Meet our new family at The Hill, the Hays! The Hays moved to our Harrisburg foster care neighborhood this summer.
Ben and Sarah began their fostering journey seven to eight years into their marriage. With an uncle and cousins adopted out of foster care, Sarah always knew she wanted to foster. When she and Ben talked about the possibility of fostering in their future, Ben was in agreement. As a teacher, he had seen foster care from the outside in and wanted to be a good example of a foster family.
When Sarah started going to foster care meetings with the state, she felt like something was missing. “I didn’t like that it felt like you became a foster parent and then there was nothing. When I heard Coyote Hill Foster Care Ministries’s story at our church, I knew, ‘That’s it! That’s what I was looking for.’ We got in touch with Coyote Hill Foster Care Ministries and started the path to becoming foster parents,” she said.
Ben and Sarah became licensed through Coyote Hill Foster Care Ministries in August 2021 and welcomed a child into their home one month later. One of the things they like about Coyote Hill Foster Care Ministries is having a Family Advocate.
“It was really nice having Karcie, our Family Advocate, to get us the things we needed or to contact if we had a question. When our first child in care had to go home, it was really nice to have an advocate to lean on through the sad parts of that,” Sarah said. “At Christmas, we got the boys, and Karcie came the same day with Welcome Baskets, which was awesome. It’s just been nice having someone you can text and say, ‘Hey, I don’t know what to do here, what do you suggest?’”
Their recent move to The Hill was a very fast process but also very exciting. The first time they saw the Harrisburg homes, they were in awe. Sarah says that moving to The Hill was an easy decision, because of their desire to foster sibling sets.
“The reason I want to foster is for sibling sets, and it is so much easier to do that at The Hill,” Sarah said. “Whereas in our three-bedroom house we were full, right now, we have all that space—we could take more children! It was hard for us to leave family and friends in Moberly, but it all fell together in a way where we knew it was what God wanted us to do.”
Ben and Sarah currently have two sibling sets and two other children in their care. As they reflect on a year of fostering, it’s clear God has shown up along the way.
“With each child, we just knew they were meant to be in our family,” Sarah said. “Even the parents, which is what surprised me. I never thought about birth parents until our STARS class. Our first child has already gone home, but we still talk to her parents every single day. It’s really cool, the relationships you build and how God smiles at you and says, This is someone that’s meant to be in your life.”
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