Carl and Caren's story

About three years ago, I heard Home for Good being discussed on UCB radio. I thought it was great that if just one person in every church in the UK adopted or fostered a child, there would be no children left needing a home. We were a family of five, with three children ranging from six to 13 years, and we were very busy with life, not least in our local church. I looked up the Home for Good book on Amazon, and read the reviews, but that was all. A year later, in January 2013, I woke from a dream. I was watching a foster carer take a child to contact. It stirred something in me, and I was awake for hours thinking about it. I spoke to my husband, Carl, and he told me to pray about it, but he didn't think the dream meant anything for us. I prayed and God spoke again and again, clearer than anything we had heard before. He had spoken to us three years previously in a word about Him giving us more children in the physical and spiritual, working with both the poor and the affluent, but we thought He had got it wrong! When I prayed about my dream, He spoke to us through more words and several Bible verses.

God started speaking to Carl too. He read the Home for Good book, which had a huge impact on him. We went on the skills to foster course, still not completely sure, but during this process, it became clearer and clearer that fostering was something we could do. We asked God to confirm one more time. He was very gracious and sent it in a form of a song, sung by Graham Kendrick at a Care for the Family event. The song had the line "Give us this mountain for your glory, I'm not quitting till it’s done" and we were all given a copy of the song to take home. We knew then what to do.

Our first placement arrived in September - a 22 hour old baby girl. She is now four months old and a blessing to us. We love being a foster family. We know that God calls the whole family and it has been so exciting to also see how our children have been keen and positive from the start. Reading back in my journal, I can see how far we have come. We can see God working out his plans and we thank him for using Home for Good as part of our journey.