[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to Life Reviewed, a podcast by Hope House Colorado, where we invite you into conversation with teenage moms and the people who champion them. These stories of struggle, overcoming and perspective shifts will challenge you to review life as you've known it. One story, one person, one conversation at a time.
[00:00:20] Intro Music: Oh, I thought I knew the kind of life that I would lead...
[00:00:29] Speaker A: Hello there. My name is Lisa Steven, and I'm the founder and executive director at Hope House Colorado. And I'm super excited for you guys to join us for our very first episode of our brand new podcast, Life reviewed.
I am excited to share with you today sort of the history and the background and the miracle story of how Hope House came to be. And it kind of really all starts with being a teenage mom myself. My husband John and I were 17 years old when we got pregnant and got married. And I often tell people, I we. When we got married, I still was wearing braces. So in all of my wedding photos, if you could see me right now through this podcast, you would see that I'm smiling with my lips closed in a very fake way. And that was because all my wedding pictures, I figured if nobody could see my braces, they wouldn't know how young I was and they would think I was actually old enough to be getting married. So we joke about that and the fact that my husband John was in a very 1980s mullet when we got married, because it was 1986. We have been married for 38 years and have three adult children and three absolutely beautiful little granddaughters that are the light of my life. But 38 years ago, when we found out we were pregnant and we're going to be teen parents, it was a super scary time. It is really, honestly, it is so scary to realize that you are going to be bringing a brand new life into the world when you don't even feel like you're a grown up yet yourself.
We had a lot of support from my husband's family, and for that, I am incredibly and eternally grateful. I honestly feel like having that level of family support can make or break kind of be the difference between making it or not. And we were just so, and are still so blessed to have their support and their love. We got married in February of 1986, and my, unfortunately, my beautiful and amazing mother in law was not able to join us for our wedding, which we planned in ten days flat days. Like, I mean, I ended up finding this wedding dress for $25 at a used wedding dress store. And I was just so excited that I actually had a wedding dress because we got married in such a quick timeframe. But my mother in law, who had unfortunately had suffered with kidney disease for a number of years, since John was a child. Her kidney transplant came in literally the night before our wedding, which was completely unexpected and really somewhat traumatic for everybody because mom wasn't going to get to be with us at our wedding, but we videotaped it and got to share it with her at the hospital. And kind of fast forward ten years later, we renewed our vows and she joined us for that. So it was like, so beautiful to have her be there and be part of that. But my mother in law has been such a huge influence in my life and someone who really helped me to understand how much God loves me when I didn't have any friends, because you either lose your friends or didn't have very good friends to begin with when you are a teenage mom. I didn't have anybody to give me a baby shower. And my mother in law was determined. She's like, we celebrate things in this family. We're going to have a baby shower. So she invited all of her friends, the Fenton street gang, who were the group of women who were the very first participants in Mops international back in the day, now called Momco. But back in the day, when Mops started, my mother in law was in that little group of eight women who were that very first Mops group. And she was determined I was going to have a baby shower. And she invited her Fenton street gang, who they were all, they are still friends to this day, all of them in their late seventies now. And she had a baby shower for me and celebrated Johnny, our son. And it was so sweet and beautiful. And when my mother in law encouraged me that I should go to mops, my first reaction was, literally, no way. I am not walking into a mops group where all these women did it the right way. Like, they got married, they had their children. At that point in time. Back in the eighties, they were largely stay at home moms. Things have changed a lot since then for mops, but I just figured these were the people who did it right. Last thing I'm going to do is walk in and be judged for having been a teenage mom. And that's kind of what you face when you're a teenage mother. You really face judgment kind of everywhere you go, whether you're, I don't know, going to the doctor and the doctor is questioning you and questioning your decisions, or frankly, much worse, just like giving you a lecture. In my case, I had had one incident where I took my son in to get his shots when he was six months old. My mother in law drove me there, and the doctor was clearly frustrated with me being a teenage mom from the minute she walked into the room and just treated me so unkindly. But I figured, worst case, it was unkind. Probably a week later at home, the doorbell rings, Johnny's upstairs napping, and it's social services. And this woman had come to my house to check on Johnny because this doctor had reported that my son had deep scratches on his back, and he was shaking really bad, so they thought maybe he had something neurological going on that we weren't taking proper care of.
Totally a lie. Like, all of it was completely a lie, except the shaking part, because he had been naked for like 15 minutes, waiting for her to come back in the room. So he was like, super cold. And so here I am just thinking, this lady can walk into my house and walk back out with my son. Like, you have so little power when you're a teenage mom. And I don't know if that's honestly true, if she could have done that, but it felt like it. It felt like I didn't have power over my own life and my own situation, let alone over my own child in that moment. And that the worst case could be that she could leave with him and I would have to figure out how to get him back, and all based on somebody else's judgment and, frankly, discrimination and the way she viewed me as a teenage mom and sort of what this is all about, this podcast. Like, we need to sometimes review the way we view things and change our lens a little bit, because, yes, I was young, I had barely turned 18, but I was a pretty good mom and trying really hard and had an amazing husband and some great family support. And she just made a judgment and made a phone call. And that one phone call could have changed a lot of things for my little family. Fortunately, Johnny woke up from his nap completely in a great mood and charmed and smiled at this woman. And potentially just like, I don't know, he just was like, eating up all of her attention. And so she. Nothing ever came of it. She was like, clearly, your son is doing well, your home is well kept. Like, she walked away, and nothing ever came of it except for me being left with this feeling of like, this is so wrong. No teenage mom should ever have to face that type of, not just judgment, but frankly, complete lack of power over their own life.
