"If you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday."  Isaiah 58:10

The Forgotten Initiative, Lifesong's foster care ministry, exists to bring joy and purpose to local foster care communities through mentorship, service projects and family support organized by local TFI Advocates. With a holistic approach they reach out not only to foster children, but also agency workers, foster parents and vulnerable adults. Read along to learn more...

JOURNEY BAGS {For Children Entering Care}

The Forgotten Initiative (TFI) has many different ways to get involved. One is creating "Journey Bags" for local foster care agency to ultimately reach foster kids in your community.

What exactly is a Journey Bag? Children often come into foster care with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Journey Bags are backpacks filled with personal items for kids to have when they are abruptly taken out of their homes.

Listen in to the impact of Journey Bags...

"Last night at midnight, three precious little beauties showed up on my doorstep. They each had with them a blanket, a stuffed animal, and a book bag, their Journey Bags. I kept waiting for more, anything more, but nothing came. The investigator told me this was all they had. 

Our 5-year-old came with shoes so worn, they had to be thrown away. One of our two-year-olds had no shoes, the other had two left shoes. When I asked about getting anything out of the home, the investigator said it wasn't possible. The kids had nothing. There worldly possessions consisted of Journey Bags. As I stared at those bags, I began to cry. What if no one took the time to fill those bags and deliver them? What would our children have then? Absolutely nothing. Nothing to claim as their own, nothing to protect or cherish. Thank you for all you do. Thank you for my kiddos Journey Bags." 

--Heather, foster mom

Learn more about tangible ways you can serve your foster care community>>

PROJECT RENOVATE {Supporting Local Foster Families}

Go on a local "mission trip" with Project Renovate!

Often foster care families feel alone and overwhelmed. Spend a day reaching out to families in need while at the same time raising support for The Forgotten Initiative with projects like deep cleaning a home, landscaping or giving a room a makeover!

Check out this new promo video & see how you can get involved at www.theforgotteninitiative.org/projectrenovate.

Join us this year for a Project Renovate in Central Illinois:

June 7th -- Clinton, IL

July 12th -- Creve Coeur, IL

Learn more about who YOU can be involved in this year's Project Renovate>> 

Read More...

Journey Bag Testimonial - Listen in as foster mom shares the impact the TFI Journey Bags had on her and her foster children. Watch Video

Showing Jesus to the Forgotten - Learn what it means to become a TFI Advocate for your local foster care community!  Read More

ReMoved - Originally created for the 168 Film Festival, ReMoved follows the emotional story through the eyes of a young girl taken from her home and placed into foster care. Watch Video

Coming This Spring...

Celebrate Life Tour - Featuring Cheri Keaggy & Zambian Children's Choir! This concert will be an excellent opportunity for the whole family to hear how they can help care for orphans and vulnerable children! Learn more about dates, locations & where to buy your tickets>>

Christian Alliance for Orphans CAFO2014 {May 1-2; CHICAGO} - CAFO2014 inspires and equips Christians to care for orphans with wisdom-guided love. Register today! Learn More & Register

$25,000 for $25,000 - what an AMAZING opportunity

Greetings ~

Below is a post from my friend and missionary Christie Magera's blog.  They have been given an amazing opportunity but in order to do it they need ALLLL of us to assist. - you can follow Christie on her blog 

Ekubo Christian Academy {25k in 25 days}

In 2010 as God directed our steps to start a ministry in our village, the vision we had was to live out the Gospel in community with the families, forge relationships with them, and provide a Christian education for as many children as we had room for in our school as we worked with the families to see how we could provide job opportunities for them. In turn, they would become self-sustainable and be able to pay their children's school fees. The plan to get there was simple; we would connect each child with a sponsor and that sponsor would financially support them until their family was able to. Unfortunately that worked out perfectly on paper but played out completely opposite. For 3 years now we have yet to have a year when our school has operated with all the funds needed. We have been praying diligently for an opportunity that would allow our school to be fully funded so we could direct our fundraising efforts toward some of the other things on our faith list - a bus we can use to generate income or a bakery that will be used to provide jobs, food for our school, and food for selling.

