Stacy Giesbrecht, who grew up in Plum Coulee, has been working with Youth With A Mission to provide foster care for children.

She works with a program known as Living Alternatives, which has an adoption agency, a maternity home, a foster care program, and also provides mentoring for parents in the community.

Giesbrecht added that she mainly works with children who are known to have behaviour problems, and therefore keep moving between care providers. The behaviour problems also make it difficult to find adoptive parents for the children, she said.

"I've learned a whole lot, just about human beings and how we function, how we we're designed, and how trauma has kind of altered and distorted the developing brain of these children," Giesbrecht explained.

When asked what advice she has for people considering being foster care providers, Giesbrecht said it is a hard but worth-while journey.

"It's going to be harder than you can ever imagine, but it's always going to be worth it in the end because love is never wasted, no matter what the outcome is, whether it's what you see as a successful outcome for the children and where they go next or not," she said.

Giesbrecht noted that many people get discouraged when they don't see positive results right away.

"It was a roller coaster every day... and you just have to remind yourself that what you see now may be nothing, but it is serving such an eternal significance and it is for an eternal purpose," she said.

Stacy says human connection and relationships are extremely important when it comes to healing

She added that another piece of advice for foster parents is not to make life about material possessions, and to always put relationships first.

"These children have broken relationships, and the relationship that God had designed to bring protection and security to them has been the relationship that has harmed them or abandoned them, or left them," she said. "I always remind myself that what relationship has harmed, relationship can heal."

Giesbrecht believes it is her love for children and her ability to tackle a challenge that has brought her into this field.

"It utilizes a lot of the gifts that I've been given and that I was created with... I never knew that I could do this, that this was even an option," she said.

The opportunity to foster children came to her one day while she was working at a preschool. Giesbrecht said the director of a foster and adoption agency approached her and asked if she would be interested in fostering three boys, who have had to move from home to home due to difficult behaviour. Her initial feeling and thought was to accept the offer, and after some deliberation she did.

"Five years later I'm still here, working with all sorts of kids and parents and so yes, long story short it's everything I never knew I always wanted," she said.

So far, Giesbrecht has worked with 8 boys from ages 3 to 11, all known to have difficult behaviour. She said all of the boys have since found adoptive placements.

"I've never ever said that I will only take boys... it's just kind of how it happened, these have just been the sibling groups that have had nowhere else to go, that have had a lot of failed placements that nobody else can handle," she added.

While the past few years have been difficult work for Giesbrecht, she said she continues to thrive from the challenges her work brings.