And so from that moment on, I really kind of swore, like, I will do whatever I can to help teen moms down the road if I have the opportunity to do that. And that's kind of what I was afraid of in going to that mops meeting that my mother in law wanted me to go to. And I only went because she said she wanted me to and I loved her and still do and wanted to make her proud. And so I'm like, all right, I'm going to be brave. I'm going to go to this mops group, and if they don't like me, then I won't go back. And I was completely wrong. Like, every woman there was so kind and so loving and just sweet with me and sweet with my son and made me feel so welcomed and, like, I don't know, it just was so amazing to be around other moms and find out that other moms actually yell sometimes and other moms worry about what their kids are eating. And I wasn't the only one. And it wasn't just because I was a teenager that I was worried about these things. Like, oh, moms worry about these things. And it just was such a huge relief. And more than that, like, within a year of being a part of that group, they came to me and asked me if I would help lead their, what was at the time called Mopettes, which was the children's program. And they gave me an opportunity to lead. And I'm literally sitting there looking around going, did anybody check how old I was? Do they know that I'm like 20 or maybe 19 at the time? And of course they knew. I did have my braces off by that time, you guys, just so you know. But, um, of course they knew how old I was. They just gave me an opportunity to actually lead at a young age. And I was incredibly excited to be asked and so honored to get to be a part of that. And mops became such a huge part of my story, just as it had been with my mother in law, who came to Christ through Mops many years prior to that, I. I knew Jesus, but I had never heard women talk about their relationship with Jesus as a relationship. I had never heard women pray out loud. So I was like, at first, kind of like, what did I get myself into?
But these women were so just outgoing and authentic and genuine about who Jesus was in their life and how they relied on him in their mothering and their motherhood and being a wife and how to be a wife and stay married. And I was so curious and so drawn in to learn more about that. And it was really through mops that my own faith grew, and I began to rely on God in a new way and eventually was able to also bring my husband to church. And the two of us began to rely on God together in a new way. And so mops was super powerful for me. And when back in the day, you used to have to leave mops when your child turned five, because it was mothers of preschoolers, like before your kids are in school. And so I was going to have to graduate from Mops because my youngest, my third daughter, third kiddo, had turned five. And I was so sad. And it was right about that time that Mops International decided they were going to start teen mops. So mops groups for teenage moms. And I was like, what? Are you kidding me? I'm so in. I figured I could find the time to volunteer and be a part of that teen Mops group and give back to teenage moms like I had kind of told God I would do if I ever had the chance. And at the same time, I was. My kids were getting older. I was hoping that I would get to go to college, that because I had left school when I was 18 and finished it through a correspondence course, which, back in the day, there were no computers, I actually had to finish through a true written correspondence course in the mail. And my husband finished the same way. And so I was going to go to school. That was my dream. And I figured I could volunteer in this Mops group on the side. So it was so cool to be a part of the only, the second ever teen Mops group at Arvada Covenant Church. And the kind of the shocking part was that having been in leadership in mops for a few years, by that point, you would get these, like, big, fat notebooks full of job descriptions and instructions for how to do your job as a leader. And when we started that teen Mops group, we got, like, four little pieces of papers stapled together with not nearly enough instructions for, how do you work with teenage moms? We knew how to run a Mops group. We didn't know if teen moms would want speakers or to do crafts or to do a Bible study or any of the things that we did in our general Mops group. And we certainly didn't even know where to find teenage moms. And would they come to the church, like, where we hosted this Mops group? Like, we had all these questions. And sure enough, we had a fairly significant number of teenage moms who did want to be a part of something just as much as any other mom. They needed to be around. Number one, they needed a place where they could go to have their children and cared for for 2 hours so they could just finish a sentence like any other mom of any age. And they also craved that, just like I did, that connection and ability to be in community as a mother, especially as a teenage mother, because you really don't have community, you don't have connection as a teen mom. And so it was beautiful to watch these young ladies come together and just at first form these kind of shy friendships and then eventually stronger friendships. And as we got to know these moms better and were doing just, frankly, just acts of kindness meant so much to them. Like, one of the moms would say, I love brownies. And so the next time we met, we'd make homemade brownies, and she would be just blown away that we went out of our way to make homemade brownies for her. And the fact that these little acts of kindness were building this trust and relationship with these girls where they could come to us and start to really tell us what was actually going on in their life. And let me tell you, we thought we had big dreams as this little leadership group of this teen mops group. We thought we would help those girls finish their Ged if they needed it. We'd help them, you know, have healthier relationships if they needed that, we would come alongside them however they needed and help them to have these self sufficient lives and launch themselves and be empowered. Right? And what happened was, as we started gaining their trust, they would come to us and share heart wrenching stories, like, just gut wrenching stories of, I don't have any food in my house.
My mom and her boyfriend are so violent with each other that I have to leave the house with my baby on a regular basis.
My stepdad is abusing me. I mean, the stories were so hard to hear, and so outside of our ability to. A, of course, we were not able to help them to think about self sufficiency when they were just worried about whether or not they were safe at home. And b, this was not what we thought we signed up for. Like, I had been raised in a middle class home. It was pretty dysfunctional. And there was a whole lot of just anger and dysfunction in my family, but it was still a middle class home. And John's family was a middle class family. And these young ladies who we were serving in teen mops and who we still serve today through Hope house, they were coming out of generational poverty. I didn't know what that meant. I didn't know what it looked like, and we were running into it firsthand and not knowing how to solve it with anything more than, oh, my gosh, we love you and making brownies. And it was so hard to have them. Eventually, after a couple of years, honestly, of building relationship and trust, have them start to come to us and say, hey, I am not safe in my home. I need a new place to live. Can I come live with you?
