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April 26th at Pullman Yards in Atlanta. Get ready for culture, community, and good conversation. This message comes from Greenlight. Ready to start talking to your kids about financial literacy? Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app that teaches kids and teens how to earn, save, spend wisely, and invest with your guardrails in place. With Greenlight, you can send money to kids quickly, set up chores, automate allowance, and keep an eye on what your kids are spending with real-time notifications. Join millions of parents and kids building healthy financial habits together on Greenlight. Get started risk-free at greenlight.com slash iHeart.
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It's like they both like a half of something, like peanut butter and jelly. Hello, I'm Deshaun Olds. And I'm Sophia Olds and we would like to tell you about our process, our story of adoption. We have always wanted to adopt. We've been married for about 13 years now and it had always been in our plans to adopt and to have biological children.
We actually took the classes in 2006 and were preparing to adopt a child. However, we couldn't agree upon an age. So we postponed it, got busy with life, enjoying life, continuing in our careers in college, military, us traveling. We just were enjoying life. We were having a wonderful time together with family, with friends. I know a lot of people probably wonder and question, why is it that they don't have biological children?
It just never happened for us. In 2013, I took a pregnancy test and the test came back positive and it was the scariest thing to me. I cried and I cried and I cried because I wasn't ready to be a mother.
I know that being a mother is one of the most important jobs, number one in this world. And I guess I felt like I wasn't ready to do that, that I couldn't be that yet. And a couple of days later, I miscarried. It was confirmed by the doctors and I had miscarried. And again, I felt another form of sadness because, you know, a child that we would have, we no longer would have, even though we were early on in our pregnancy. It was it was still devastating for me. No, I hadn't felt the baby kick.
I hadn't felt the baby move, but it was devastating. But again, we continue life. Also, we are very active in our local church. So we were active in my husband is the youth pastor, Children's Church, ages what?
Four to twelve. Always been a part of my life just to help out with children in the church. And I guess one thing we always did is that every time we gave our offering, we had on the back of it adopted child on there. And then it was just no surprise that the story came out the day after Thanksgiving and the day after Thanksgiving.
What most people are doing is shopping, how we are shopping. And we saw the story on Facebook, these seven children who needed a home. It was home for the holidays. And one scripture just came to my mind is that in my father's house, there's many rooms. And I go prepare a place for you. And the Lord's Prayer, we do things on earth as it is in heaven. So we had a space to truly be, to open our home for seven children. And we knew that we had everything that these children needed. They needed a mother, a father. They needed stability, structure, discipline with us having military. They needed love.
They needed care. My husband being a teacher, me being in social work, having those skills, the spiritual background, everything. We were just putting our whole hope and our whole trust in all of our dreams and our ambitions and our life in his hands. We were surrendering all when we decided to adopt our seven children.
And once we put our faith out there, it's amazing how God works it out. These students I've been serving at Rutherford High School, their parents came together and said, what can we do? What can we do? They did everything for bringing furniture, to build bunk beds, to donate sports equipment, to donate groceries. One parent is a farmer and truly just slaughtered a pig for us.
So we have sausage, bacon, everything else. And also our families, a day hasn't gone by that they haven't asked us or given to us, whether it be snacks for the children to take to school, whether it be cooking up a big pot of lima beans, helping out, cooking food, getting the children off the bus when we both have to work, picking oranges, whatever it is, any extra that they have had, anything that they could give, whether it be five dollars. We have had that outpouring from our families from both sides. We have had that from complete strangers that live thousands and thousands of miles away.
It has been no stress, no struggle at all. And I do believe that that goes back to us doing the will of God to help build his kingdom, to provide a home for, as the Bible calls them, orphans. You know, that is something that the Bible states we should do. Yes, in James 127, it says true religion is to take care of the orphans.
And we all know that it is more blessed to give than to receive. If we were allowed to adopt these seven children, we would do it. We will work every day of our lives to make sure that they are cared for. And I think what's most important, too, is for them to see and to have an example of what it's like to have a father who is the head of the household, who has a strong faith and belief in God, who can teach them, who can lead the family. And I know that they enjoy that. I know that they feel privileged and proud to know that their dad is up there teaching them. You can see the smiles on their face and they enjoy talking about it afterwards.
They ask lots of questions. So that whole aspect has been wonderful to have him up front teaching our children about God, about the things that they should do in life to be saints, to be good children, to grow up, to be successful. And I just think for my spiritual fathers, because I did not have a biological father involved in my life, but my spiritual father from my pastors to different men in my church to help show me the way right there. And I could just use that to impart not only to my children, but all the children I minister to on a weekly basis. So I think it's important to know that in this story of adoption, I am not called to be a minister, to be behind a pulpit, to preach at a church, to be a pastor. But I know that this is my calling that God has placed in my life and I am embracing it.
I am enjoying it. And that's why I can say that I am not stressed because it is something that we are doing that we are supposed to do. So it makes it so much easier. Does it require a lot from us, a lot of time, a lot of correction that we have to do? But it is also worth it.
Every part of it. This is what we're supposed to do in life. These seven children are our calling to be their mother and their father. And we take it just as serious as if it was a pastor over a church or a CEO or a business. This is us, a manager over a team. This is us. This is what we are called to do. And we give him all the praise, the glory, the honor for it, because without him, we would not be able to do this. And we are doing it. And that is our story. And what a story it was. And thanks, Greg, for doing that. And thank you, Sophia and Deshaun Olds for recording that and for doing what you did.
It's an inspiration. And it was their faith. Of course, the fruits of their faith.
And by the way, NBC's Today Show, ABC News, Inside Edition, Miami Herald, Parents.com and People, they all did this story. But they somehow managed to leave the faith walk of this couple out of the story. And just a few things they said.
And it was Sophia who said this. Once you put your faith out there, it's amazing how God works it out. And in came the food and in came the help from the family members. In came all that love.
True religion is to take care of the orphans. And if more Christians in this great country did what this young couple did, my goodness, we could solve a lot of problems in our country. This is our American story.
Sophia and Deshaun Olds' story and those seven kids they adopted their stories to. You don't want vacation to end, but with Amex Platinum, you're already planning the next one because you earn five times membership rewards points on prepaid hotels and more booked through AmexTravel.com. So every trip to the beach and the city and the country and back home again leads to another destination. That's the powerful backing of American Express.
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