This is my story of how I was led to the amazing young girls at the TBCH.  Everything I have ever done has always been by accident.  It is amazing how one door will lead to the right door no matter what it looks like on the outside.  

 

We were in the middle of our adoption which was taking a lot longer than planned due to the country we had selected shutting it’s doors to adoption for a season.  During that last year of waiting, my sister was working for a sock manufacturing company. She had gotten boxes and boxes of socks for us donated to take to the Ukraine orphanages when we went. When we realized we were not going to Ukraine I had all of these boxes and boxes of brand new socks to get rid of. I was driving down Franklin Road one day and passed by this sign that said "TN Baptist Childrens Home". I had seen this place before and wondered what it was. There were all of these cottages in this one little area. So I thought, 'This is a children's home, surely they need children's socks' . I went home and called them. She gladly said they would accept them and had me bring them to their drop off location. While I was there I asked her what that place was and she explained it is a home for abandoned, neglected, and abused kids and she took me over and showed me these little run off computer pictures of these kids. I explained to her that I was a photographer and asked if she wanted me to come donate my time and take good pictures of the kids and she gladly accepted. I went down and took pictures of all of the kids and then they had me come back on two more occasions. I started connecting with the teenage girls and my heart wanted to reach out to them. Since they now all knew me pretty well I asked if I could come share my personal testimony with them sometime, as I had experienced in my life a lot of the things that some of these girls were facing. They allowed me to come and share. I brought with me a couple of other girls from my bible study group who had a heart for teenagers and we all shared our stories with these girls. It really opened a door for these girls to want to start sharing their own personal stories because they felt a connection. It went so well that we now have a bible study every other week with these girls that the Lord led me to three years ago. I was on a quest to help one orphan from Ukraine and because of some socks the Lord has led me along with others to help about 20 of them over the past 3 years right up the road. These are precious and beautiful girls and I'm so thankful that I followed the Lord's steps to them during such an uncertain time in my life regarding our own adoption.