Shepherding Homes
Bethany is committed to helping our birthmothers with housing assistance when needed. Loving, stable Christian families open their homes to them during their pregnancy. For women who make the courageous decision to choose life for their baby, housing assistance may be their greatest need. Bethany is actively seeking more shepherding homes.
Perhaps you can provide a nurturing, loving, home environment for a young, unmarried woman who needs a place to stay during her pregnancy. As a shepherding family you can reflect God's love and forgiveness to a young woman while He reveals His unique plan for her life and the life of her unborn child. Bethany will provide you with the training, supervision, and support that you need to be an effective shepherding home. In addition to providing regular counseling sessions for the young woman placed in your home, Bethany's counselors will meet with you regularly to discuss your concerns about being a shepherding home and about the young woman placed in your care.
Bethany provides ongoing training and support to families involved in the shepherding care ministry to birthmothers. If you would like to find out how you can be involved please fill out our contact form. The following story is a testimony from one or our Shepherding families.
David and Lori remember well the call they received from Bethany's counselor asking them if they would consider this most unusual situation. Typically, young women enter shepherding homes because of problems at home or with peers, or to shield the birthmother from negative influences during her pregnancy. Ana's situation was unique in that she requested that her mother come to live with her. In Hispanic culture families stay close, so for them, being separated was never an option. Ana remembers the great sense of relief she felt when her counselor told her about David and Lori.
Over the past three years, David and Lori have shared their home with a woman struggling to put her life together after an abusive marriage, a former drug addict trying to make a new start and several Bethany birthmothers. When the call came from Bethany about Ana and her mother; David and Lori agreed to meet with them the very next night.
Much to her surprise, Bethany's counselor later discovered that David had already learned "beginning" Spanish for his job. He welcomed the opportunity to practice his Spanish and help Ana and her mother learn English. "We had just had an experience with a Venezuelan young woman living with us who knew little English. We knew the challenges before us and were excited about the opportunity to minister to those of a different culture and to help one another learn a new language." David and Lori bought English and Spanish dictionaries and kept them close at hand. Laughter filled their home on many occasions as they struggled to communicate, but they always found a way.
The relationship between them and Ana and Louisa grew as trust was quickly established between them. Ana describes David and Lori as her two angels, but to David and Lori, Ana and her mom were the angels. Lori explains, "They loved to cook. There would be many nights when I had to work late and they fed my husband [before I got home] and had a warm plate in the oven waiting for me."
As a Bethany shepherding couple, David and Lori Mansfield have entertained many "guests" in the name of Christ: pregnant women, unborn children, immigrants and orphans, and who knows . . . perhaps . . . even angels.
To contact Bethany Christian Services of Atlanta, Georgia, call us at 770.455.7111or fill out our
contact form.