He made the front page!

Our little guy made the front page of our local paper and what we are really excited about is that article really centers on Adoption and foster care and how churches in our area are rallying to bring children into homes to discover their full potential that God has intended for them to be! Brad and Asher are recognized all over and an Ethiopian man gave Brad his business card in the barber shop and said if you need any help with cultural influence give him a call. Can't wait to see how this connection plays out.

In case the link goes away here is the article copied.


Bringing Hope to orphans
Coalition eyes more adoptions of local children
By Denise Callahan
Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
His big eyes shining, Asher Ewing extends his one-year-old hand for a shake.
He didn't learn this confidence from his birth parents. He learned it from Chris and Brad Ewing, who rescued him from a life of certain despair and devastation in Ethiopia.

Brad Ewing holds onto his adopted child from Ethiopia Asher Ewing in Landen Park Saturday afternoon. The Ewing family attends Hope Church which is a church that has been encouraging more families to adopt and foster children.Click to enlarge
Larry Bergeron, lead pastor of Hope Church in MasonClick to enlarge
Asher epitomizes the effort his parish — Hope Church in Mason — is making to save orphaned and abandoned children around the world and in the Tri-state.
Hope Church is marshalling the Tri-state community to find homes for foster and orphaned children.

The Ewings, who live in the modest community of Wood Trails, already were raising three children. But they reached into their hearts and there was room for one more. They traveled to Africa a year ago to bring Asher home.

"I felt God was calling us to join the process," Chris said. "It was in my heart for a long time, but I had to get Brad on board because I couldn't jump in that puddle alone. He was all for it."
Several families from the church, including Lead Pastor Larry Bergeron and his wife, Wendy, have adopted and fostered children. But Bergeron said they can, and will, do better.
"What a great thing it would be if a year from now the state of Ohio had taken such a lead on this nationally — that Ohio became one of the models for improving the lives of children — because of what we did together," he said.

Coalition of Care
Hope Church doesn't just give lip service to helping children — and it seems others are also interested in taking action.
More than 800 people flocked to the church Sunday night for the kick off of the Coalition of Care initiative. Hope and its Lead Pastor Larry Bergeron have collected eight other partner churches thus far for its Coalition.
The coalition is an effort to raise awareness about the great need for adoptive and foster parents worldwide, and locally and to provide direct support for families who have taken this generous step.

"Sometimes families think, 'I don't want to be a foster parent,'" Bergeron said. "But besides being a direct parent there are 40 different ways to be involved with foster care."
The churches agree in phase one to identify families in their parishes who are fostering or have or are trying to adopt and offer them support and recognition. The churches will educate their flock on the enormous need and offer assistance for those parishioners who are interested in programs to care for children. They also were asked to set some money aside to help families with respite care and other needs and to collect shoes, clothes and food for the needy.
The coalition will also hold a symposium in 2008 that partners are expected to attend.
The second tier of partnership requires a bit heavier commitment, according to Bergeron. Parishes are asked to provide money to dig a fresh water well in a third-world country, or perhaps to participate in a major food project or to set up an adoption fund to help with overseas adoption expenses.

Chris and Brad Ewing spent $17,000 adopting their son, Asher, but bills can often bulge to $30,000 in some cases. Brad said, however, they received a $10,000 tax credit for adopting Asher, "So it really was a wash."

The Ewings brought their son home in July 2006, just seven months after they applied — which was shortly after he was born. He'll turn 2 in December. With all the requirements —fingerprinting, background checks, immigration red tape and the like — that was a lightning-fast turnaround.

Bergeron said 22 families in his church either have or are in the process of adopting children. Some adoptions — he called them "paper pregnancies — can take years. He and his wife Wendy adopted a little Russian girl, Nadya, 12, in 2003 and little Emma, 2, came from China to join the Bergeron clan earlier this year.

"Many people tell us how fortunate these children are," he said. "But I have to tell people you don't understand, I'm far more blessed than these children are."
Warren County Children Services Director Patricia Jacobs said the local push to find foster and adoptive families could have a profound effect.

"One of the biggest things the churches can help us do is to recruit new foster homes in Warren County so we can keep the kids either in the same schools or the same county, at least to help facilitate a smooth transition," Jacobs said. "The same school would be ideal. The same county helps us with visitation between the children and their parents and with services we need to provide to the children."

In addition to forging the Coalition, Hope is also in the process of building a center on its site — set to open in 2008 — where community groups can come to prepare food packets for starving people around the world.
By the numbers
• There are 143 million children orphaned worldwide, and only 22,000 are
ever adopted.
• There are 500,000 kids in foster care in the U.S., and 120,000 are seeking
adoption.
• There are 12,000 children in foster care in this state, and 100 of them are in
our County.