HOPE AT HOME 2013 BREAKOUTS

It is hard to describe how exciting and humbling it is for us to prepare and share these breakout sessions for Hope at Home 2013, September 27-28. We are full of anticipation and hope for our time together with you all. There is still time for you to register-- come on and join us for this weekend of refreshing, equipping and HOPE for adoptive, foster and waiting parents. 

Breakout Session I:

1. Connection 

This interactive time is designed to help us connect with the One who loves us unconditionally and is completely for us. Come and be refreshed as we hear the Father’s voice, bring our deepest needs to Him and experience His amazing grace for us as His sons and daughters.

2. Fathering Your Adopted Child 

In this session for fathers Stephen Templeton will examine basic principles regarding the authority, responsibility and capacity God gives us to lead our families. We will discuss some of the unique challenges of fathering adopted children and blended families, examining our role in helping our children fully attach to us and integrate into our family. Emphasizing the practical application, we'll spend time receiving God's encouragement and strength for this awesome fathering role.

3. Remind Me Who I Am: Helping Your Child Connect with God 

Until we encounter the love of our Heavenly Father, we all struggle with identity. This is especially true for the adopted/fostered child who may have experienced more brokenness, instabilities, and insecurities than most. Jenni Means will share testimonies from her experiences ministering to adopted children and their families. In this session you will experience first-hand what God has to say about His children and our identity in Him, learning practical steps to invite God encounters into the lives of your children. Discover that hearing from our Heavenly Father and encountering the Holy Spirit brings freedom from the lies of our past, melting the walls in every heart.

4. No Ceilings: The Parents' Self-Help Approach That Is Not About Self 

There is the option to live out our family lives as though there were no ceilings, no boundaries to the potential for us to flourish. We find this life of no ceilings happens NOT when we do the best we can as parents, but when our best as parents is submitted in prayer to our Lord, for Whom it is natural to do the supernatural. He then does exceedingly abundantly above and beyond all we can ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20). In this session of encouragement and help for your parenting journey, Susan and Brian Hillis will share from their experience with the Lord over their 15+ years of adoptive parenting.

Breakout Session II:

1. Connection 

This interactive time is designed to help us connect with the One who loves us unconditionally and is completely for us. Come and be refreshed as we hear the Father’s voice, bring our deepest needs to Him and experience His amazing grace for us as His sons and daughters.

2. From Fear to Fruitfulness 

If we are honest with ourselves, most of us live with a nagging general sense of anxiety as parents; we feel uncertain and helpless about the future of our children as we struggle with their past and ours, quick to remember the hurts and offenses. To protect ourselves from these anxious feelings, we attempt to eliminate risk and increase feelings of security by controlling and managing our worlds and the people in them—often to an increased sense of anxiety.

Thankfully we have an answer in Christ to worrisome anxiety. In this session Dr. Terry Mitchell will lead us in an interactive time, exploring:

~How anxiety is a point of struggle to either maintain the present conditions or risk new potentialities

~How Christ offers freedom from the harmful effects of unresolved anxiety

~How God’s love banishes this type of fear

~How we can begin to live from God’s much larger perspective when tempted by circumstances that make us anxious

3. Remaining One through Adoption: Keeping First Things First

Come and revisit the importance of your connection to your spouse.  Scott and Jenni Means will share about the various kinds of intimacy vital to a strong marriage relationship that blesses your whole family. Hear about practical shifts that can be made to establish the connections both husbands and wives desire. Step away from regret, guilt and shame and into the blessings of marriage as God designed, desires, and intends it to be.

4. An Opportune Time: Loving Your Adopted Teen 

This breakout is for parents of teens and those preparing for this exciting and often challenging season of parenting. The teen years are full of opportunities for growth and healing as our children face the primary task of adolescence--answering the question “Who Am I?” Beth and Stephen Templeton will share some of their successes and failures along the way, all of which God has used to teach them about the high value of connection and the power of parenting in grace in the midst of the complexities unique to this season.  

3 MORE DAYS

As you can imagine, we are all quite busy here at Hope at Home preparing for this year's conference for adoptive, foster and waiting parents. You have three more days to register at the discounted early bird price, so now is the time! 

We hear Father God's voice to us, fellow parents. He is saying, Welcome Home! It is the Father's heart cry of accepting, hope-filled love--the same love that we echo when we adopt our children. 

So, if you are able, come join us for Hope at Home 2013 and enjoy Real Families, Real Help, and Real Hope for your parenting journey. 

To get a feel for Hope at Home 2013, take a look at this video: 

ORPHANS NO MORE!

This post will be mostly photos, but oh how true it is that a picture is worth 1000 words. No matter who you are, these photos from H@HKids! will lift your spirits as you see with your own eyes the Spirit of Adoption (Romans 8:15) at work. Beautiful, Powerful, Awesome! Beloved Sons and Daughters!
Keep scrolling down to see them all--we don't want you to miss what Father God is saying through these images. Laura Means and Ruth Holleman captured some of the Father's Heart for His children. 

So, first off we got the children checked in:

Our team had lots of fun with the FAB Children (foster, adopted, and bio):

Worship was lead by Emma Templeton, a bio daughter with 4 adopted siblings:

Our team prepared a few skits for the children about their IDENTITY as Children of the One True God, interspersed with testimonies from young adults from adoptive families. 

Jenni Means shared The Truth About Lies with the kids. 

There was something powerful about seeing our team, some of whom are adoptees themselves, love on these children:

It was really moving to see each child take their "hello my name is" tag on which they'd written one lie that they have believed about themselves and put it on the cross, exchanging that lie for the truth God was showing them:

And our favorite part of all, the Date With God. To see a room full of children quietly listening to the Lord and interacting with Him in times of encounter--now that right there is the Spirit of Adoption at work! They prayed for the nations, read God's word, sat in His lap, painted what He said about them, shared their own and prayed for others' prayer requests, received a blessing and prayer as they had their hands washed.