Week 3: Four Bedrooms

Let's get this framing party started!

It's fitting that we have on our VBS shirts. The framing was a happy surprise to me during VBS week!

“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves.”

Proverbs 31:8

“Not all of us can do great things.  But we can all do small things with great love.”[1]

--Mother Teresa

This is bedroom #4! :)

FOSTER CARE FACTS

Children in foster care in the U.S.:  399,546

Children in foster care waiting to be adopted: 101,719

Children entering foster care in 2012: 254,162

Children exiting foster care in 2012: 241,254

Children “aging out” of the foster system in 2012 in FY: 23,439

Average age of a child waiting to be adopted:  7.8 years old

Number of children whose parental rights were terminated in FY 2012:  58,587

Approximate number of children adopted from foster care in FY 2012:  52,039

Number of caring adults it takes to make a life-long difference for a child in the foster system:  1

[Source:  AFCARS Report July 2013][3]

In 2013, 60 percent of the child sex trafficking victims recovered as part of a FBI nationwide raid from over 70 cities were children from foster care or group homes.[4]  (Good foster parents can protect vulnerable children from these dangers.)

Read about more risks (i.e., homelessness, incarceration, etc.) for young people who do not become adopted, but who age out of foster care without a family: http://www.childrensrights.org/issues-resources/foster-care/facts-about-aging-out/. 

Orphans & the Fatherless in the Bible[5]

Psalm 68:5


A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling.

Psalm 146:9


The LORD watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow.

James 1:27


Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Go to http://orphancareresources.org/resource/resource/orphans-bible for more…

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[1] https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/838305.Mother_Teresa.

[2] http://www.christianalliancefororphans.org/resources/orphan-facts/orphan-facts-foster-care/

[3] http://www.christianalliancefororphans.org/resources/orphan-facts/orphan-facts-foster-care/

[4] Saar, Malika Saada.  (2013).  “Stopping the Foster Care to Child Trafficking Pipeline.”  Retrieved from Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/malika-saada-saar/stopping-the-foster-care-_b_4170483.html.

[5] http://orphancareresources.org/resource/resource/orphans-bible.