And the truth is, one of our leadership women at that point did have a mom come and live with her, and it was not a great idea. We didn't know what we were doing. She didn't know what she was doing, and it didn't end well. And that just got us thinking, like, there's got to be something out there in the Denver metro area, like, who is taking care of housing for teenage moms? Like, somebody's got to be doing it. So we started making phone calls and looking things up. And at that time, in the late nineties, there were several maternity homes in Denver. And maternity homes would take in a momma while they were pregnant and help them make a birth decision. Like, should I keep the baby or give the baby up for adoption. Maternity homes were, in general, focused on helping a mom to make a decision for life. And they could usually stay in those maternity homes up to about three months after the baby was born, which three months? I mean, that is not enough time. Like, we had learned that by now from our teen mops group that three months, you still have not solved a lot of what's going on in this dysfunction that's happening in your own life and in your home life. You don't have a safe place to go back to. So first of all, three months wasn't enough. And second of all, we were a teen mops group. Mothers are preschoolers, meaning these girls had children already. So they were parenting. And maternity homes would not take a mom if she were already parenting. They took you while you were pregnant. And so that was a dead end. So we were looking at transitional housing and homes for single moms and all of them across the board, you had to be 18 and older, but most of them really wanted the women who participated in their program to be 21 or older because just in all honesty, teenagers are hard. And their programs were much more successful when they worked with adult women than teenage women. And so what we found out is that there literally was no home for teenage moms between the ages of 16 and 18 if they already had a child. And that was that. And honestly, we are still to this day hope House is the only home that serves 16 and 17 year old parenting teenage moms. And so that was kind of the beginning of, well, gosh, I mean, that's. What are we going to do with that? Like, there has to be something. And it wasn't even me. It was another one of the leadership team at the time, Debbie, who said, well, maybe we should just open a home for teenage moms. And the rest of our little group of leaders, women on that team, were like, yeah, we should just open a home for teenage moms. And I'm like, I'll. I'm in. I'll help open a home for teenage moms. I mean, I can volunteer to do that while I figure out going to school.
So crazy that at the time, I thought it would just be this volunteer position and I'd have one more volunteer notebook on my shelf of volunteer notebooks. Because, guys, there were not laptop computers or cloud storage at that point. And so I went home to talk to my husband about it, and I said, hey, Debbie thinks maybe we should just open a home for teen moms. And the crazy thing was that I had actually been, at that point in time, considering whether or not I would try to get a job with mops international and work for mops with teen mops. And my husband just. He is a guy who.
He is so quiet. Let's just say he will not likely be a guest on this podcast. He's very shy. He's very quiet. He's pretty reserved, but he's incredibly wise, and he always thinks about things very deeply. And so here we were talking about this, hey, should we be a part of this, like, opening a home for teen moms? Should I go get a job with Mops International? And he comes home from work one day, and I'm literally putting away the dishes in the dishwasher. And our kids at this point are like elementary school through junior high, and they're outside playing, and he sits down at the kitchen table after work, and he says, hey, I've been thinking. I was thinking about this whole idea of a home for teen thing, moms. And I actually got kind of excited, and I'm like, what? So I'm kind of, like, slowing down and putting the dishes in the dishwasher, because he never says he's excited unless we're talking about vacation. And he says, yeah, actually, I think maybe this might be a calling. And I'm like, what? Okay, so now I stop putting the dishes away, you guys, because this man has never used the word calling in his life, not once before or since that day.
And I went and sat down with him, and we just started talking like, what? What would it look like? What does that mean? And we prayed about it. And, yeah, we jumped in and said, okay, I think this might be a calling. I think this is something that we're meant to do to open a home for teenage moms. And so I called the other leaders, the other gals on that leadership team, Amy and Debbie and Terry, and I told them, hey, John's in. And they talked to their husbands, and all their husbands were in, which, honestly, was kind of a really big deal, because it truly was our husbands in that very first initial group of what I would come to understand to be a working board of directors. And, I mean, I did not know what a board of directors was at the time, but we were that first working board of directors. And it was really critical that it was not just us girls, that it was our husbands who came beside us and said, yeah, this is a calling. We're doing this together. We're going to be on this journey together. And so we started meeting. We started going to visit other homes for single moms where we could kind of see what they were doing and how they were doing it. At the time. There was something called second chance funding for second chance homes, and it was government funding. And so we were contacting some of these other homes across the country who had opened homes for teenage moms with this second chance funding. And what we found is the second chance funding actually required you to take a portion of the moms you served as court ordered cases, and then you could take a portion of moms that were voluntary, that were not court ordered.
