Transcript
Announcer: Welcome to the Adopting and Fostering Home podcast. Whether your family has been on this journey for years or you’re just getting started, we’re here to support and encourage you along the way. Now your hosts, Lynette Ezell and Tera Melber.
Lynette Ezell: You know, Tera, when God’s people open their lives and homes to children in need and bring them into their families, it’s truly one of the clearest pictures of the gospel. Today, we’re gonna talk with a family who has done just that. What a privilege today to be joined by Joy and George Ross.
Tera Melber: Well, George and Joy, we are really excited to have you. George, you are a North American Mission Board Send missionary to New Orleans, Louisiana. That’s a mouthful. Can you tell us a little bit about what that means?
George Ross: Yes, I’ve been for over three years. We’re starting our fourth year actually here in New Orleans. Part of my job is to help mobilize churches to partner in the city to plant churches. We’re working to that end to see a church planting movement happen here in New Orleans.
My wife and I also are very involved in coaching the church planters and ministering to their spouse. Planter support and planter health, especially with the family, is a big part of our ministry as well.
Tera Melber: That’s amazing. I noticed on your bio that we have is that you have a family motto that “We are a Kingdom family.” You’re definitely doing that in your work as Send missionaries, and you’re doing that in a bigger sense for your own family through jumping into the foster care arena, not that long ago, I guess. How long has it been?
George Ross: Well, we really prayed about joining foster care or being a foster care parent back when we lived and pastored in Mississippi. We went through all the training, so that was almost five years ago.
Tera Melber: Wow.
Lynette Ezell: Oh, wow.
George Ross: In New Orleans, we had to redo all of that. It didn’t transfer.
Tera Melber: Oh.
George Ross: So we redid certification in New Orleans and have been fostering for the past two and a half years. Two years, excuse me.
Lynette Ezell: So, Joy, how did you know where to begin in this new city to jump into foster care? What did you do? Did you get help?
Joy Ross: Yes. We actually are so blessed here by an organization, a non-profit organization out of First Baptist New Orleans called Crossroads NOLA. They actually can help point you in the right direction, and they, I think, now are even doing some of the training. They have a foster care social worker, who actually came to our house and did all of our home study for us. It was incredible. So we are blessed here in New Orleans by that non-profit.
Lynette Ezell: That is amazing to have that resource. I mean, what a blessing.
Joy Ross: Yes.
Lynette Ezell: When you brought the social worker into your home, you kind of had a full nest already, right?
Joy Ross: I do. I have four biological children. Isaac, who’s 12, Hannah Ruth, who’s 10. Abigail is nine, and Jeremiah is seven. So yes, ma’am, we have our hands full.
Lynette Ezell: Wow, you really do. You really do. What did they think about all this?
Joy Ross: They were excited. George and I, we do have a family motto about being a Kingdom family, and that was one of our goals for the year was to get certified. They were excited about the possibilities of having babies and younger kids to love on in our house.
Tera Melber: When you received a phone call for your first placement, tell me about that.
Joy Ross: Well, it was the day after we were certified officially.
Tera Melber: Of course, it was.
Joy Ross: Yes, so it was a little overwhelming, but we had really talked about what we could do and what we couldn’t do. When they gave us the phone call, sometimes you get no information, but at that specific call, they did have information on this child. The child had some behavior issues. He had some trauma in his life. They were really wanting a home that did not have many children. But they were just desperate, as many times they are.
Tera Melber: Right.
Joy Ross: I did not have any peace about that because I knew that that child probably needed a lot of attention. If they knew that on the front end, I knew that, having four children already, I just did not have a peace. I talked to George and kinda explained the situation. He was okay with me saying no, especially since we were given all that information on the front end. We were sad, and I felt a little bit like we had failed.
Tera Melber: Oh, yeah.
Joy Ross: But I knew that probably we weren’t the fit for that child, since we already had four children.
Lynette Ezell: Absolutely. I hear you saying, George and Joy, that you just need wisdom from the Lord in these placements.
Joy Ross: Yes.
George Ross: Absolutely, you do, absolutely.
Lynette Ezell: What does that look like, George, for you, when you see that Joy did not have a peace about, since she’s in the home 24/7 and since she just didn’t have a peace about bringing that child into the home? Was that hard for you?
