Chapter Four

I remember that they used to put a daily column...I believe it was daily, since it was called Today's Child, in our city newspaper. One day , the featured child caught my eye and at the end of the article of describing the child it said to contact our Children's Aid Society.....actually, this child was just the 'hook'...obviously they're not going to feature local children where relatives might recognize them. I got up my nerve to call CAS, and inquire about this child. The worker questioned me about becoming foster parents. 'Oh no', I thought....'I want one of my own'. So, I dropped that idea. A few weeks later, my friend Sue and I went to visit a friend of Sue's also coincidentally named Sue, and also coincidentally was a Foster Parent.....what do you think of that? Sue the FP, had the sweetest little baby....Don and I have always had a soft spot for babies.....Sue talked about what it was like to be a foster parent and a foster family...it does affect your whole family! My interest was piqued and I went home and talked it out with Donald. We talked about it at some length...Leslie and Ryan had to be considered ...they were about 8 and 10 years old at the time. We talked to a worker and found out that we'd have to take a course before hand.....it was a huge undertaking but we decided to do it.

It should be mentioned at this time that the helping relationship with the single mom Anne had lapsed after she lied to us about being pregnant again and then tried to get us to adopt Tanya. Under the advice of a good friend who was also our minister we declined to do that. It was pointed out to us that Anne wouldn't leave us alone to actually parent Tanya and that it would put us into an untenable position. It broke our heart to walk away from Tanya but we had to 'cut the apron strings'.

We took our course and were full fledged foster parents....our home was inspected, our children were questioned and inspected, police checks were done, medicals were done. Reference letters from reliable sources were checked and double checked!

We waited for our first call....the first call that opened up a brand new journey in our family....a journey that would take twists and turns, fractures and sprains.....

Don and I had already prayed that any child that we were called about would be a child that we would take......we were opening up our family and our home in this new adventure and we left it to God to bring in the kids that he wanted to be there.

It was a journey that lasted nineteen years.....looking after and loving about seventeen children, and adopting seven of them...it was quite a ride!

...but the story goes on....