It is hard to remember what life was like before Our Father’s Children.

When our church children’s minister approached us in 1997 about directing a summer camp for kids in foster care, we definitely had some doubts and hesitations. Do we have the time? Where do you even have camp? Who would come alongside us to serve? How do you fund-raise for something like this? However, after a lot of conversation and prayer, we attended Director’s Training in 1998. At that time, we thought we would only direct camp for 5 years, but God had other ideas.

In December of 2004, Melinda left her teaching position. In May of 2006, Darren left his corporate job. God led these big steps in our lives and provided everything we needed: financing, steadfast volunteers, prayer warriors, and the passion to continue serving our campers.

We can now look back over 25 years of serving and loving abused and neglected children of North Texas. It is impossible to express what this ministry means to us and how it has so radically changed our lives. This mission remains our passion: it’s what we think about, pray for, plan for, dream about every single day. God has very clearly shown us both that this ministry is in His plan for us! Our hope is that it will continue for years to come, and the impact to the kids we serve will be life changing and life giving.