George Ross: Yeah, you have to be on the same page. One of the commitments we had made, just praying for the process, is that we knew the Lord would give us a peace, and part of that peace would be we’d in agreement.
Tera Melber: Yes, I agree. Mm-hmm.
George Ross: We’d be in a unity where we would be. I knew, as we prayed through that and just listening to Joy as we discussed that, that this season of life we were in at that moment, that would’ve been too difficult for us at that moment. Even though you do have your emotions pulling at you, we felt like it wasn’t the wisest decision for us at the time.
Tera Melber: I think that’s probably the hardest part for me as a wife is being able to balance those emotions of it.
Lynette Ezell: Yes.
Tera Melber: As wives, as we come up underneath the leadership of our husbands, to be able to lean in and for Joy to be able to lean into you and say, “I need you to help me be able to take all this information in and look and see what’s the very best for our family.” It’s very wise that you all have those discussions beforehand as you’re really seeking the Lord and allowing each other to balance one another out.
Lynette Ezell: And thinking about your other four children.
Tera Melber: Yes.
George Ross: Absolutely.
Tera Melber: There will always be a phone call.
Lynette Ezell: Always, absolutely.
Joy Ross: Always. But as first-time foster parents, you’re not really sure of that. That was a big step of trust, knowing that, “What if I say no, and they don’t call me back?” I know that fear is not from the Lord, and you have to just trust the wisdom of your spouse and what’s best for your family. And you have to know that on the front end because when they call, your emotions are just immediately drug into it.
Lynette Ezell: What do you think the biggest fear, George, in the church is about beginning to open wide their tent and take in foster children in their home?
George Ross: I think there’s a couple of things. One is awareness. I do think awareness is getting much better. When I grew up, I did not see a model at church at all.
Lynette Ezell: Nor did I.
Tera Melber: Me either.
George Ross: As Joy’s testimony as well, there was a good friend on staff at the church that I pastored, they started fostering. They actually led our church to almost create a culture of foster care and adoption.
Lynette Ezell: Wow.
George Ross: It was through that that we really got a heartbeat for that. So one is awareness. You just have to cultivate awareness of the need, even in New Orleans. At any given time, there’s 400 children in need of foster care here in the city.
Lynette Ezell: Wow.
George Ross: Those numbers are pretty significant. Awareness is one, and then to remove fear. If you asked Joy and I three months ago, “Should you foster?” we were in a hard time in our foster journey. Even though I would’ve given you a good answer to do it, I would’ve been very, very honest. I still am today very honest.
Lynette Ezell: Right.
George Ross: It’s just hard through the process. I think sometimes the fear of the process, the fear of the unknown, and maybe even the fear of stories they’ve heard from other people hinder them from embracing it fully. Just trying to navigate through that, even as Joy and I have talked, we’re on the other end of it. We want to be advocates for foster care, advocates in the sense of, everybody might not be a foster care parent, but you can help out in foster care, whether it being a respite worker, helping with meals, loving on families that are doing it. I do think there’s a place for everyone to participate, even if you don’t actually have kids in your home. Again, cultivating awareness, helping people remove the fear from doing it, and giving them opportunities to really connect the different avenues of foster care.
Lynette Ezell: That’s a great point. I think Kevin and I saw, when he was a senior pastor, that when leadership did it, it just kind of made people feel more comfortable to join in to that calling.
George Ross: Absolutely. I agree with that so much. Absolutely.
Tera Melber: When a culture of foster care and adoption and caring for the orphan in our country, in a sense, and anywhere else, I feel like, when people rise up to do that, and you get the support that you need, even though it’s really messy, as far as having traumatized children in your home, if you have outside support that, even on those hard days, you know that you’re gonna have the body of believers that are gonna surround you.
George Ross: I agree.
Joy Ross: Yes. I feel like, if we hadn’t had our body of believers, there were several times that we wanted to give up.
Tera Melber: Right.
George Ross: Yeah.
Joy Ross: The body came in and did some amazing things. One time, this group of five ladies came in and cleaned my entire house.
Tera Melber: Oh, wow.
Joy Ross: I mean, you could walk in, and you could smell the Lysol and the Pine-Sol. To a mama, it was the best smell in the world.
Lynette Ezell: It’s my love language, I will tell you.
