Thanksgiving Offering allows Baptists to help children and families in crisis

Skipping out of her bedroom door, 6-year-old Kristen prances around the living room to show off her new Sunday dress and matching tights and shoes. Flipping her sandy blond locks put up in a lilac bow, she bubbly asks, “How does my hair look? Do you like my hair bow?”

“It’s beautiful,” replies Laurie Franco as she attempts to get the talkative youngster ready to leave for Sunday morning church services.

At first glance, most could not imagine the cheerful schoolgirl once lived in a world of physical and verbal abuse, neglect and filth. There were no pretty clothes. No hair bows. No affirmation. No Hope.

But since arriving at Baptist Home for Children in Monticello in 2009, Kristen’s hope is being restored through a safe, loving and stable home-like environment. Now, the outgoing, active youngster is excelling in school, recently named to the A-honor roll. Kristen enjoys soccer, reading, playing with her dolls and spending time with her friends on the playground. Her collection of  hair bows comes in most every color.

Just a few weeks ago, with much encouragement and help from her houseparents, Kristen learned to ride her bike.

 “I can’t believe I learned to ride my bike in just two days,” excitedly notes Kristen. She often tells her houseparents how much she “loves them and wishes they could be her parents and keep her.”

Kristen is one of 75 children, many for the first time in their life, who this year has experienced a sense of hope at the Monticello Home. The Home is a ministry of the Arkansas Baptist Children’s Homes and Family Ministries (ABCHomes).

“After coming to live at the Baptist Home children like Kristen see how a family can be stable and secure, not just some of the time, but each and every day,” says Franco, a houseparent at the Monticello Home. “Children like Kristen learn that they, even in difficult situations, can have joy and hope through Jesus.

THANKSGIVING OFFERING
Providing hope and love to hurting children and families has been the goal of the ABCHomes, which raises much of its support through an annual Thanksgiving Offering, traditionally observed by Arkansas Baptist churches since 1908. The theme of the 2010 offering is “Give Hope.”

“Many children we serve often are the weakest in our society,” said David Perry, ABCHomes executive director. “Their hearts and lives are not full of courage but of fear. Thanks to the many churches and individual donors that generously give to the Thanksgiving Offering, we can reach out to these hurting children and families and offer them Christ-like hope and seek to direct them to that wonderful hope in the Lord.”

In addition to the Monticello campus, ABCHomes staff has given hope this year to 44 boys, ages 6 through 17  at the Boys Ranch in Harrison.

Nick and Colby live at the Boys Ranch. The teenage boys recently exemplified the hope they have found at the Ranch during a door-to-door food drive for the North Arkansas Baptist Association. Portions of the collected canned goods were to go to the Boys Ranch.  

As the boys were knocking on doors asking for canned goods donations, they encountered an elderly woman who told them that she could not donate because she had no food for herself. The two boys, of their own volition walked back to the van, put together a box of food and took it to the needy woman.

Noting that, “an important goal in our ministry is to help the children learn how to give others hope,” Perry said, “We are very proud of Nick and Colby who thoughtfully helped provide a sense of hope for one who may have felt hopeless.”

This past year, ABCHomes staff has provided hope for 28 unwed, pregnant pre-teen and teenage girls at the Promise House Maternity Home in Little Rock. Another 169 children, many of them victims of severe abuse and neglect, found  hope at the emergency receiving homes in Judsonia, Paragould and West Fork.

Of these ABCHomes residents, 29 of them, in making a profession of faith, discovered the perfect hope that is only found in a relationship with Jesus Christ.