This is a guest blog post from CAT09 attendees, Andy and Tanya Ehlers. Andy is the Pastor of High Tide Church and Tanya serves as the Children's Director. The couple started High Tide Church 9 years ago. They have two beautiful girls, Raychel and Camryn. They are foster parents. High Tide is located near Bethany Beach, Delaware and 1/3 of the church is 12 and under!

My wife Tanya and I moved to Delaware to start a church in 2002. Little did we know we had started a family the same month as well. God has blessed us with two beautiful girls, Raychel and Camryn. They are 5 and 8 years old. My wife and I were content with two kids. We had talked loosely about adopting a child. When I say loosely we entertained the idea but we never took any serious steps towards it.

In October 2009 we attended Catalyst in Atlanta, GA and there was a focus on adoption. When we left Catalyst we not only knew we needed to do something but we knew we were more than convinced but called to do something. After talking to a couple adoption agencies and learning the expenses that were involved, we asked God what could we do right now. He put on our heart foster care. We immediately signed up for the classes and went through the process of getting approved. The first child we had in our home was a beautiful 3 year old girl. She had been in the system for two years and her case continued to drag out. We had her for just a weekend and she returned to her foster family. We have been blessed enough to have her in our home two more times.

In late summer of 2010, we had just got our kids to the age where they both were in school. It seemed that we had more time to accomplish the tasks of a church planting couple. My wife and I were able to get on a schedule and even had time to add exercise to our daily routine. Then we got the call. Would you be willing to take a medically fragile baby boy? How could we say no? We went to the children's hospital two hours from home and met a four month old baby boy. He was born with his intestines on the outside of his body. His mom was in jail and his father was on the run from the police. At four months he had gone through two major surgeries and was being feed through a feeding tube.

In October 2010 as we followed Catalyst via twitter we spent several days in the children's hospital learning how to insert a feeding tube and how to care for this precious baby boy. Though we missed Catalyst we knew what we were doing was far more important. As we brought this baby home the first several weeks were challenging to say the least. We seemed to only get 2-3 hours of sleep. Keeping up with the diapers was another story. He went through at least twice as many diapers as a healthy baby. In that first month we were able to wean him off the feeding tube and he was eating on his own. After spending the first four months of his life in the hospital, he seemed to respond well to a home and a family. Eight months later he has made a full recovery and has advanced in so many ways. At this point his case is still pending and the goal is reunification. He has been a blessing to us, our family and our church.

Last week we were informed that the three year old girl who is now four has had her case moved to adoption. We were asked if we would consider adopting this beautiful girl. Of course we said yes! We are preparing our home and getting ready to have her this weekend in our home. We were told that we will start with weekends and gradually bring her into our home. They require us to have her in our home for six months before they finalize the adoption.

We have seen fostering change not only these children's lives but ours as well. We celebrate 10 years of marriage this December and we are closer than we have ever been. Spending time with these children have made us work together and spend more time with each other. Some how we have still found time to complete our goals. Fostering has changed our children's life. Not only have they become attached to these children, but they have helped with all the hard work that goes with it. They often ask if we could take in more children. During the tough times they remind us of how much these kids need us.

I don't know how God is going to use this in their life, but at 5 and 8 they are already passionate about fostering and adopting. As a church planter and a pastor I have seen this affect our church more than I realized it would. Don't get me wrong there have been some that told us we were crazy for taking on these children. Some said, "You don't have the time." Others said, "What if you get attached and they have to go back?” Our response has been we are not doing this for us. We are doing this to honor God and for these children.

However, we have been blown away by the response of most in our church. Before we got home with this child we had a crib, a changing table, boxes of clothes, cases of diapers and people willing to help out in any way. With just day’s notice that we would be getting this baby, we had every physical thing we needed. We got to experience the church being the church. We were excited to learn this month that there are three families in our church going through the process to become foster parents. We hope and pray that this is a trend that will continue throughout our church.

Thank you Catalyst for the opportunity for my wife and I to be in an environment where we could hear from God and leave with the boldness to do something about it.

Do you have a Catalyst story you would like to share with our blog community? Email ashley.williams@catalystspace.com!