Running Toward

South TX Alliance for Orphans
  • 5.0 (12)
  • Christianity
  • Weekly

Running Toward tells the stories of ordinary people who couldn’t look away once they saw the hidden crisis in foster care and family. Each episode features honest, unfiltered stories from ordinary people who couldn’t look away once they saw the hidden crisis impacting children and families in their own communities. People living normal lives who took imperfect, often reluctant steps toward brokenness — and were changed by it. This is not a podcast about quick fixes or heroic solutions. It’s about the long, costly, deeply human work of preventing family fracture and supporting families.

  1. 3d ago

    “You’re the Only Dad I Got” | Pastor Ed

    Pastor Ed Newton of Community Bible Church and his wife Stephanie had three biological children when they felt called to adopt — a journey that took them from a closed door in Haiti to a two-year-old boy in Ethiopia named Lawson. What they didn’t fully understand yet was Reactive Attachment Disorder: the invisible wound of early trauma that made Lawson push away the people closest to him, especially Stephanie, while bonding instead with strangers. As the behavioral struggles escalated, Ed and Stephanie made the hardest call of their parenting lives — sending Lawson to a Christian residential ranch in Montana for eighteen months of healing, at a cost that wiped out their savings. This conversation doesn’t skip the hard parts: the statistic on divorce among families who walk this road, the Father’s Day sermon Ed preached with his son’s bedroom empty, and the moment everything changed — Lawson, now a senior in high school, telling his dad he was never once embarrassed to call him father. It’s an honest, unflinching look at trauma, adoption, and what it costs — and gives back — to say we picked you and mean it. — Thanks for watching! Follow South Texas Alliance for Orphans: 📲 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/southtxalliance4orphans/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SouthTexasAllianceForOrphans 🎙️ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5OW7JlcWOlbs9Ms4BQcdeI?si=0416b37dd53540c8 🌐 Learn more about fostering & adoption: https://www.southtxalliance4orphans.org If today's story moved you — share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you've ever thought about fostering, even just once, let that thought be the start of something. 🤍 — Running Toward Podcast is brought to you by the South Texas Alliance for Orphans — real stories from real families walking the road ahead of you. Be sure to like, subscribe, and share this episode . We'll see you next week. 🤍

  2. Oct 21

    More Than Just Mentors, We Became Their Parents | Randy

    Pastor Randy Garcia has spent nearly 40 years leading in San Antonio — first as the founding pastor of 316 Church, now as executive pastor alongside his son, lead pastor Randall Shawn Garcia — but he’s honest that for most of that time, he had no real idea how deep the city’s foster crisis ran. That changed when his own son Matt and daughter-in-law Jessica fostered and adopted three siblings, and changed again at a 2024 gala when Randy and his wife Brenda met Juan (who goes by JJ), a 21-year-old who had legally adopted his own 13-year-old brother, Ray, just to keep him out of the foster system. Randy handed Juan his phone number that night; by the next afternoon, Juan and Ray were sitting in the back row at church, and before the hour was over, Juan had given his life to Christ. What started as mentorship became something more — Juan, his sister Julianne, and Ray now call Randy and Brenda family, and one young woman even asked permission to hug Randy because, she said, she’d never had a dad. It’s a conversation about the fatherless generation sitting in plain sight, and what it looks like to say yes to it even after you think your parenting years are behind you. — Thanks for watching! Follow South Texas Alliance for Orphans: 📲 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/southtxalliance4orphans/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SouthTexasAllianceForOrphans 🎙️ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5OW7JlcWOlbs9Ms4BQcdeI?si=0416b37dd53540c8 🌐 Learn more about fostering & adoption: https://www.southtxalliance4orphans.org If today's story moved you — share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you've ever thought about fostering, even just once, let that thought be the start of something. 🤍 — Running Toward Podcast is brought to you by the South Texas Alliance for Orphans — real stories from real families walking the road ahead of you. Be sure to like, subscribe, and share this episode! We'll see you next week. 🤍

  3. Oct 14

    Still Changing Diapers At 60 | John

    Father John Sweeney of Christ the Servant Church joins guest host Mike Kraft for Pastor Appreciation Month to share a story that spans 38 years of marriage, seven children by birth and adoption, and one more — a foster baby — in his home right now, at 60 years old. John and his wife Kelly adopted three kids from South Korea and Liberia after Kelly had a vivid, tearful vision at a stoplight of a little girl sitting on a bed with a bow on her head. Years later, a form John handed out to his own congregation ended up face-down on his dresser, filled out in Kelly’s handwriting: a calling to foster infants. In the middle of it all, John and Kelly walked through every parent’s worst nightmare — losing their son Tyler to a congenital heart condition at age 10 — and found, in their grief, that “Jesus is enough” wasn’t just something to say, but something to live. It’s a raw, hard-won conversation about trauma-informed parenting, obedience long after you think you’re done, and why John still answers the door at 60 for one more child who needs a home.

  4. Oct 7

    Trust the Lord, Take the Jump | Robert

    Pastor Robert Balfour of Grace Northridge sits down with guest host Mike Kraft for a special Pastor Appreciation Month conversation about saying yes to foster care from the pulpit. Robert and his wife Lauren first felt God open their hearts to adoption as teenagers serving in orphanages in Russia — a calling that, years later, led them through a fragile first placement, a suspicious birth father who was slowly won over and invited to his daughter's first birthday party, and the arrival of a baby girl they'd eventually adopt and name Ezra, the same week Robert preached his very first sermon series... on the book of Ezra. It's an honest conversation about relinquishing control, loving a child's biological family instead of judging them, and the line that's stuck with Robert ever since: "Are you willing to let your heart break so that another heart can heal?

