Food Service Director

“My mommy is in the hospital because my daddy beats her!”  The words rang cold and hard in my nineteen-year-old ears.  Just moments earlier I was bound and determined I was going to get this beautiful, brown-eyed, four-year old, Native American girl to smile and laugh. After all I had never met a child I couldn’t make smile.  Not only was she not smiling, neither was I. I said, “It’s going to be O.K., honey”, as I embraced her. That night after I had finished locking up the daycare center and had eaten my supper, laying on my dorm room bed I yelled out loudly to God in my heart I asked, “Why, God why? Why was I blessed with such a good home and this little girl was not?  Why, God why? God you heard me say it was going to be O.K. I have no idea if it’s going to be O.K.! Dear God protect this little girl. Help her family.” My prayers went on and on until I finally fell asleep on my tear-soaked pillow. I knew from being raised in a loving Christian home that God was not responsible for this little girl’s suffering but yet there still remained the question of, “Why, God why? There was still a part of me that wondered if God really could be fully trusted, as my parents trusted Him.

I thought that I knew Jesus died for my sins yet I had several nagging questions that lingered in my brain. It was not until two years later at a point of great rebellion in my life that God miraculously answered those questions. On the very night God answered so many of my lingering questions and I put my full trust in Him, God brought Chad into my life, the man who would become my husband. Chad, was another answer to some of those lingering questions – Is there really someone out there for me? Someone who loves you, Jesus? Someone who can make me laugh? Someone who has a similar heart and a similar background to mine? After Chad and I were engaged I told him I wanted at some point in our marriage to adopt children and even to do foster care - he was good with that and I knew God had provided me the right man.

Our life and marriage has had many challenges where God’s direction was sought. Among these challenges there has been news of infertility from doctors; changes in jobs, churches, and homes; 10 years of being foster care parents; the adoption of four children made official on the same day; death and illness of family members; and the list could go on. A favorite scripture God liked to take me to was Isaiah 54 part of which reads, “Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. For you will spread out to the right and to the left…” In the middle of another stretching of our tent cords as we were adding a 5^th adopted child to our “tent”. God seemed to be telling us to roll-up our tent we had pitched in North Dakota our entire lives and stretch it out to Ankeny, IA. God had told Abraham to “go” without knowing where to go. At least He was telling us what city to go to. But we were going on faith in Him not with the security of jobs and with an adoption not yet complete.  Our one friend explained it this way - just like a plant can get root bound so can we. Sometimes God needs to pull us out, shake us off, and put us in new soil so we can grow. ACA is one of those places that God has “planted” myself and “planted” our 5 children in so that we may grow.

Email Neomi Nelson

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