AHA Moments with Kendra #3

Every mission has a moment when everything changes. In this episode of the Rise and BUILD podcast, Kendra shares the early ideas that sparked BUILDing All Children and how an unexpected closed door ultimately opened the way for something greater. What began as a vision took shape through prayer, trust, persistence, and a deep calling to serve children and families in a new way.

Whether you’re building a nonprofit, navigating a season of uncertainty, or waiting for your own “aha moment,” this episode offers encouragement, perspective, and hope.

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, where we are in the aha moments with God where all we have to do is abide, hear, and act. We are sharing the stories of Building El Children and how God has just shown up and has provided along the way. It's actually been so fun to go back and remember, and I hope I don't ever forget where we started. Through the process of telling these stories, I remembered early on that when I was in that stage of knowing that I wasn't quite doing my purpose, but I didn't know what that purpose was, I was reminded, my husband and I were talking about it, that part of my story is that we actually had a local church, a significantly large church here in Tulsa, contact me and they asked me if I would be willing to come on staff and be a part of their staff. And I had never really thought about working for a church. And I just remember just kind of sitting on it and I asked them if I could pray about it. And they said, you know, yes, absolutely, you can pray about it. But what we would really like you to do is to create a position, like create a job description with how you could tie in your child development, you know, expert, like the child development piece into the church. And I had never thought about that. And so I spent, I mean, probably a good two weeks praying over it, and I ended up creating a pretty in-depth job description where I felt like I could still do what I was called to do, the child development piece, but maybe do it in a church setting. Um, and so spent quite a bit of time on it, created it, and I never heard back from that church. And I remember honestly being kind of frustrated, just a lot of time went into it, um, a lot of effort went into it, and I couldn't figure out why I was never called back and why I never had a follow-up with all the work I had put into it. And so I just put it aside and really didn't think much of it. But after I got the vision of building all children, I realized that the Lord was calling me into the ministry. And it was the job description that I created a long time ago of trying to take the child development piece and putting it into a ministry that I would have probably never thought about if I hadn't had the opportunity to just kind of be on my knees and study and get that job description completed. And what it allowed me to do is one realize that I do not have a theology degree. I have a child development degree. I mean, that's what I'm specialized in. And so I felt very um just not prepared or not educated enough to step into the ministry world. But the job description allowed me to show that um what families need is information about their children, and a child development specialist knows that. And just because I don't have a theology degree doesn't mean that I still can't turn people to Jesus and provide them with the true hope. And so it was kind of the first step of realizing, like, hmm, I think maybe the Lord is calling me into the ministry. Um, so, anyways, once I got the vision of building all children, I knew I was really stepping into a ministry and I didn't know what that looked like. Um, but I wanted to make sure that I was prepared and I was equipped to really share the Bible with families. So I went and got certified in biblical counseling. And so while I started Building All Children and started creating Building All Children, um, I ended up getting certified in biblical counseling. And the cool thing about it is as I was getting certified in that, I was getting certified with um three other ladies. And one of the ladies and I became really good friends. We still are really good friends to this day, but she was pregnant and so she couldn't finish her um certification. It was funny, she still went with us. We would go away for the weekend. Um, we got um certified through Southwestern Baptist Theology Seminary. Um, and so she would go along with us and she would go thrifting and junking throughout the day while we were like studying scripture, and we kind of giggled about it because we would go back to the hotel room and she would have all this stuff, all this junk that she purchased and while we were studying the Bible. But the two other ladies that I got certified with um in biblical counseling, both of them become became two of my board members. Um, and when I had to decide how to build a board, I had never built a board, but when you do your bylaws, um you have to have a board as a nonprofit. And so these two women I knew were grounded in their faith, and I knew that they would pray for me and pray for the whole process of building all children. And so both of them became board members along with my husband. Ryan became a board member also. Um, we felt like we might need his logic and just um business mind involved, and so he was also a board member, and really that was it. I started our board really small, just wanted people surrounded around me that could pray for me and guide me with some wisdom because I knew that the vision was pretty powerful and I only wanted to do what the Lord's will was. Still haven't told anyone about this. We kept it super quiet, haven't launched it, um, but started to do the work so that we could start helping the children. So behind the scenes, I was creating a website and I created a blog where I just really wrote a lot, um, studied a lot. Um, I got certified in biblical counseling, and I created a small board that could help me along the way.