It’s been our incredible privilege to hear stories from the field here in the U.S., revealing how churches are diving deeper into the child welfare system through CarePortal. We recently received the story of a Missouri woman who helped meet a need. She was haunted by a desire to do more for the family in need. In her own words, this is her story.

CarePortal is having a huge impact on people in our church and community. It is a slow process, but that’s ok because it gives us a chance to learn as we go. We made a CarePortal delivery recently and realized that this single mom of 7 needed more support than just the couch we were bringing her. The couch gave us the opportunity to show her the love of Christ in a tangible way by providing for a physical need. It also brought us into her home where we ended up having the chance to hear some of her story and pray with her right there in her empty dining room.

I left that day heartbroken over this woman and the fact that if I left her driveway that day and never looked back, I wasn’t really loving her the way that I felt Christ calls me to. Over the next handful of days I prayed for this family and shed many tears over how ill-equipped I felt to really support them the way I knew they needed. They needed a community. They needed people to poor the love of Christ into them the way my community does for me. Only, she is far from my community. It didn’t seem realistic to think that she could really get planted in my community considering how far we are from her.

In the midst of this, I had a phone call with a dear friend. I was letting her hear all of my raw emotions over this single mom and her 7 children. She had the idea to see if there were any CarePortal churches nearby this mom that we could reach out to. It turned out that there was a CarePortal church just 4 miles from her home!  We were able to get in contact with this church and connect them with the family. They have already been a huge support for this mom. My prayer is that this church will be able to really wrap around this family and become their community.

I am amazed at the way God is working through CarePortal and His willing children. He is continually showing us His hand in all of the messiness of broken families. Sometimes it can be hard when we don’t get to know what comes of the families we reach out to, but I believe that God has a perfect plan. I believe that He is walking through this with us and teaching us as we go. I believe that if we are faithful to His promoting, we are going to see great things happen!

For this Missouri woman, we pray that you will continue to see the CarePortal community as THE church, not just a collection of churches.  We’re all in this together, with every body of believers needing to do just a little.