September 2023

The Ruth Project

Family Fun Day - It's for All Ages

Last month The Ruth Project hosted our first Family Fun Day for our foster families at The Farm. What a day it was! There was something for everyone – including parents. Everyone left with new friends and huge smiles on their faces!

Each age group had an activity designed just for them. In the Play Barn, little ones gathered with Mom or Dad who chatted and made new friends of their own. Toddlers who were guided along the Activity Path were in absolute awe of every bug, animal, and blackberry they saw! The youngsters in Grandpa’s Workshop created a wooden Rocket Ship Pencil Box that hopefully makes their new school year more fun. Our teens hung out in silliness with our cool young adults and made cobbler with hand-picked blackberries! And, a group of moms and dads had intentional, heart-felt conversation in the Farmhouse while sipping coffee and eating donuts.

Watching entire families check in with anticipation of what The Farm had for each of them was amazing. It expressed what The Ruth Project is all about – providing refuge and abundant love for children and their foster families! Many more Family Fun Days are on the horizon!

A Meaningful Gathering for Dads

We had another first at The Farm on September 1 – Dad’s Night Out. This was an invitation for foster and adoptive dads to come and be blessed with great food and great fellowship. Yard games were set up, but these dads were obviously more interested in getting to know one another and just visit. It was obvious they were glad to have a safe place for meaningful conversation. Foster and adoptive dads are indeed a special group, called to be loving dads to children who desperately need strong, family leaders. We were so glad to create an atmosphere where they could encourage one another and be encouraged themselves!

Hot dogs and hamburgers were supposed to be the main dinner event, but rumor has it the homemade Texas sheet cake was the biggest hit. So were the Greenhouse tomatoes, which needed replenishing! Thank you to the generous hands that made the meal special, and thanks to our moms who gifted their hubbies with this evening at The Farm. Look forward to more Dad Events to come!

Meet Rudy our Highlander Cow

Have you met all the animals at The Farm? They are sweet creatures intended to help children experience unconditional love and the opportunity to care for God’s creation. They each have their own lovable personality, and they each have their own story. Rudy the Highlander Cow has a particularly meaningful one, as it speaks to the heart of The Ruth Project in a very special way.

Rudy was born at a friend’s local farm on a bitterly cold night last January. He had been abandoned by his mother at birth, was only a few days old, and was fighting for his life. He was an orphan! Our friends rescued him, cared for him in their barn, and smothered him with love. They fostered him! They tended to him hourly and gave him what he needed to heal. Rudy did recover, but not without a bad case of frostbite on his nose. The holiday season and his prominent nose was the reason “Rudy” got his name after “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

What makes Rudy’s story even more poignant is that one of the cows at that farm adopted him! While this is highly unusual for this breed, the cow stepped into nurse Rudy, protect him, and launch him as one of her own. He not only survived but began to thrive! Rudy was then offered as a temporary gift to The Farm for a season, where he is still being smothered with love. What’s more, Ruthie the Donkey has taken it upon herself to adopt him and protect him when they are in the pasture together. What a blessed little cow – and what a sweet story that reflects the impact fostering and adoption can make!