“Life is full of surprises” is a saying that we can all agree with. But the degree of those surprises can vary greatly, and sometimes there’s just absolutely nothing we can do to plan ahead or predict where life will take us.
Mark Purcell, an executive chef at a church soup kitchen in Tampa Bay, Florida saw this first hand. He never could have been ready for what he found after leaving work one evening – on what had been an otherwise regular day.
He was just taking out the garbage before closing up at Pasco Metropolitian Ministries, when he spotted what looked like two human babies nestled in with the garbage. He couldn’t believe his eyes and assumed they had to be dolls that someone threw away.
But when he took a closer look, he was shocked to find that they weren’t dolls at all… they were real live babies!
The two young boys were sitting side by side in their diapers a top the mountain of trash. Mark didn’t know what to do. He looked around in disbelief, and saw their mother hiding around the corner.
He spoke to her about the abandoned children and learned more about her story.
She was homeless and had decided to leave her children at the church because she couldn’t care for them anymore.
She felt they’d be better off in the hands of someone who could give them the care they needed.
It was an unusual situation to say the least, and Mark didn’t really know what to do. Would anyone know exactly what to do in the same shoes?
So he contacted one of the church pastors, Krystal Stewart. He hoped that she and her husband would be able to look after the orphaned boys for the night.
To Mark’s surprise, Krystal and her husband, Ron were already aware of the two boys and remembered their mother from the soup kitchen. They knew she was struggling to take care of them and they had already offered to help in the past, so they were happy to step in.
In an interview with FOX 13 News, Krystal described the boys’ condition when they came into her care. They were dirty, covered in bug bites, and needed a lot of TLC.
At the time Krystal and Ron thought it would be a temporary arrangement. But little did they know, it would soon become a life altering commitment.
They took care of the boys for a few days before a social worker came to visit with the boys’ mother. She knew she was unfit to care for them, and wanted to ask if the pastor and her husband would be able to care for the boys permanently. If they declined, the boys would have to go into the foster care system.
The children’s welfare system in the United States (and other parts of the world) are flawed and don’t always work in favor of the children they seek to help.
So without much time to spare, Krystal and Ron had to make a very important decision.
But they knew they couldn’t guarantee the boys would have a good life if they let them go to the system.
They both say it was an easy decision. They felt there was no other option as far as they were concerned, and agreed to become the boys’ guardians.
From that pivotal moment, the adoption process started shortly after.
The boys’ parents signed over custody of their children to Krystal and Ron Stewart. They knew they would be in good, loving hands.
The Stewarts already had some kids of their own, but now their family is two babies bigger.
What an amazing story! It just goes to show that life can be unpredictable, but there’s always some light and people who have good hearts, even when things seem hopeless.
Learn more about their story by watching the interview below.
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