Sorry, guys. And so what we found was that these homes that had some of the cases being court ordered were, frankly, they just felt sort of punitive. I mean, they felt a little bit like, I don't know, not jail isn't the right word, but they certainly were pretty cold and sterile. It wasn't warm and loving. It was not the way we pictured it, and it certainly wasn't the way we treated our moms at mops. And so we were like, okay, this can't be the model. This our model needs to be. Mamas come because they have mommy motivation. That's our secret sauce. That's what makes Hope house successful, is that our moms are so motivated by their little ones to do anything they can to break the cycle of poverty and create a new and a better life for their kids than what they experienced. So we knew that mamas needed to be able to come voluntarily. And we knew that we wouldn't be able to do a house mother model, like where you just have one person living in a house and four or five or six teenage moms, because house moms burned out so quickly, and our moms had experienced so much change and so much chaos in their lives. They needed stability. They needed somebody who would be long term there with them. And that was really what came to form the basis of our theory of change, if you will, that change happens within long term relationship with healthy adults. And so we knew that it wasn't a house mom model. It would have to be staffed. And we knew that just one person, a house mom, couldn't do all the things that we wanted to do, because now that we had this opportunity, this ability to create this vision for helping our moms become self sufficient, we couldn't do that in a support group setting. It was a small, you know, 2 hours a week with these beautiful mommies providing them support and love. But in a home where they lived with us, we could meet that vision. We could actually have the mission of helping our moms to become self sufficient. And we knew that would take a lot of extra people. People, right? Like somebody who would be teaching parenting classes. And initially, that was a volunteer, someone who would provide counseling, and that was also a volunteer. Like, all the different pieces of what a mom would need to get their GED, someone to sit with them and do homework, someone to walk them through. What does it look like to even think about going to college when none of the moms we've ever worked with have been. They've all been first generation college students when they've gone to college. So we knew we needed this staffed model, and we also knew that would be expensive. And that meant, um, not only figuring out how to start a non profit, which I joke about this all the time, literally. My background is having worked at JC Penney's and done home daycare and a whole bunch of volunteering for MoPs International. And at my kids school, I had no business starting a nonprofit. I did not know the first thing about how to run a nonprofit or, frankly, how to run a business, because that's what a nonprofit is. And, I mean, I still, to this day, look back and just kind of shake my head, like, the audacity that I would think that. That I could step out and do something like that. And really and truly, I'm telling you, if you are listening to this right now and God is tapping on your shoulder, and calling you to do something that seems completely out of your depth. Like, there's no way I could do that. Like who? Me? Lord, you are in the right spot, because if you're brave enough to say yes, I promise you, he will surround you with the most amazing people to make your vision real. He will equip you for what he calls you for. And I know we kind of talk about that as christians, but our story is just such a perfect example of how God does just that. He equips those he calls. And so here I am, stepping out in faith with my not great pedigree for running a business, along with my beautiful co founders, to open this home for teen moms. And we're.
We literally spent the next three years trying to figure out how to open a home for teen moms. We went to so many places to visit. We developed a program we would meet weekly to go through. What should our parenting program look like? What should our GED program look like? How are we going to help the moms do each of these pieces of things they need to do to be self sufficient? And meanwhile, what does getting a house look like? What does zoning look like? How do you work with a city?
How do you even start a nonprofit? What's a board of directors? All the things that you had to learn to do this. And at the time, of course, not getting paid, all of this was just. We were spending probably 20 hours a week just volunteering our time to start this project. And finally, about three years in, I got to the point where I was like, maybe this isn't supposed to happen. Maybe we misheard God even after all of this, because we still don't have a house. I mean, at this point, we'd maybe raised like, $80,000, which is a lot of money to have raised back then with no home. Like, you're raising money on a dream because you don't have a. You're not doing anything yet. You're not actually performing ministry yet. You're just saying that you're going to and, you know, sharing the dream and the plan with people. So we had raised some money, but certainly not enough to buy a house. And so literally, when I'm just getting ready to kind of give up on maybe this is not going to happen, we get a phone call from a man named David Nestor, who had, at the time, was the, I think the president of the board for Rocky Mountain Housing. And Rocky Mountain housing was an organization that built low income housing projects, like villages, they called them. And we had gone to see him, just to pick his brain. This was kind of our method for learning. We went to talk to anybody we could possibly talk to, and as soon as they said yes and they talked with us, we would turn around and make them homemade brownies, which plays a part in this story. So he will. David will still to this day, tell you that we have hope house because of homemade brownies. Because we took him, those homemade brownies apparently made an impression. And that. That day that I was getting so close to just saying, I think we just need to call this quits. Like, it's not happening. We get a phone call from David Nestor, and he said, hey, Rocky Mountain housing has purchased this piece of land in Arvada, and it's got a house sitting on it. And we're going to tear that house down eventually when we get annexed into the city and we're going to build townhomes. But in the meanwhile, I mean, that'll probably take two years. You can move into that house and get hope house started. And what do I do? I flat out panic. I'm like, oh, no, we can't afford. He was going to charge us dollar, 350 a month in rent. I was like, no way. We can't afford that. And fortunately, our amazing president of our board, because at that time, we had actually had a working board of directors, a true board, and we had a president named Clarine Shelley. And clarine was like, 350 a month, done. We're moving in. We're going to rent that place, and we're going to get started. So, my butterflies aside, thankfully, I had a group of leaders that I relied on that knew that this was God moving, and this was where we were going to go. So in April of 2003, we moved into this brick ranch house with, like, nine bedrooms, and we took in our first two teenage moms. And it was so incredible, you guys. I mean, Fendia, our first mom, who moved in, she was from Haiti. She had actually moved to America when she was twelve years old. Her mom had been here for a number of years without her. So she was coming to America on a plane from Haiti in February with a snowstorm happening. She had never even seen snow, didn't own a coat, lands in Denver, and has to, like, integrate into this family her mom had created while she was not with her. And it hadn't gone well for her. It was really difficult to make that transition. And by the time, time she turned 17, Vendia was just kind of a mess. I mean, she was making decisions that she shouldn't have been making. And she had ended up pregnant, and her mom basically said her new husband would not allow this in our home. And so at seven months pregnant, she had kicked her out. And Findia had been staying with a teacher, and that teacher brought her to Hope house. And I'll never forget the day she moved in, just walking through that door with her baby in a car seat. She was wearing a t shirt, and Fendi had all of her belongings, all her clothing, and all of Sarah, the baby girl's clothing, in a trash bag. And she was so nervous and so scared, walking through the door, and how our hearts just filled with love for her. Like, the minute we saw her, she was ours. She was a hope house mommy. And it's still that way today, guys. If you come visit Hope house, our campus in Arvada, the first thing you'll feel when you walk through the door is how much we love our moms. Every single staff person is just in love with our girls and cares for them so deeply. And so here's Fendia and our second mama. Her name was Tiffany. And we're trying to figure out how to make what had looked really good on paper work with real life people, because everything seemed like it made sense when we drew it all up. And then here we are, working with real, honest to goodness teen moms. And it wasn't as easy as it looked.
