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28. Serving the Foster Community with The Forgotten Initiative Founder, Jami Kaeb **Transcription Below** Scripture NIV Psalm 68:5+6(a) “A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families,” Jami Kaeb is a dreamer and a coffee lover! She is married to Clint and the mother of seven–five through adoption. It was through a difficult season of waiting that Clint and Jami’s eyes were opened to the foster care community. They became foster parents to three siblings who they eventually adopted. Jami founded The Forgotten Initiative in April 2011. At The Savvy Sauce, we will only recommend resources we believe in! We also want you to be aware: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Connect Online: The Forgotten Initiative Website The Forgotten Initiative – Facebook The Forgotten Initiative - Instagram Jami’s Recommended Books: Confessions of an Adoptive Parent Reframing Foster Care The Connected Child Additional Recommended Websites: Empowered to Connect Other Podcasts Jami Recommends: Tapestry Empowered to Connect Podcast Honestly Adoption Foster Movement Podcast Conferences Recommended by Jami: Refresh Chicago Christian Alliance for Orphans (CAFO) Thank You to Our Sponsor: Fae & Monroe Connect with The Savvy Sauce on Facebook or Instagram or Our Website Please help us out by sharing this episode with a friend, leaving a 5-star rating and review, and subscribing to this podcast! Gospel Scripture: (all NIV) Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.” Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession- to the praise of his glory.” Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.” Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“ Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“ Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” **Transcription** [00:00:00] <music> Laura Dugger: Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here. [00:00:17] <music> Laura Dugger: Today's episode is brought to you by Fae & Monroe. They make hand-stamped jewelry and accessories, and they are located right here in Central Illinois. They provide delicate, personal everyday necklaces, as well as keychains and accessories. Check them out online at FayAndMonroe.com. Today we get to chat with Jamie Kaeb. She is a dreamer and a coffee lover. She is married to Clint and the mother of seven, five through adoption. Jamie founded the Forgotten Initiative in 2011, and today we get to hear more of her story, we get to be inspired by God's work, and she will share with each of us how we can serve the foster care community in unique ways. Here's our chat. Well, hello, Jamie. Thanks so much for joining us today. Jamie Kaeb: I'm really excited to talk with you and to have this conversation. Laura Dugger: If anyone hasn't met you yet or heard about the Forgotten Initiative, would you mind just sharing a little background on both? Jamie Kaeb: So for us, I would say even all the way back to several years ago, if you would have asked me, you know, what do you think about adoption or foster care, would you ever do that? I would have said, oh my goodness, only if I cannot have children, because I was very afraid of adoption. Honestly, I really didn't even think about foster care. And I remember when Paige was an infant, and now she's 15, hearing a broadcast on the radio about adoption. And I can still vividly feel that pit in my stomach as I said to the Lord, "I hope you're not trying to tell me something." So that's where I was. [00:02:00] But God, in His gracious way, was so faithful to bring people into my life who opened my eyes and brought awareness to this whole world of adoption and ultimately foster care. For us, adoption became our first experience was with our son Hudson, who we adopted from Guatemala. And then it was now 2008, and we had kind of caught this adoption bug, and we already had another daughter. So we had two daughters biologically, and then we adopted our son. And now we wanted to adopt again, and this time we were going to try to adopt from the United States. God took us on a journey that was not what we expected. It was very painful because basically, every person said, No, this is not, this is no. And for me, it was a very difficult time because I'm a very emotional person and all in. And so when God was saying no, no, no to adoption, I was saying, "Why? This is a good thing. I don't understand this. This hurts. This stinks. I hate this." [00:03:00] And yet God, in His graciousness, opened our eyes to a whole new world. Through the journey of saying no and the journey of waiting, He opened our eyes to a whole new world, the world of foster care. He taught us that it's not about bringing a child into our family, but it's about bringing our family to a child. So we started to go to foster care classes. This is where we learned that really foster care is about coming alongside another family. It's not just about providing a safe place for kids, which it is, but it's about coming alongside another family for temporary, for time, with the hope that if this family can come back together, then that's a win. So we kind of learned about that. And at the same time as we're learning about foster care, I remember watching a video of a little girl who was waiting in a foster care office. The worker was calling around trying to find a home for her and everyone was saying, "No, I can't. I can't." [00:04:00] And watching that there and getting to know this world of foster care was just eye-opening and it just broke my heart. I could not believe that this was happening in my own community. I thought, "This is not okay." So this time we had our three kids still, and I went to DCFS, our local foster care agency, never had been there before, never knew what to expect. But I walked in and I said, "Please tell me what happens to these kids. Where do they go? Where do they wait? I need to know" because I did not know. So they let me see some of the rooms where kids will visit with their parents. And just as I walked in there, it was just heartbreaking because the furniture was hard, the walls were blank, the toys were broken, some of them, and it just made me sad. And I thought, "How can kids who are being pulled from everything that they