  5. Sep 30

    Five was the Number | Pam

    Pam Snook already had triplet sons and two adopted daughters when a phone call from a woman she'd barely met — a virtual stranger who'd been told Pam was "next on the kinship list" — pulled her into the hardest case of her fostering journey. Within days, Pam and her husband said yes to a baby girl in an emergency shelter with no training and no medical history, welcoming into holidays, ballet recitals, and dental appointments a man caseworkers were adamant was her father — for six months, until a simple paternity test revealed he wasn't biologically related to her at all. What followed broke Pam's heart in ways she's still working through in counseling: a little girl moved through a string of losses the system could have prevented, and a grief Pam now calls "ambiguous loss" — loving someone you no longer have any way to reach. It's a raw, honest conversation about kinship care, broken promises, and what it means to hand a child you can't protect anymore into God's hands. Thanks for watching!Follow South Texas Alliance for Orphans:📲 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/southtxalliance4orphans/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SouthTexasAllianceForOrphans🎙️ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5OW7JlcWOlbs9Ms4BQcdeI?si=0416b37dd53540c8🌐 Learn more about fostering & adoption: https://www.southtxalliance4orphans.orgIf today's story moved you — share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you've ever thought about fostering, even just once, let that thought be the start of something. 🤍

  6. Sep 23

    Every Time I Said I Was Done | Jessica

    essica thought her husband was describing summer camp when he mentioned his "dorm parents" — it took years before she understood he and his two brothers had actually grown up in a residential children's home in West Texas, from fifth grade through high school graduation. Jessica and her husband set firm guardrails before ever saying yes to foster care: only sibling groups, only school-age kids, no babies, no adoption, one placement at a time. Years and several placements later, they've broken every single rule — including a transracial adoption of two brothers that Jessica was certain wasn't meant for their family, until her husband called her three times in one morning insisting God had told him otherwise. It's an honest look at what happens when a Six Sigma-certified, process-driven professional collides with the chaos of the foster system, and has to learn the hardest lesson of all: these were never her children to control. — Thanks for watching! Follow South Texas Alliance for Orphans: 📲 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/southtxalliance4orphans/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SouthTexasAllianceForOrphans 🎙️ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5OW7JlcWOlbs9Ms4BQcdeI?si=0416b37dd53540c8 🌐 Learn more about fostering & adoption: https://www.southtxalliance4orphans.org If today's story moved you — share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you've ever thought about fostering, even just once, let that thought be the start of something. 🤍 — Running Toward Podcast is brought to you by the South Texas Alliance for Orphans — real stories from real families walking the road ahead of you. Be sure to like, subscribe, and share this episode on Facebook and TikTok. We'll see you next week. 🤍

  7. Sep 16

    Only Hours to Spare | Hans and Lauren

    Lauren and Hans never went looking for foster care — foster care found them through their church, first as a two-week favor for friends heading to Hawaii, then as a "just a few days" respite placement for a 14-year-old girl. What started as a short-term favor turned into three weeks of Lauren wrestling with what she calls an unmistakable nudge from the Holy Spirit, one day before the couple's own two-week vacation to Alaska, and a foster certification finished from an iPad with hours to spare before a judge's deadline. Lauren and Hans open up about discipling a teenager into faith over a single summer, the fears of exposing their biological daughters to a harder world, and the long, humbling process of learning that loving a broken teenager takes something books and training can never fully prepare you for — total dependence on God. Thanks for watching! Follow South Texas Alliance for Orphans: 📲 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/southtxalliance4orphans/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SouthTexasAllianceForOrphans 🎙️ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5OW7JlcWOlbs9Ms4BQcdeI?si=0416b37dd53540c8 🌐 Learn more about fostering & adoption: https://www.southtxalliance4orphans.org If today's story moved you — share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you've ever thought about fostering, even just once, let that thought be the start of something. 🤍

  8. Sep 7

    I Just Wanted To Be A Grandma | Denise

    Denise became a relative caregiver the way most grandparents do — with a phone call she never expected. Over the years she took in four grandchildren born into crisis, including a grandson who weighed just 10 pounds at eight months old and was later found to have esophageal atresia — born without an esophagus. She navigated CPS "safety plans" that dragged on for years without legal custody, a case that was quietly closed without her knowledge, and the day she was denied entry to her own grandson's hospital surgery because she still had no legal rights. Now Denise works alongside Texas Grandparents Raising Grandchildren, helping other relative caregivers avoid the same painful gaps she fell through — because, as she puts it, the need doesn't change based on which door a child walks through. Thanks for watching! Follow South Texas Alliance for Orphans: 📲 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/southtxalliance4orphans/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SouthTexasAllianceForOrphans 🎙️ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5OW7JlcWOlbs9Ms4BQcdeI?si=0416b37dd53540c8 🌐 Learn more about fostering & adoption: https://www.southtxalliance4orphans.org If today's story moved you — share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you've ever thought about fostering, even just once, let that thought be the start of something. 🤍 — Running Toward Podcast is brought to you by the South Texas Alliance for Orphans — real stories from real families walking the road ahead of you.

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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
12 Ratings

About

Running Toward tells the stories of ordinary people who couldn’t look away once they saw the hidden crisis in foster care and family. Each episode features honest, unfiltered stories from ordinary people who couldn’t look away once they saw the hidden crisis impacting children and families in their own communities. People living normal lives who took imperfect, often reluctant steps toward brokenness — and were changed by it. This is not a podcast about quick fixes or heroic solutions. It’s about the long, costly, deeply human work of preventing family fracture and supporting families.

Information

  • Creator
    South TX Alliance for Orphans
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    42
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © South TX Alliance for Orphans
  • Show Website
    Running Toward

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