So let me welcome all of our Atlanta area churches who are joining us today and those of you who are joining us online, wherever you are in the world, more and more churches all over the world and people all over the world are becoming a part of this growing network of Christians who understand it's not simply what you believe, it's what you do with what you believe, and that is the hallmark of Christianity, and more and more it's becoming what characterizes our churches, and I just love that.

From time to time, I mentioned I kind of drop into conversations or sermons, the fact that

Sandra and I were foster parents for 10 years, and I do that intentionally because we love

the foster care community, and any time we can be an advocate for that amazing community we

want to be.

But anyway, during those active foster years, a young lady came to live with us.

She was 10 years old, that little girl, and she was with us about four or five months,

or maybe six months. And then she moved on to a different situation. And then five years later,

when she was 15, she came back into our home. and she had quite the journey.

She ended up in a group home, and Sandra and I, we stayed in touch with her throughout those five years,

and so we visited her in the group home, and so I think it was our second visit.

Sandra and I were driving home from the group home, and we were just being real quiet.

And I can't remember which one of us said. It probably Sandra, she turned to me,

and I'll give her credit, and said,

do we even need to pray about this?

We weren't even talking.

Do we even need to pray about this?

Like, seriously, so we contacted the folks

we needed to contact and we went back

and picked her up and brought her home to live with us

until she could age out of foster care. We warned her, we said, by this time our kids were out of the

house, so it was just me and Sandra and her, she's 15, and we wondered, this is going to be really

...