Our First Prayer Letter

Bridge House for Children
Bridging the gap with real love
and hope so that children can
experience God's grace lived
out toward them.

Dear Family and Friends,
We hope and pray that this will be the first of many letters sharing with you our hopes and dreams for our future. We are asking each of you to pray with us as we begin moving toward our dream of opening a home for foster and troubled children/teens. Brent and I have been thinking, dreaming, and praying about this for several years. God has used several situations in our lives to challenge us to seriously consider developing this dream, although we realize there are years of hard work ahead of us before we will be a working organization, but we are excited to see what God will do.

I will try to paint a picture of our dream so you can know better how to pray. We want to stay here in our community so will need land with buildings or space to build; land that can become a small ranch where the children learn, in part, by gardening and caring for animals. We envision several family style homes with several children in each home. This will allow us to keep sibling groups together. We also desire to provide a place for children with special needs, which will add another difficult but rewarding element to our ministry. As many of you know, my passion for children with special needs began when, at 13, I was privileged to work with little Dana Kappel. Then through my years as a dance student, then instructor and studio owner, my desire to teach dance to special needs children grew. Because of this, we hope to incorporate a dance program, particularly for special needs children. The children, programs and needs will require the commitment of mature, wise, caring adults as house-parents, counselors, tutors, medical staff, therapists, and more. Our goal will be to help these children develop real relationships with God and other people - people who become family - as we teach, train and disciple them with the hope of them each becoming productive members of society.

This is the vision that we have right now. We are still in the very beginning stages and understand that there are many small steps that are necessary. We also understand that this may need years to develop fully, and we are learning new levels of patience as we work and wait. On Friday, February 12, we are meeting with the director of Palmer Home for Children in Mississippi. Their organization is one we would like to use as our model. We will be staying on campus Thursday night and begin meetings and tours at 8:30 Friday morning. We are very excited about this meeting and are putting together our list of questions for them. They have sent us a list of things we need to do as starting steps, and we have begun to work through those. Our organization will need to be a non profit 501( c )3 which is long and expensive process. It may take a year just to complete the non-profit process, and it will require the services of a lawyer. After the 501( c )3 is in place, we will begin organizing fundraisers, finding property, and working on buildings, with the goal of working with children as soon as possible.

We are asking you to commit to pray with and for us as we walk through these many complicated steps. At this point, we are very overwhelmed and very excited. Here are our specific prayer requests:

1) That we keep God at the center of this organization and trust Him to provide.
2) That God would provide us with the land needed to begin.
3) That God will put people in our life to guide and encourage us and that we will be eager to

listen to the advice of others.
4) That our meeting with Palmer Home in Mississippi will provide needed answers and

wisdom which we will be able to understand without becoming overwhelmed.
5) That we are able to find the balance in working, being parents, caring for our home,

working with the youth group and other church involvements, and working at starting this

organization.
6) That God will give us wisdom and grace in our decisions.

As we consider and take steps to develop this dream, we realize the tremendous importance of prayer warriors walking with us every step. Feel free to ask questions and offer wisdom. The questions we will attempt to answer and the wisdom we will attempt to absorb. Please share this with others who will join us in prayer.

We love you all and thank you for your prayers.
Brent, Anna, and kids