Ekubo Christian Academy now has the capacity for 320 students. The parents are asked to contribute to their children's educations by supplying small amounts of firewood, maize, or whatever they grow or have access to that meets a need at our school. This serves two purposes - to push the ownership of the children's educations back to the families and to help us keep the sponsorship amounts around $300/child. We made some much-needed changes to our program and now your financial gift will cover all the children, not just one. Go here to read more about it. Our faithful supporters were excited about the changes and we picked up some new sponsors in the process. The operational expenses for our school are $96,000 and while we haven't heard back from all of last year's sponsors as to whether or not they will be renewing this year, we have raised the $16,000 needed to cover through the end of last month. So for the 7 days of this month we have gone backwards - the school continues to run but no funds are coming in. Just when we were beginning to feel defeated, God whispered, "I am not silent. I am working."

Friends, when we feel God is silent - He's not. He is moving mountains that we don't see. Some we never knew were there. Oh, when we feel He is silent it just means we are not to the point in our journey that He is revealing His plans to us. Brothers and sisters, be courageous! He is our Hope. Let's walk boldly on the path He has set out before us, even if we can't see where our next step is. For that silence may be Him preparing hearts to join us on this journey.

And that was exactly what He was doing. A couple of nights ago I was catching up on emails when I got a message from a sweet family.

They have generously offered to match all donations up to

 $25,000 through March 31st!!!

We are beyond excited that God is using them to build our faith and answer our prayer. We invite you to help us. If we can raise $25,000 in 25 days, they will match it and we will have $50,000 toward our goal of having the school fully funded. 

How can you help?

PRAY that hearts are moved to help us and that God pours out His blessings in and through each one of them.

GIVE sacrificially to help us. God has already made provisions to have every dollar matched. You can give your tax-deductible gift through Visiting Orphans. We encourage you to send a check as there is a 5% fee for credit card donations. A check would enable your entire gift to be matched and applied directly to the need. Please make checks payable to Visiting Orphans, put Ekubo Christian Academy in the notes and send to:

Visiting Orphans
449 Metroplex Drive
Nashville, TN 37211

SHARE this amazing opportunity. Talk with your family. Your friends. Your small group. Your faith family at church. Share on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and any other social media sites you use. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram to get the latest updates that you can use to share with everyone you have encouraged to give. Watch with us as God brings His body together to fill this need and restore our faith in Him! 

You are invited ~

Weekly in the office, our Lifesong Family comes together to pray for our in-country orphan initiatives, adoptive families, Forgotten Advocates, fellow co-workers and anything other items needing prayer or praise that week. It's a special time to come together to remember and acknowledge THE ONE who deserves all the glory and praise for the work HE allows us to do. To THE ONE who has ultimate control and power over every situation.
We would love to invite you to join us in this time of prayer by subscribing to our monthly Prayer Team email. At the end of each month, you will receive an email outlining the prayers and praises for specific needs from that month. We hope you will pray along with us! Sign up below...
[gravityform id="19" name="Lifesong Prayer Team Sign-up:" description="false"]

Learn more about the Lifesong Prayer Team>>

“Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well…The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.”
James 5:14-16

It's Giving Tuesday ~

Greetings ~
YAHOOOOO - you have survived Black Friday and Cyber Monday and made it to Giving Tuesday!  I want to know who you give to - so I am going to randomly give away 2 copies of the book Orphan Justice by Johnny Carr.  All I want you to do is share with me who you are giving to on this fantastic day.

So here is how it will work ~
Leave me a comment on who you are giving to - 1 entry
Share my blog on facebook/twitter/instagram - 1 entry for each share (but you need to come back here and tell me you shared it!!)

Than tomorrow morning at 8am I will give away 2 copies of this most amazing book!

