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It wasn't long before we were filling moving trucks at our Dripping Springs storage units, breaking down what we had just spent the year prior building up, and reconfiguring a new setup in the yellow house.

Rather than one giant space focused on essential items, we were challenged to dream up how a house and home-like setting could create a more holistic experience for the kids and families we serve.

We envisioned hosting our Support Gatherings there, creating an environment for play and connection, hosting family visitations, and giving CPS an alternative to kids sleeping in offices while awaiting a foster home.

I shared the photo of Ellen, Nick, and me in front of Oak Haven on move-in day, along with this caption:

When children come into foster care with just the clothes on their backs, foster parents and kinship caregivers will be able to bring them here to pick out all of the items they need in a dignified way (clothes, beds, car seats, toys, etc). We are also working with CPS to make it a place where children in foster care can have visitations with their parents and/or siblings in a more home-like environment and an alternative option for the local children who currently need to spend hours in the car each week to get to the nearest visitation location. A place where they can cook a meal together, climb trees, practice life skills, and have mentors equip them with helpful tools. It will also serve as an occasional safe haven for a child to stay overnight with his/her caseworker while waiting for the right foster home, rather than sleeping in a CPS office.

We are beyond thrilled to see what God has in store for this next exciting chapter for Foster Village. We will be sharing more volunteer opportunities, updates, and news about our upcoming fundraiser to those subscribed to our email list, so please sign up if you haven't already.

We will also be posting a 'wish list' of items we are needing for the Oak Haven house that we will pin to the top of our Facebook page. This project will be a true community effort... it takes a village!

Shortly after posting, we received a direct message from a woman in the community. She said she did a double take when she saw the house in the photo. Her in-laws were the original owners, and it was her husband's childhood home. She shared that she and her husband had also been foster parents, and in the early 2000s, they'd had an emergency foster placement arrive at the yellow house to stay with grandma while they made the commute home from work. "That yellow house," she wrote, "was his haven growing up."

We invited the entire family out to tour the work-in-progress resource center we were creating, including the family's matriarch, who had raised her five children there. As she walked through the space and touched the walls, I remember holding my breath, wondering how she felt about what we had done with the space. She walked over to me with tears in her eyes and said, "For 34 years while raising my children here, I said the same prayer every night: Lord, let this house be a haven to all of the children who walk through here."

That was the first of countless moments that would say the same thing, over and over, in different voices: Oak Haven is sacred ground. A true haven for every child, big and small, who walks through its doors. A little yellow house that would soon have a giant impact on how children, families, and a caring community approach foster care.

Speaking of which, if you have yet to come tour Oak Haven, let this be your personal invitation from me :) It's a home where everyone belongs.