AHA Moments with Kendra

Sometimes clarity comes in a single moment... In this episode, Kendra reflects on the early days of BUILDing ALL Children and the experience that confirmed her calling. After evaluating a little boy who was developmentally behind, she met with his parents during an emotional conversation that left her searching for the right words. Instead, she chose to pray — and the peace that followed changed everything.

So she started her first step into helping families navigate child development while pointing them toward Christ.

For more Aha Moments visit https://buildingallchildren.org/podcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome. My name is Kendra Morgan, and I'm the host of the Rise and Build Podcast, where we hope to empower you to rise up and build a strong family, knowing you have to strengthen your hands to do the good work. Come with us as we rise and build. Hey you guys, welcome to the Rise and Build Podcast. We are still in the aha moments with God where we abide, hear, and act, and I just get to tell you all the God's stories through Building Ill Children and how He has just shown up and provided. Today I am gonna talk about how did I know that I was really truly called into the ministry. And so I had received the vision of Building Ill Children. At the time I was working for a nonprofit here in town, part, part, part-time. And it was where I would go into child care centers and I would do one assessment on a child. And then I never saw the families, but if I needed to go over the results, I would meet with the family. But a lot of times I didn't need to go over the results, and so a lot of times I didn't even see the family. But this particular case was downtown Tulsa, and it was at a pretty large church downtown, and I had just tested a little boy that was three years old, and he was significantly behind. And so I had called his parents and asked them if I could go over the results with him. This particular program really didn't have resources for family, so it wasn't like we connected him to resource like Building All Children does, but we just kind of gave them the results of that one screening that we did. And so I remember I met with mom and dad both, and we were at the church, and so we were in this conference room with this really long table, and I was discussing the screening that I had done, and there were areas that this little boy was really, really far behind. Um, dad was a TU football player, and so he was this um big strong man. Mom was super tiny and petite, and I remember I was setting across from them and I started to go over the results on this little boy, and I'll never forget dad's big hand kind of reached over and grabbed the little boy's mom's hand, and his whole hand like covered up her hand, um, and he just kind of held on to it tight. Like I think he knew that um that the results were not gonna be good. And um, I remember I was looking down and I was going over the results, and when I looked up, I'll never forget this dad had this tear in his eye, and when he blinked, it like rolled off his face and just landed on the conference table. And um, I mean, it it got me, and I remember I looked over at mom and she had big tears, and I just didn't even really know what to tell them. I obviously was the first one to tell them that something was wrong. Um, and and they were heartbroken, right? And so I kind of took a deep breath and I asked them if we could just stop and if I could pray over them. And the dad was like, oh, please, please. Um, and so I reached over and I grabbed both of their hands and I just prayed and I just asked the Lord to give us wisdom and to give us hope and to just not let us go down a journey through a bunch of doors that we don't need to go down, but to just close the doors that we don't need to go down and open the ones that we do, and just get us to the people that can really help this child, that can build this child to be the boy and the man that the Lord had created. And then I said amen. And um, I remember dad kind of wiped his tears away and took a big deep breath, and he was like, We're gonna be okay. And at that moment, I knew, I knew I was doing what the Lord had called me to do, and that is through child development, going back to prayer and going back to scripture and going back to this God that provides, to Jesus that provides hope, and praying over families and turning them back to the truth of scripture, knowing that um through anything we can do it as long as we have God in the center. And so I remember I got in the car after the meeting and I immediately called Ryan and I was like, oh my gosh, I just prayed with this family, and this is this is it. This is what I am supposed to be doing. And Ryan was like, that's awesome. I was like, no, it was like the only thing I knew to give them was the true hope. And and I did, and it just felt like I was doing the right thing. And so the organization that I was working for at the time was not Christian. And so I went back to my boss at the time and I just said, I know that I work part part-time, but I did want to let you know that I prayed with a family because I didn't know what else to do, and they the they were really discouraged, and I I just felt like the thing to do was to just stop what we were doing and pray. And I'll never forget, sweet, awesome lady. She took a deep breath and she said, Kendra, we know your heart. We love your heart, just don't let it happen again. And I just remember in my mind going, Oh, that's gonna happen a lot more. And so I went home that night and I had told Ryan kind of that conversation, and I said, I know the vision I got from the Lord, and I know that we are supposed to send these families back back to Jesus through prayer and through scripture. And so at that moment is when I quit my job. Um, I went in and I I quit either the next day or maybe a couple days later, and I a hundred percent dedicated my life to building on children and decided that I was gonna follow this vision. I was gonna do what the Lord had called me to do. Um, and if all the work went into helping one child, it was worth it because I was gonna help one child. Just wanted to do the Lord's will. And so I did. I quit my little job that I had and I started the full work of building all children and never wavered from the mission. Um started with one sheet of paper, um, and I will tell you next time how the process of that started.