April 8th-10th has been marked on our calendars for only about a year now. It’s the largest event The Sparrow Fund hosts in terms of numbers as well as logistical efforts. It was born at a cafe as so many great ideas are. A group of women gathered there to talk about how we could better serve the needs of adoptive moms, how we could support women locally, how we could come together in unity to encourage and bless each other. We sipped our lattes and shared challenges and ideas in this faithful brain trust and landed on something big that kind of took all of our breath away. We needed something for couples, not women alone, not for simply a community of mamas; we needed something to build up marriages. It just made sense. The best way to serve families is to build up the partnership of a husband and a wife.
We started Together Called with 60 couples in 2013, filling all 60 spots in 15 minutes. In 2014, we added a few more couples, forcing us to have overflow housing at another hotel. In 2015, we moved to a larger place to open it up to a few more people while still keeping a small retreat feel. Now, this weekend, for Together Called 2016, we have about 100 couples coming—couples from 12 different states around the country who represent 334 children born to them or born to others and adopted into their families from at least 16 different countries around the world. The magnitude of the impact of pouring into these 200+ parents who are in turn pouring themselves out is incredible.
As April 8th-10th has gotten closer and closer and now is only days away, the magnitude has become more and more apparent but also has the mess that often comes with that. Where there is a place for transformation, life change, and healing as these marriages are and can be, there is also opportunity for weariness and a sense of never, impossible, and stuck to creep in. We need prayer in a significant way as our team—all of whom come with our own stories—seeks to serve each one of these men and women and enter into their stories. We want to honor that charge and be intentional to have consistent prayer coverage over the course of the whole weekend as we press on in it. The needs of the couples coming are that great—our needs as a team seeking to be effective conduits of His mercy and hope are that great.
If you want to pray at any time however you are led, please do. Let us know in a reply at the bottom of this post or on our Facebook page that you did because it will build us up and encourage us. If you want to pray over a specific time frame to be a part of consistent prayer coverage for specific needs that we’ll provide to you, then let us know via email and we’ll direct you as to how to do that.
