Friends,
My family returned yesterday from what was MDPC’s 5th annual Safe Haven Family Camp. We returned home exhausted in the very best way.
Our weekend away at Safe Haven Family Camp refreshed our souls and encouraged our hearts in ways we didn’t even know we needed. The foster care and adoption journey, though filled with immeasurable blessings, can be lonely and discouraging at times. Many children involved in [MDPC] Safe Haven Ministry go through life feeling different than their peers in many ways. In their daily lives, many of our children do not know any other children who have been in foster care. Often they don’t know any other kids who are adopted. Many don’t know any other kids in transracial families. But at Safe Haven Family Camp and other Safe Haven events, our kids are given an opportunity to be around other children and adults walking a similar road.
This weekend, a parent shared with me that as their family was pulling into camp, her 11-yr-old son sweetly encouraged her 6-yr-old son by saying, “…camp is a place with people of all colors where almost all of the kids are adopted and we’re all friends!” This statement is so true! Children walk into camp and immediately start running around, playing with other kids. Some of these kids have been coming to camp for 5 years and for some its their very first time, but everyone is “best friends” almost immediately.
It’s the same for the parents. We naturally gravitate to one another, laughing, sometimes crying, but most importantly understanding one another on a level we don’t often feel when talking with other parents in our daily lives. Safe Haven Family Camp happens just one weekend a year but the joy, the encouragement and the refreshment found in that type of fellowship is priceless.
Over the years so many parents have expressed to me, with tears in their eyes, their thankfulness for MDPC’s Safe Haven Ministry. I want to pass along their thankfulness and mine as well. MDPC’s commitment to supporting foster and adoptive families may not be known or felt by many, but for the families we serve through the Safe Haven Ministry it means the world.
With a very thankful heart,
Keri