Tera Melber: Uh huh.
Joy Ross: Yes, yes. They didn’t tell me, so for .5 seconds, I was a little upset because they saw all my junk. But after that five seconds, I was like, “Oh, praise you, Father.” I was so excited and felt like I could make it. But not only did they clean, they enlisted the help of the church, and I had at least 15 meals in my freezer that were frozen and just ready. That gave us just this sense of, “Okay, we can do this.” Even in the hardship, even in the unknown, we can do this. I really credit our body at that time for helping us.
Tera Melber: So, George, if I’m correct, at one point, you had an older sibling in your home around Easter time. Tell us about that.
George Ross: We originally had all three siblings. Sister was a half-sister. She was older, she was a teenager. She was in our home. As they were trying to navigate where she would be, she was with us for a little over a week. She came in the week before Easter. What we do, as a family, just every year, we read the story of Christ coming to Jerusalem, we go through the Passion Week, and that is our family worship for that week. We lead up to Good Friday. We lead up to Saturday and then the resurrection on Sunday.
She’s from New Orleans. She’s here, a cultural southern city, which is often very different from other cultural southern cities. You would think that she would’ve heard the gospel, and she would’ve heard the story of Jesus. But what we found out through the course of the week is she participated with us in family worship, and we were just going through the life of Christ and leading up to the cross and resurrection. She had never heard that story before.
Tera Melber: Wow.
George Ross: And Easter to her, it was a family gathering, where people got together, but it had nothing to do with the resurrection of Christ. She told us she had never heard that story before. She actually woke up on Saturday morning. I cooked pancakes on Saturday, and she woke up on Saturday morning because we had made a big deal about Good Friday and talked about the cross, Jesus going to the tomb the day before. She woke up telling everybody, “Happy Easter” or “Happy Resurrection.”
Tera Melber: Oh.
George Ross: Well, no, not today. Tomorrow is the resurrection.
Tera Melber: Right. Wow.
George Ross: We had a humbling time and a great time just reflecting on the fact that she was with us, she heard the gospel clearly, but also just challenged by the fact that she lives here in a city in the south, and she had never heard that story by her own admission.
Tera Melber: That was a providential placement.
George Ross: We still have opportunities to follow up with her. She still connects with us in a relationship right now, so we’re praying God would continue to use that in her heart and in her life.
Tera Melber: Wow, that’s an incredible story of God’s providence. Joy, on another note, how do you and George maintain the health of your family while fostering?
Joy Ross: Right. George has a great question that he asks me sometimes, and we will ask each other, “Are you thriving, or are you just surviving?” Because it says a lot. It’s not all rainbows and lollipops. There are times when we are just holding on, and we’re just surviving. Then there are times that we are thriving. Then there’s reasons sometimes why we’re not thriving. Are you not meeting with the Lord? Are you not having time to take care of your body? We’ve been so busy that we’re just eating McDonald’s every day. There are definitely reasons that add to why we aren’t thriving, so we want to shoot for thriving. If we’re just surviving, we need to let people know.
Lynette Ezell: Wow, that is fantastic. We also want to know how that first … when you get the call, and you took the placement. I know you took a placement for three children. The oldest sibling was placed in another home, but you were left with two little children. How does that look like, say the first couple of days? How did life change? What are some of the things you learned?
Joy Ross: We definitely learned to be flexible. You forget, once you’re out of that bottle stage and there are no diapers, you just kind of block it out, I think.
Lynette Ezell: Oh, wow.
Joy Ross: You think, “We’re past that.”
Lynette Ezell: Yeah.
Joy Ross: We had to remember what it was like to do bottles and to do poo in diapers.
Lynette Ezell: Oh, goodness, yeah.
Joy Ross: We just kind of gave each other … everybody was giving each other grace because they were learning how to navigate, “Okay, Mom’s got two babies in her lap. How does she do dinner?” They didn’t know me. They were scared sometimes. They had never been around a man, from what we understand. George would be holding one, and she would be crying.
Lynette Ezell: Yeah.
Joy Ross: I’d be like, “Oh, this is fun.” Of course, she loves George now. She’s George’s girl. That’s what she says. But at first, that was so new to her. Then they would … the food, they would try to eat, and some would get choked because they were trying to eat so fast. Some of those stories that you hear in training are so true. Eyes are just opened to this world that you’ve heard of, but you didn’t really understand. It was very eye-opening.