know come here? That is not okay." So I asked them, I said, "Can we do something about this? Can I bring in people? Can we make over these rooms and make them beautiful." Essentially they said, "Well, will you pay for it?" And I said, "Sure." [00:05:04] So we called on people I got on Facebook and I called them my friends and family and I said, "Let's create a space that says, you are special to these kids, so that they know that there are people who are thinking of them and who care for them." So for me, I always describe this as a puzzle piece, because what I saw there is the same thing I see today many years later, is that God's people really do care, they just don't know how to help, or maybe they just don't know that there's this need out there. But when I reached out to people and said, Okay, this room needs done, we need painters, we need brand new toys, we need people to put shelves together, people jumped on board and they were so excited to get involved. And also watching the response of the agency to see men and women who work there in this really dark field often, laughing and excited and just kind of blown away that we were even there, was so beautiful. So again, it was like God was saying, Listen, the church, they care. It's not that they don't care. It's just that they don't know. [00:06:05] That was a puzzle piece I always described as saying God was putting together this picture. And as I got to know workers, I started asking more questions. "Okay, what else do you need? Help me understand. I need to know. This is all so new to me. What do you need? What do your families need?" And as I learned, another common need is diapers. You know, maybe a child will come into DCFS with a soiled diaper and maybe there's nothing on hand. So the worker, in the middle of this transition time that is scary for the kids, they have to run out to Walmart and often pull out of their own pocket money to pay for diapers. So I'm like, this is easy. So I got on Facebook again and said to my friends, "Let's do a diaper drive." And I wrote, "Let's get 30 boxes of diapers for these agencies." And then I changed my mind and said, "No, let's get a hundred boxes of diapers." Laura, I'm telling you, again, God's people just stepped up and responded. I started getting diapers to my door almost daily. I think the speedy delivery guy who delivered these diapers thought I was crazy. But it was so beautiful to watch diapers being delivered from all over the United States because people were sending them from Amazon. [00:07:16] Someone even sent them from Japan. Someone who had read the blog apparently sent diapers from Japan. It was this beautiful way to walk into one agency in town. We got over 100 boxes of diapers and wipes combined, but I took about 30 of those to one agency and I said to them, "This is from the body of Christ. We need you to know that we see you, we care about you, and we just want to do what we can to support you." Again, their response was just overwhelmed. They could not believe that we would do that, that we would think of them. So God took those puzzle pieces and put them together in a picture that became the Forgotten Initiative. What started then as a movement in my community to just learn the needs, to share the needs of God's people, and then help the church to be the hands and feet of Jesus to this agency and to the families that they serve and the kids that they serve and the foster parents that they serve has moved, has spread all across the nation where now we have 35 communities serving their agencies. [00:08:17] We call them advocates. They're leaders in their community. They're volunteers who are going out and they're saying, This is not okay. We need to make a difference. And so they're serving and we're just continuing to bring awareness because like I've learned and like we believe, awareness leads to action. So that's really the story, really, to TFI. And during this journey, as we're in those foster care classes, after going through the classes and really getting our whole brains around this idea of foster care, we determined that, yes, this is what we want to do. After those classes, we got a call about two little boys. They were three and seven months old, and they needed a foster home. And I will never forget the day that they were coming in to our house. I was waiting. We had not seen them. We really knew very little about them. I was waiting in my house excited, nervous, until the caseworker pulled up. [00:09:08] And as she did, I ran out there and I saw three-year-old Dade who was very quiet and very nervous. And I just remember looking at him and saying, "I am so happy to have you here." And then looking at little seven-month-old Bobby, who was just a baby, and just thinking, "Wow, this is the beginning." And for us, as beautiful as that moment was, and we'll talk more about this, I'm sure, but there was definitely some challenges along the way as well. But about five months after those two boys joined our family, their sister also needed a foster home, and so we said yes to her. So at this point, we had six kids and at that age, they were seven, five, four, three, two, and one. So life changed very dramatically. But that is a little bit about our journey to foster care. Laura Dugger: You mentioned all of the children's ages. As you continued adding children, did they continue to be the youngest one chronologically as well? Does that make sense? Jamie Kaeb: Absolutely. And for our situation, those three were the only three that came into our home to foster care because they ended up needing adopting. So we did adopt them. [00:10:16] And in Illinois, once you have six in your home under 18, you can no longer foster. So for us, our foster care journey was done at that stage. But later on, God did call us to adoption. We met some kids from Zambia. I remember telling my husband one night, "Listen, Clint, I don't know what God's doing, but I feel like we need to pray about adopting from Africa." And I remember Clint saying, "Okay, let's pray, but don't expect anything." Now we have a six-year-old little guy from Africa. He was born in Uganda. We brought him home three years ago. His name is Friday. Laura Dugger: That's such a b…
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