They were amazing, but they had very traumatic backgrounds, hard stories then. And now our moms have, and we had a lot to learn. And so nine months go by, and we're just barely starting to kind of figure it out. We'd hired enough staff. We were just beginning to figure out fundraising. And let me tell you, like, back in those days, we literally. There were times when we could barely pay our bills or couldn't pay our bills. It was a lot to learn how to fundraise, and I didn't necessarily want to be a fundraiser. I don't think most people who start a nonprofit want to be a fundraiser. It took me a while to learn that God has a much bigger plan for fundraising. And it's not just about fundraising. It's how people can experience God through their giving. But at that point, I mean, we would get these, like, oh, my gosh, we have payroll due, we're short $5,000. And I would be going to the post office, like, just praying the whole way there that there's some miracle check in the post office box, and there would be, like, this crazy $5,000 check. Exactly what we needed from a couple who had sold their home and decided to tithe on a portion of the sale to Hope house out of the blue. So there were these just crazy, miraculous stories of how God was providing for us, but it was. It was just.
We were just figuring out how to do things. And nine months in, I get a phone call from David Nestor, and he says, hey, we've gotten annexed into the city of Arvada more quickly than we thought we would, and you guys are going to have to move. And I'm freaking out. I'm like, we have not learned how to. So we've barely learned how to fundraise. I still didn't even know what a capital campaign was.
We certainly didn't know how to go out and raise enough money to buy a house or build a house or something like that. And so I panicked and started arguing with God, which is my way. Like, really God? Like, I thought we'd get longer than this, and went to work, like, a few days later to tell everybody, like, hey, we're gonna. We're going to have to move out of this. This house. And I get another call from David Nestor, and he says, hey, our board has met, and they've decided that they will give you the house, but you have to pick it up and move it off our property so we can develop the property. And I'm like, what? Holy cow. Okay. So our board meets, we talk about it. We're like, all right, we can move. We can pick this house up. We can move it. I have no idea how to do that, or who does that kind of a thing. But what we came up with is that we could get a loan against the top half of the house. It was a ranch, and the basement was good enough, of course, get plowed under. But we could get a loan against the top half of the house, and then we'd have enough money to move it and buy land to put it on. And so we go about getting this, like, crazy loan from an organization called Mercy Lending. It was a one year loan contingent upon us turning it into an actual commercial loan when the house was built and actually livable and habitable. And so we're like, $100,000. It's a ton of money. We're going to find someone to find us land, and everything's going to be perfect. So we get a realtor. She goes out looking. We find a house mover, who I looked up in the phone book, which back then, for any of you millennials and Gen Zers who are listening right now, there was such a thing as a phone book. It was called the yellow Pages. It was very fat, and it had all the businesses in it. And so we're looking up house movers, and we find this guy who will move the house, and he wants $40,000, which is, you know, almost half of our money. But that's okay. We got 60 grand left. We're going to find land, put it on there. The house mover tells us, you can move that house within 7 miles, so just go find some land within 7 miles. Turned out he just didn't want to get a permit to drive the house down sheridan, which is a state highway. And so he was kind of scamming us, and we just didn't know it. We were so naive. So we're out there looking for a place to put this house within 7 miles. Can't find anything. Finally, our realtor calls me one night, and she says, I'm sorry, but there is literally nothing within 7 miles, let alone, like 20 miles. There's nothing, nowhere for you to put that house. And here I am arguing with God again, like, okay, lord, really? I mean, you give us a house and no land to put it on. What are you thinking? And someday, I'm sure God just rolls his eyes and, like, laughs at me. Someday he's gonna just have a good conversation with me about, ye of little faith. So I go to work to tell everybody I don't know what's up with God. He would give us a house, no land to put it on. And frankly, I mean, I'm joking about it, but I was pretty much devastated. And it was a bit of a faith crisis. Like, I don't know what's happening. I don't know why God would do that. And I literally get to work that day, and I get a phone call from this pastor, Pastor Monty, who I've never met, but a woman in his church had been bringing us laundry soap for our laundry room. She knew what was going on, had gone to Pastor Monty to tell him what the story was, and he said, well, we want to help. And he calls me up, and he says, hey, are you the people looking for land? And I'm like, yes, we are. And he says, well, we have some we want to give you.