Tera Melber: And there are things that are happening to children in your city. That’s what’s so hard to think about.
Joy Ross: Right.
Lynette Ezell: Absolutely, absolutely. How do you offer security to these children when you first get them in your home? What are some things that you all did, so they would know you are safe and it’s gonna be okay?
George Ross: Well, one of the things that I thought Joy just did a great job, and I just modeled after her, just words of affirmation, whether it’s putting them to bed at night. I just remember Joy doing this. We still do this together, say, “We love you, and you’re safe, and we’re gonna take care of you.”
Lynette Ezell: Right.
George Ross: Just simple things like that over and over again, where words, I do believe, have great meaning. I think it had great meaning in their life because you can sense and you can see that there is fear. Over the course of two years, seeing where they’ve come from, from having no security to having a very high level of security and just the words of affirmation in that security, of “I love you, you’re safe, and we’re gonna take care of you.” Seeing the fruit of that over the course of two years, of where they were, being very fearful, to where they are right now, just being incredibly secure. Seeing that evidence out in their attitudes, their actions, and their lifestyle.
Lynette Ezell: Well, we are so grateful, you guys, to get in your cars and get on your cell phones and spend time with us today.
Tera Melber: Yes.
Lynette Ezell: If there’s anything else you want to add, or is there something else you’d like to share?
George Ross: Yeah, I would, just one thing. A couple of cautions and just thoughts.
Lynette Ezell: There you go.
George Ross: As we were in the foster care journey, we started out with the real desire for reconciliation and restoration, and you should be. That should be your heart as you head into foster care and praying for the family and praying for God to do a great work in their life.
It was probably after a year of fostering that we recognized, especially after the state asked us if we wanted to go through with adoption, that we knew that that would be very probable. During that time, as you enter into a foster to adopt, especially in the United States, just be prepared for that journey. I don’t think we were very prepared for all the things that would happen and as long as it would take. You just want to be prepared for that.
We knew we wanted to adopt at some time, and we knew we wanted to adopt these children. But you also have to work within the system that you have. So just navigating that, I would encourage people to have wisdom in that. You are balancing, how do you pray earnestly and sincerely for restoration and reconciliation in the family that you’re trying to help, and you want that. But then the reality of, if that’s not going to happen, how do you work within the system to adopt? It is a process. It is a journey that God used to sanctify us greatly during that. To be aware of that and to work through the means that God has given for that.
The other thing would be just the caution for husbands with wives. I think there’s something that’s just a God-given characteristic about motherhood, not that I did not emotionally bond with the children immediately. I did. But there’s something different about how a woman bonds with children.
Lynette Ezell: Oh, absolutely, yeah.
George Ross: And I believe it is something that’s just God-given. The wisdom that husbands would have to know that and to help their wife navigate through that because as the foster system is telling you, they want you to love the children like they’re your own, and you should. That’s a huge part of that. But they want you to be ready for reconciliation and restoration as they go back. That is such a hard back to strike, if you’re a mom.
Lynette Ezell: Oh, wow. Mm-hmm.
George Ross: It is incredibly, incredibly difficult to really understand what that is. I think men would be wise to recognize that God-given trait and characteristic a mother has to bond with children. When we were just at a season of thinking, “Are we gonna be able to keep these children or not?” And just the ups and downs of our foster care journey, where sometimes it looked incredibly promising, and then other times it would look incredibly like it was not gonna happen. Just a roller coaster of that was an emotional nightmare, for Joy especially. For me, but for Joy especially. Just to be aware of that, what’s going on internally and how do you process that? How do you pray through that? How do you have friends come alongside you during that?
The last thing I would say is this: during our journey, I can remember we’d been in about three months. You asked earlier what was the feelings you had in the first month. I can’t tell you the first month, but I can tell you about the third month. I journaled in my journal, and I hadn’t journaled a statement like this in years. What I journaled was, “God, if you do not give me the grace to make it, I will not be able to make it.”
Tera Melber: Wow.
George Ross: It was just the newness, it was the new schedules. It was two babies in diapers and bottles. It was a new life, literally. We’d just got thrown a new life. There was such dependency. There had to be such dependency on the Lord during that time.
