People Fest.

I met someone at the Park today from Uganda and he is a strong advocate of children in the foster care system. He knows the dismal outcomes of children aging out of the foster care system in California and rightly feels that the church does not reach out to the youth in group homes. His vision is to sensitize churches of this need and hope that the church would respond by coordinating with the group homes and picking up the children for youth night and/or sunday worship. Most of the children have never been to church and are only exposed to humanistic teaching in our public schools. He is organizing a "People Fest" at the park and so far 39 churches have shown interest. He is really challenging the local church to have compassion for the children in their neighborhoods. Last year, he led a mission group with 29 Americans to Uganda and his challenge is for people to have the same compassion for the local mission field.

Ironically, he plans to have the Child Welfare Agency have a booth at the "People Fest" to try and recruit foster and adoptive parents. From his interactions with social workers in the foster care system, he had the same misconception that I had that people are not willing to step up to the plate to adopt or foster children from the Child Welfare System. I think this is the line that the Child Welfare Agency keeps feeding people, but they sure put a lot of barries once people express an interest. In my office alone (and it is not a large office), 2 people are interested in adoption from the foster care system and 1 is interested in fostering. All of us started the process about six months ago, and none of us have a homestudy yet (not for lack of trying on our part)! Anyway, I plan on going to the "People Fest" and I pray for courage to talk to people about adoption. I am normally pretty shy, but I am asking God for blodness to be able to speak to pastors about the need to support christians who are adopting.