Having lost both their jobs due to COVID in 2020, with 3 kids at home, and resorting to alcohol to numb destructive patterns of anxiety, the Davis family needed help—but had no one to depend on. Within months, this already fragile family found themselves living in their car and unable to provide for their most basic needs. They knew that they needed a safe home for their children, so they reached out to Olive Crest.

With the help of our Church Partners, and by mobilizing our community of professionals and volunteers, the Davis children stayed with John and Darleen and were cared for while their parents got the help they needed.

“It’s just a God gift,” Sarah Davis said. “Every day, we talked to our kids on the phone. We knew how they were doing, what they did that day.”           
                      
“John and Darleen would text us constantly, sending us photos, just to let us know that everyone was fine. Honestly, more than anything, I think this is what gave us the strength to get through it!”

“It is such a privilege to be entrusted with these children while their parents are getting their lives back together,” John recalled. “I cannot think of a better way to love these families than through the local church.”         
                                
Darleen added, “I was at church, and they were talking about this ministry. The model just made sense with what we were reading in scripture. Families like mine could be there for families who needed help and had no one else to turn to. And not just families, the church community as a whole! People who we barely knew would come around us and provide what we needed to take care of these kids…anything from clothing to meals. If that’s not God’s plan to take care of ‘the least of these’ I don’t know what is.”

Today the Davis family has been healed and restored. Both parents are employed and have a comfortable apartment that their 3 kids can call home. They have a new family in John and Darleen, and, most encouraging of all, because of the remarkable support they received from the entire church family, they have dedicated their lives to faithfully following Christ.