As of 3 weeks ago, C and I, became foster parents. What a journey of time, prayer, and trust to see come to fruition.

Maybe I should back up a little bit…

AZ1.27 is an initiative that the state of Arizona started a little over a year ago.  Calling people to help the kids in the foster system that have no place to go.  At the time they started there were so many kids in the system they didn’t have enough homes to place them, often they spent the night in the CPS office or were sent to group homes; neither an ideal place to go, specially for the little ones.

My husband, C, and I attended an orientation and our hearts were pricked for all these little people that just needed someone to open their home. So after some conversations and prayers we decided to go for it.  That included 30 hours of training, meetings with an agent through our agency to get our package together, background checks, fingerprint cards, home study, and more.

Most of the process was straightforward.  Hard because of the time requirements but nothing to crazy.  We hit a snag with C’s fingerprint card.  He was denied because of things he had done in the past.  But this didn’t mean the end of our journey it just meant we had to appeal the decision by gathering all records, explaining every charge, and how he has changed since.  For more people to think about this process it would be one or two stupid nights to explain and very little time.  What you might not know about C is that he was pretty goofy in his teen years, which earned him a 12 page list of charges.

After contacting each court and requesting specific records, he then had to write out an explanation of each item. This process took a good 2-3 hours.  A lot of memories and a lot of pain in the events around the charges.  The beauty in the ashes was the ability to see how God called him to Himself and has changed his life so drastically.  While his past isn’t the prettiest, he survived and is now a tool for the Lord’s work.

Once that was complete the package was sent to the review board, where it was expedited through as an appeal.  Amazingly they considered the our package complete, required no further information from us, and it was approved.  The surprising thing is that in talking to some people they have never seen a history as close as C’s was (10 years) get approved.

Once we had that piece approved we met with our agent for the final information gathering. And our file was then sent before the state’s board to see if we could be certified.  The file was sent Wednesday. We were approved Friday afternoon.  That was a huge PRAISE THE LORD!

The end of this glorious story is 48 hours later we had our first sweet placement, a beautiful baby girl – who has stolen our hearts already.