Going Mainstream ~

Greetings ~
If you follow me on facebook or twitter than you know last week I was in warm sunny florida at the annual association of bridal consultants conference. I ALWAYS look forward to the week of conference as a time to re-connect with industry pals, learn amazing new things, and come back inspired and ready for the next year. This year is no different EXCEPT I can truly say it was soooo much more than I ever expected.
 I have always been a public speaker, my first formal time on a stage speaking was in 3rd grade and I spoke to 1,500 adults in Hawaii about why my mom was the best shaklee mom. As I went onto high school and college I spoke and competed and became a nationally ranked speaker. In my professional life I have been asked to speak, submitted topics to speak, been paid to speak and created speaking opportunities. What all of these have in common is they were safe. I always knew the group WANTED to hear what I was saying. 
 This brings me to the last speaker on the last day of conference. His name is Simon T. Bailey  I have known Simon since my earliest days with the Walt Disney World Company when he was over new business development for the Disney Institute.  I have followed him and heard him speak time and time again.  In fact in one of my presentations I give away his book!  But this time his talk was different.  It was talking to a different part of me - as per usual he has the group (376ish of us) work through an exercise with what we will STOP doing, START doing and CONTINUE doing.  As he went around the room asking people what their stop and starts were I thought about my continue - imagine my surprise when he landed right in front of me with Courtney what will you continue to do?  I knew it was a moment not to be wasted and so in front of 376ish believers, non believers, atheists and everything in between - my answer was simple - I will continue to be a voice for the 147 million orphans worldwide.  As I went to hand him back the microphone he told me to keep it - he asked me what exactly my continue meant and there in a mainstream room I was able to share what my eyes and heart had been opened to over the last 5 years.
I share this story with you today because you never know when you will get the moment to share your story - so be ready - the lord continues to work in mysterious ways in my life but one thing I know for sure is that I need to seize my moment whenever it comes. And if you are so inclined check out Simon's books.  Great reads such as The Vuja de Moment and Release your brilliance.

Many thanks to my dear friend Lisa with Gabbi Grace Events for capturing this amazing moment on camera!

Ornaments 4 Orphans

Greetings ~
I hope that Nov is going oh so well for you.  It is so hard to believe that Christmas is right around the corner and with that comes ALOT of Christmas trees.  I wanted to introduce you to an organization based around just that ornaments and Christmas trees!  I know I know what you are thinking how can an ornament and/or a Christmas tree make a difference in the life of an orphan?
Well let me introduce to you Ornaments 4 Orphans (an initiative of Pearl Ministries) - the concept is really pretty simple - Buy an Ornament. Bless a Child
Today there are 3.2 million ugandan children orphaned due to AIDS and you can make a difference all while decorating your own home for the holidays.  Proceeds from the sale go directly toward enriching the lives of vulnerable children and building their communities.

New Horizons for Children ~

Greetings ~

I promised you when I returned from Together for Adoption that I would share with you some of the amazing organizations I met.  We all know that not everyone is called to adopt and I totally and completely get that - but we are ALL called to help the widow and orphans and to defend the fatherless.  So here is my first resource

New Horizons for Children is a international orphan hosting ministry based out of Acworth GA.  To be honest when I first heard about Orphan Hosting I wasn't real sure about that idea in fact I wasn't real crazy about it but as I talked to the ladies I learned something that SHOCKED me - I had no idea that some of the orphanages in Eastern European countries actually "close" for the summer and these children have to go somewhere. Well with programs like this, the children are going to Christian God centered homes and experiencing life as a family.  Yes, some of them are adopted by their host families, some are adopted by friends of host families but most importantly they are learning about family love in a family setting.

The programs run  5-6 weeks in the summer

                             4 weeks around the Christmas holiday

                             5 weeks for the Chinese New Year holiday   

Children available are 

Healthy Children ages 8 - 16

Siblings groups of 2, 3 ,or more

Special needs children ages 4 and up

Some children who are not adoptable but could benefit from the program

Want more info on orphan hosting check out www.newhorizonsforchildren.org

If this is the ministry you are called to be sure to stop back here and share the experience with us.  I would love to hear all about it!

My thoughts post Together for Adoption Conference-

Greetings ~
I have just returned from a great weekend in Louisville, KY.  The conference was EVERYTHING and MORE.  I am in the process of processing all that I learned and heard and saw.  But I did have to stop by here and say just a few things.

* The orphan crisis is an overwhelming thought and I think often times we are frozen just by the sheer magnitude so over the next few days, weeks, months (whatever it takes) I hope to share with you ways you can make a difference and NO adoption is not the only way!!

* Thank you LORD for re-breaking my heart for what breaks yours

* I was blessed beyond measure to catch up with old friends and make some new ones and for that I am incredibly grateful.

* I want to leave you with one tangible thing that you can do TODAY - read this story and PRAY not only for Davion but for the family that is out there for him.  Pray for all the kiddos in the USA foster care system that they know they are not alone and were not abandoned by God. (Click the link below the photo)

Orphan pleads for a family

* Want to know more about Together for Adoption? Click here