Tera Melber: It’s good for foster families to hear that the feelings that they are having are normal feelings, and that they shouldn’t feel guilty about those feelings.
George Ross: Yes.
Tera Melber: I think, too, it’s a really great word from you to men in that we have dear friends who struggled through some issues with their adoption, and at one point, the husband said to their social worker, “I’m gonna need to field all the phone calls for a while because my wife needs a break from hearing all of the details. So I’m gonna need to take those phone calls.” He was allowing himself to then be able to disseminate the information that was really necessary for her to know.
George Ross: Absolutely.
Tera Melber: But just to protect her heart because she was weary and overly emotional at times because that’s the way we girls roll.
Lynette Ezell: Yes.
Tera Melber: And she was tired. She was exhausted.
Lynette Ezell: Yeah.
Tera Melber: For him to be able to do that was just, it was really neat to watch from the outside in. David has done that for me over the years. But to be able to watch him lead his family well, as you’re talking about, helping Joy work through some of that stuff, is so, so important.
George Ross: Absolutely.
Joy Ross: Amen.
George Ross: We had to make a decision about going to the court cases. There was a time where it just wasn’t beneficial for Joy to be there.
Tera Melber: Right.
George Ross: Having to navigate through that and to have those discussions with the foster care workers and the people that were involved, just to communicate that was huge to her health.
Tera Melber: Right. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, George, one of the things that we would like to let the listeners know is a little bit about, just for your family in general, for North American Mission Board missionaries, how they are affected by the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering. Could you just explain that a little bit to the listeners?
George Ross: Absolutely. The Annie Armstrong Easter Offering is the support mechanism for our missionaries and church planters. As churches faithfully give to that, we’re able to see the fruit of that, having missionaries in some of the most unchurched, lost cities in America. As churches participate and they give to that, they’re really having an opportunity to engage lostness and to push back lostness by having some incredible guys involved in church planting in these cities. I’m so grateful for that. We’ve been able to see over 27 churches planted in the last three years.
Tera Melber: Oh, wow.
Lynette Ezell: That’s awesome.
George Ross: We’ve seen over 300 baptisms here in the city. Part of the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering enables us to do that, in such a way, where, if you think of the Send Initiative for the 32 cities we have here in North America and the incredible lostness that exists in all of those cities, participating in the offering allows us to have an incredibly missional footprint that we believe, as we reach the cities, we’re gonna see a change in our culture. I firmly believe that. The Annie Armstrong Easter Offering is making that possible in a way that has been unprecedented for us as Southern Baptists.
Tera Melber: It’s a beautiful way to get little children all the way through senior adults involved, to say, “Maybe the Lord hasn’t called me to a place like New Orleans.” But you’re not just supporting the George Ross Send Missionary and the church planters of New Orleans. You are supporting an entire, the Ross family, the family who says, “We’re a Kingdom family. Not only are we gonna work to church plant and push back lostness, but as a family, we’re gonna engage our neighbors and our culture in the city in which we live for gospel purposes.”
Little ones collecting change, all the way to everyone who can give to the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering is benefiting these very lost areas in the world through families like George and Joy Ross. We are so grateful. You can find George’s information in his website at georgeross.net to learn more about their family and the things that they do. They speak and lead conferences on parenting, marriage, and living a gospel-centered life. Listen, if I was in New Orleans, I’d come to one of those seminars.
Lynette Ezell: Absolutely, absolutely. Tera and I are loaded up and headed over. Absolutely.
Joy Ross: We’d love to have you. Come anytime.
Tera Melber: Well, it’s been a blessing to talk to you. We are super grateful for your family, and we look forward to hearing and celebrating the adoption of your little ones and making your family of eight an official family of eight.
Lynette Ezell: Yay!
Tera Melber: So thank you so much for joining us today.
Joy Ross: Thank you so much for having us.
George Ross: Thank you for having us. Thank you so much.
Lynette Ezell: You’ve been listening to the Adopting and Fostering Home. This is a resource of the North American Mission Board. We’ve been talking with Joy and George Ross today, who serve with the North American Mission Board in New Orleans. For more information about today’s podcast and other relevant resources, visit namb.net/sendrelief.
