foster parents, and so much more.

I loved this episode, and I know you will too!

(Don’t forget that through the month of July, a generous donor has offered a matching grant up to $20,000! Join Team 3:10 today.)

Show Notes: https://theforgotteninitiative.org/jonah-sarah-wilson-192/

Welcome to a bonus episode of the podcast! We don’t do these very often, but we wanted to give you a little extra surprise content that we hope is an encouragement to you this week.

It’s always special when we get to share the work of our TFI Advocates, volunteer leaders across the nation who are working to support their local foster care community by bridging the gap between the needs of foster care agencies and the people and resources to meet those needs in local churches.

At our TFI Advocate Retreat last year, we got to share an interview between Lisa Jacobsen, an Advocate in Carver County, MN, and a local pastor as well as a local agency worker to share how they have built trust and started working together to meet needs in their community. In this bonus episode, we get to share that same interview with you! This conversation will give you such a great look into some of the work we’re doing here at TFI, and it brings us so much joy to hear stories just like this one.

(By the way, if you want to make ministry like this possible, we have a matching grant up to $20,000 through the end of July, so your gift can be doubled right now! Double your gift today.)

Show Notes: https://theforgotteninitiative.org/bonus-lisa-jacobsen/

It’s not uncommon for children impacted by foster care or adoption to desire to find answers, know where they came from, and understand the reason their life has looked the way it has. It can lead many children to question their identity or even wonder if they will ever find a sense of peace at all.

Anna Bernacki grew up in an adoptive home after being placed in foster care as an infant. As a teenager, she began to long for that special biological bond she felt would come from her biological parents. But after meeting her biological mother, Anna was disappointed to find that in her experience, that special connection she had longed for was still missing.

It wasn’t until Anna and her husband, Brian, were foster parents for six years and then adoptive parents to two sibling sets of two (four adoptive children in total!) that she would find healing and come to terms with the identity she carried outside of biological connection.

I really enjoyed my conversation with Anna and appreciated her openness about her story and experiences. I hope you do too!

Show Notes: https://theforgotteninitiative.org/anna-bernacki-191/

Back in 2009, trauma-informed care wasn’t discussed as much as it is today and many families were not as open about the hardships that came along with an adoption. Kara Higgins always knew she wanted to grow her family by adoption, and she and her husband, Ryan, later had the opportunity to do so when adoptions opened up in Rwanda. That’s when she came face-to-face with trauma at a time when very few realized what it meant.

Kara is the mother to six children through foster care, adoption, and biology. She and her husband founded Imana Kids, which is an orphan care ministry with an educational sponsorship program in Rwanda focusing on trauma-informed interventions, learning, and care. Kara has more than twenty-four years of experience as an international healthcare provider and orphan care advocate for some of the most vulnerable populations of women and orphans, and it was an honor to speak with her today.

In this episode, Kara shares openly about her journey to understanding trauma-informed care, how her expectations of adoption matched up to reality, when she discovered that trauma isn’t just for foster children, and why connection makes all the difference in the world.

This really is one you don’t want to miss.

Show Notes: https://theforgotteninitiative.org/kara-higgins-190/

Join Team 3:10 (a generous donor has offered a matching grant up to $20,000!): https://theforgotteninitiative.org/team310/