I could literally have fallen off my chair. I'm pretty sure I did not even thank him. I think I was just so blown away. Like, what? Who are you? Where are you? And he says, come over to 64th and sheridan, and let's, you know, I'll show you the church and the land and all that. So. So my program officer at the time, Robin and I drive six blocks down and one block over. Guys, it wasn't even a mile. And here we are at this big field, and this little gold car is sitting there. We pull up next to him. Pastor Monte hops out of the car, and I'm telling you, he looked like Santa Claus. No joke. The whole white beard, red nose, big belly, the whole thing. And he's totally jolly, and he's like, yeah, we're so excited. We want you to have this piece of land for you to put your house on and your playground and whatever you need. And he kind of waves his arm and he says, and now I gotta go to lunch. And we're just standing there looking at it like there's a field standing here. And a Santa Claus who just left us it and went to lunch. And of course, at that point, you know, the trustees got involved and our board got involved, and it was a lot more complicated than, here you go, I gotta go to lunch. But at the time, that's what it felt like. So Robin and I were like, we gotta go over to the city and figure out how do you. I mean, I didn't know the right words, but it's subdivide. So how do you subdivide this piece of land this church wants to give us so we can move our house there, go down to the city, and we have an appointment to meet with Carol, and Carol at the planning department. She's like, no way. This is not happening. That project, the Rocky Mountain housing project, they need that house moved within two months. You're going to have to rezone that land. It's going to take over a year to rezone. So case closed. You're done. So I'm standing there at the counter of the planning office in the city, having my little fight with God yet again. Like, what? You give us land, you give us a house, and now this. Like, it's not even possible. And Robin, being the calm, cool, and collected one, with much stronger faith than I have, says, hey, can you just check what the zoning is? And so Carol's, like, rolling her eyes at us, but she's like, okay. She goes to this huge lateral file cabinet, and we had to have a multifamily zoning. And she pulls out this huge plat map. And I'll never forget, like, down in the corner of that map is a big green stamp for multifamily zoning. And she just stands there for a minute, like, totally silent. And then turns around, and she's like, holy cow, it's. The piece you're wanting is already zoned. So it turns out that that church, 25 years prior, had zoned just that one little piece of their property to put a maternity home on, and they had never done it. And so 25 years before I was ever even a teenage mom, God knew what he was going to do with that land. Like, he literally knew he was going to put hope house on this piece of property. And he moved the hearts of those people in that church to do this work, to zone it. And then, for whatever reason, it hadn't happened. So this church thought that we were the blessing, because 25 years later, we had come along and were finally putting ministry on their land. And so that whole those, like, God words we use, like, our christian language, like, God knows the beginning, from the end. He knew the beginning, from the end. He knew he was going to use that land for hope house. And so the story just was, it's so unbelievable and gives me goosebumps even to this day, when I share how God had preordained that piece of property for Hope House to be moved to. And literally from there, you guys, it was like one big old fashioned barn raising. And I'm going to tell it fast, and it sounds like it was easy and it wasn't. And there were a whole lot of those moments, still many more moments where I would stand there and argue with God and say, what are you doing? Have you even seen what's happening? Are you in this? But truly, what happened was, from the digging of the basement to the roof of that house, it was donated like one big, huge, old fashioned barn raising in our community. Different subcontractors, different vendors, different trades from different churches. Someone would hear about it, and then they would tell someone else, and they would tell someone else. And before you knew it, I mean, literally, like, we had this incredible project manager who was donating his time. He would call me and say, hey, you need 13 four foot egress window wells. And I'd say, what is an egress window? Well, how do you spell it? And who do you call to get it? And he would tell me, and I would call up white cap industries, and they would say, literally, this phone call happened. I called them up, and they said, huh, we just had an order for 14 of those get canceled. So we will donate them to you and deliver them to your property. I mean, it was like picking up the phone and going, hello, God, we need this. And him saying, okay. And it would be again. There were a lot of moments that were much harder than that. But it was such an incredible story of God building this house that the reason we say it's the house that God built is that it truly was the house that God built. It could not have happened any other way. We were still struggling to just pay payroll. We were still waiting for those $5,000 miracle checks in the mail just to pay our bills. We were certainly not in a position where we could have done this without God being at the center of it and moving people's hearts to make it happen. And meanwhile, we were in. This whole process took, like, two years. And we were in a little townhouse in Westminster, which we had a family who had allowed us to move into their four bedroom house and utilize it while we were doing our building project. And we just had to pay enough for them to pay their loan payment. They weren't making any money on it. And we moved in the. Into this little townhouse and the master bedroom. We lined all the desks all around the master bedroom for our staff. And then we used the master bathroom as it was, like a big bath with a double sink. So you'd have meetings in there with, like, one chair in front of each of the double sinks. And then in the glass enclosed shower was just all the diapers piled up to the ceiling, boxes of diapers. And in the walk in closet was where you did counseling, which don't tell anybody, because I'm not sure you're supposed to do counseling in a closet, but that's what we did. And we were there for two whole years while this project was being completed. And then on Easter Sunday, 2006, we moved back into our newly renovated home. And, guys, if you could have seen those kids, the mama's little ones, when we moved into that house. And that, like, we have these long hallways in our house that are, like, really long hallways. And the kids had been so cooped up in that town home, they were just literally running the halls, running back and forth, bouncing off the walls, run around the living room, run back down the hall, bounce off the wall, and come back and do it again. It was so much fun. They were so excited to be. To be in this house where they had so much more space, and literally within probably, I don't know, six months or so of moving into our house and just kind of figuring out how to do things. Now in this beautiful home that we had, we started getting so many phone calls. I mean, we were getting, like, 100 phone calls a year from teenage moms or service providers working with teenage moms who didn't necessarily need housing, but they needed something or somewhere for their moms to go, whether it was GED or help figuring out parenting orders or whatever it might be. And so our board got together and said, hey, maybe we can do more than this home, this hope house home. Maybe we could do a GED program. And so we started a GED program using the church's classrooms. We're right next door to that church, and they let us use their classrooms for a small GED program. And that started to grow. And eventually we were doing GED and a little bit of helping those mamas get into college, and we started a mentoring program. And we started dreaming about what if we had a resource center? Like, what if we could have a place that was. That our moms could call their own, a place to belong for our mamas. Because as wonderful as the church was to let us use their space, it was still a church. And we could tell the difference the way our moms felt, even when they came into the house, into our residential home, it felt like Hope house. Like Hope House is their place to belong. So here we are dreaming about, can we maybe possibly ever build a resource center? And it just so happened that the church was selling at that point. Then by 2011, they were selling a piece of property. It was the same field that the pastor had waved his arm at years before.
