Left to right: Olive Crest Chaplain Frank Fried with Bishop W. C. Martin, and 31-year Olive Crest supporter and volunteer Eric Bezko.[/caption] What a difference it would make if we could motivate and mobilize the church to find a home for foster children in need of a foster or adoptive home. On April 11, Bishop W.C. Martin, author of Small Town Big Miracle, spoke on that very topic with local pastors and church representatives at Calvary Church of Santa Ana. The event was sponsored by Olive Crest and Saddleback Church.
Olive Crest Chaplain Frank Fried spent some time at the event, and he and 31-year Olive Crest supporter and volunteer Eric Bezko compared notes on how long they worked with Olive Crest. Frank shared:
I started Jan. 2, 1986, part time, 20 hrs. a week. I spent most of that first year learning what I was getting myself into! Olive Crest Founder Lois Verleur sent me to CSAN (Child Sexual Abuse Network) classes, which also included how a kid enters and proceeds through the system. Within the first few weeks, I set aside much of what I thought I knew about teenagers from my Christian Education degree from Biola and actually started to get to know what kids from a troubled background really needed! So new to such a challenging assignment, and after feeling like I was just spinning my wheels for several years, a volunteer pointed out James 1:27 to me…and my life changed. “This is pure and undefiled religion in the sight of God our Father, to visit the orphan and the widow in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”
“Visit the orphan”…not preach, admonish, disciple, discipline, rebuke or even teach…just visit ‘em! I looked up the word in the original Greek and found that it meant: visit, spend time with, provide oversight. Heck…that’s what I’d been doing all along! All that other stuff happens after they learn that you really care about who they are right now, not just who you’d like them to be someday! And the 32 years have passed in the twinkling of an eye!
What a perfect time to reflect on what God has been doing through Olive Crest since 1973…caring for the orphan, for the hurting child who needs the love of God in a most tangible way: a safe and loving family![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]