That was the rest of their property that they were going to sell. And we. I mean, to this day, I'm just still so blown away. We had an incredible board member come forward and offer to give us the money to purchase the land for us to build a resource center on. And that was the beginning of, by this point in time, we were able to start kind of figuring out what even is a capital campaign.
We had a really amazing staff by then and had an amazing director of development named Lisa Schlarbaum, who you're going to meet on this podcast. And Lisa, she never backs down from a challenge. Wait till you meet her. She is. She's fearless, you guys. Like, she was so on board with, we can do this. We can raise what it takes to not only buy this land, but also to build this resource center. In further episodes, you're going to get to hear from Lisa and others who were a part of building that resource center. And you're going to get to hear kind of the next part of the story of what happened after the resource center dream got started. And with that, I'm going to take us to a little bit of a commercial break, and when I come back, you're going to get to meet one of my heroes, one of our alumni teamia, who is just so incredible and brave and strong and I can't wait for you to meet her. Be back in just a minute.
[00:45:38] Speaker B: Hi everyone, it's Emmy. I'm the development officer here at Hope House. I'm so excited to share that. Our 11th annual Hope House Five K in Fun Run is coming up on Saturday, May 4 at the APec center in Arvada. Make sure you register soon because early bird pricing ends on April 18. All proceeds will go towards empowering teen moms. We have a beautiful paved course along the Ralston Creek trail. We'll also have a vendor village, live music, music and fun for the whole family. For more details, check out our events
[email protected]. Dot we can't wait to see you there.
[00:46:10] Speaker A: I'm so excited. We are back and TMIA has joined me. I can't wait for you to meet her. We left off talking about how we had started providing GED classes and mentoring program at the church next door to Hope House. And what happened next in the story of buying our property is that in and part of rezoning is that you have to have a neighborhood meeting and talk to the neighbors about what you're doing and what your plans are. So we had this whole meeting set up and we met at the church next door. And all the neighbors came and some of them were pretty supportive, but there were a few who were definitely not supportive and really loved having an empty field that was sitting there that we were going to, of course, build a building on and potentially block their view of, I guess, the field. And so there were a few contentious people. There was one, one gentleman in particular who was just kind of problematic and made the unfortunate statement that I still to this day just floors me, that he said, but he literally had the microphone and said, we don't want your warehouse full of unwanted kids in our backyard. And I had a microphone that I wanted to beat him over the head with, but I refrained and just, it just struck me like this is part of the reason we're doing this podcast. Life reviewed. He had this idea in his head about who teen moms were and what it was going to be like to have teen moms around his, you know, in his neighborhood. And he was so wrong. He had such a wrong view of who teen moms were and the life and the energy and the joy that they and their children would actually bring into our community and bring into our neighborhood. It just was. It just struck me. And unfortunately, we've maybe not. I don't know where that relationship is. But he has not called us or caused any issues for us since then. I guess he hopefully has seen that we've been just a beautiful addition to our neighborhood and our community. But what happened the next day was that I got a call from the city of Arvada and our planner, Carol said, hey. And one of the questions last night was, why are there so many people coming in and out of that house all the time? And I was like, well, because we have our mentoring program and our GED program and all this stuff we're doing. And she's like, yeah, you're not allowed to do that. You guys have a residential use permit for your residential program. You've got to move all that other programming out of your house. And we're going to give you two weeks to do that. I'm like, what? What do you mean? Like, we are. We don't have any money to pay rent somewhere else. I mean, and once again, I'm standing there arguing with God, like, oh, great, what are we going to do now? And we put the word out to our champions that we had grown so much. We had all these programs we were doing that weren't residential. We had to move probably two thirds of our staff and all of the girls who are not living in the house, all that programming somewhere else. The totally ironic part is the gentleman who came to our rescue owned a good portion, if not most, of the warehouse space across the city of Denver. And he offered to let us move into some warehouse space in Westminster. It was a small space, about 2200. He offered to let us move there for free for one year of rent free. It ended up taking us. Well, let's just say I called him every single year for about six years to ask if, hey, David, could we have one more year free? Because it took a lot longer to rezone and build a resource center than I would have expected it to and to complete this capital campaign. In the meantime, we moved all of our, you know, half our staff and our mamas into this warehouse space. We painted it. We had amazing champions come alongside us to make it look beautiful and look like Hope House. And that's kind of where Tymia comes in, because I'd love to ask you, Teamia, what was your first. The first time you walked into Hope House, what did it feel like?
[00:50:13] Speaker B: Yeah, the first time I walked into Hope House, I had a feeling of kind of like intimidation because I come from a place where it's very quiet and you don't go out of line, and it's kind of, you know, stepping on eggshells. So when I first came into Hope House, the old RC center, I was scared, I was intimidated. But right as I stepped inside of the building, I was greeted by all of the staff members. I was getting hugs, I was getting praise. Like, I'm so glad you're here. And these people had acted like they've known me for years and years when I had just stepped inside of the building. It's probably one of my favorite memories at the old RC as well.
[00:50:50] Speaker A: Oh, I love that. And tell me a little bit about growing up. Tell me about that. I get that. Walking on eggshells, that was like my family home, too.
[00:51:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Life was very uncertain for me as far as navigating being a new mom in this world and also not having a stable place to live and thrive and learn all of these things that I needed to at that age.
So I was not as confident or as knowledgeable.
I slept on the floor in a basement for a while. I bounced around from home to home, really wherever I could that felt safe for me and my kiddo. You know, I would try to, you know, get a place there for a little bit, but it was never, you know, a permanent situation, and it never felt safe.
[00:51:37] Speaker A: Just a lot of instability. And that's so true for so many of our mamas that just have to move around a lot. Whenever the situation changes at home, which is frequent, things just blow up a lot in their lives and in their homes, and then they're moving a lot from place to place, and their children, of course, are moving a lot with them. Tell me a little bit about when you first came to Hope House. Why'd you come? What did you think maybe we would be able to do with you or empower you?
[00:52:07] Speaker B: Yeah. I was actually working as a waitress at Great Scott's eatery when Jackie, she was already a part of. Of Hope House kept on talking to me about it every shift. She would tell me the different classes they had to offer, what they could help me with, letting me know that I wasn't alone, letting me know that there was a program out there that was for me, even though I was shy and intimidated and very easily pushed down by other people.
So one day, she was like, let's go get some lunch. And I was like, okay. So I got in her car, noticed we were going a little bit farther than usual, you know? So I was like, oh, what are we doing? And all of a sudden, we pulled up to this, like, warehouse building, and she's like, okay, let's go. And I was like, there's not food here. Like, where are we at? And so I went in the building, and that was the first time I went into the RC was, you know, just hearing about all of these classes and the programs and the love, the family environment that they had to offer made me feel even more comfortable walking in there, even though I was scared out of my mind.
[00:53:09] Speaker A: Aw, I love that. And just so everybody knows, we are little inside language, as we call our resource center, the RC. So when you hear us saying RC, that's our resource center. So, TMIA, what in that first, probably two years of being in the small, little, tiny resource center, what did you accomplish? What things did you do?
[00:53:31] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness. I accomplished way more than what I would have without Hope House. I accomplished my GED in a matter of about a month's time with all the studying and help and the rides. The rides were the biggest thing. The transportation was the hardest for me. I wasn't going to be able to make it back and forth from the resource center or even to the college to go take my GED test. So I accomplished my GED. I did parenting classes. I did healthy relationships.
I put legend in daycare when I was there, which was another hard thing for me.
But Hope House made me feel like everything was safe and that I was safe. That was the biggest thing for me, is that me and my child were safe and we always had a place to go if there was no other option.
[00:54:20] Speaker A: I love that. I love, like, I think back to those days of you studying in the resource center, and you are so smart. Like you guys, if you knew Tymia, I mean, she really did accomplish her ged. And probably like, like four weeks or something, it was you. It was so fast. Like, you just breezed through that. And I know you have. I'll also tell you guys, TMIA is one of the hardest workers I have ever met. So she will literally, and has for years now supported herself largely through waitressing, although I know you have bigger dreams, and I'm going to ask you about those, but I've been blown away by how you have managed to put a roof over you and legend's head and pay your bills, really? By working so hard. Tell me a little bit about what's life like as a single mom trying to make rent.
[00:55:16] Speaker B: Yeah. Life as a single mom has its ups and downs. You know, as far as bills go, he's mainly the thing that keeps me going and keeps me motivated to, you know, keep all of this stuff that I've worked so hard for, just taking extra jobs as I can, working extra hours, coming to Hope house when I need help, you know, that's the biggest thing. I was always scared to ask for help before I'll do it myself or nobody's gonna help me type thing. But ever since I became a part of Hope House, it's been, if you ever need any help, we're a family, we're gonna help you. And that also keeps me very motivated as well.
[00:55:56] Speaker A: Oh, I love that. That's. And that's so true. Like, most of the teen mommas we work with just don't have, like, really strong support networks. They don't have strong support systems or their support systems kind of are in and out of their life when it's convenient for them. And so not having the basics like needing help with things like filling your refrigerator with food. But I think almost even more importantly, is just having that consistent message that you matter and that you are beautiful and strong and worthy, and God loves you so much. Tell me a little bit about how you bumped into God at Hope House. What did that look like for you? Yeah.
[00:56:35] Speaker B: Hope House has definitely given me a passageway to God and helped me learn more about what he's done for us and what he's done for me and my son. You know, even the little things that people tend to overlook, you know, I've became way more thankful for them every single day.
I've started praying, and thankfully, it's gotten me far because I know that I have Hope House and I have God, and I have the support from the family that I've made for me. And legend, I love that.
[00:57:04] Speaker A: And I love that you bring that up, the family you've made for you and legend, because I think the other thing is that we sometimes think that we have this idea of teenage parents and what their relationships look like. But you did a lot of work. I mean, I know you did a lot of counseling, a lot of work on healthy relationships. Tell me about you and Dom. Dom is not legend's dad biologically, but Dom is his dad in so many other ways. Tell me about you guys.
[00:57:34] Speaker B: Yeah, he's definitely not his father, but he's definitely a dad to him. He does everything with him. He takes him to school, picks him up. When I can't, they'll go out to McDonald's and go out to the jumping place. And just having a male figure in his life that's consistent and constant and just lifts him up any way that he can, whether it's positive, whether it's, oh, you're feeling a little sad, let's go get some ice cream. You know, it's that much more support for me to feel comfortable and feel like, okay, I have another support system, so my life is getting better. It's not staying stagnant, it's just continuing to grow.
[00:58:13] Speaker A: I love that so much. So I definitely want to talk about where you are now. But first tell me. Tell me a little bit about like, what your dreams are in the future. And I know you will get there because I've watched you grow. So TMIA has been a part of Hope House since she was, what, 1716 years old? And she's 25 now. So I've watched her grow over these several years and watched legend grow, which you guys, he's like a little linebacker, he's such. And he loves pizza.
But tell me a little bit about your dreams. What do you want to do with your future one day?
[00:58:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I've always wanted to be a mortician, like a funeral director, that sort of thing. It came like, as a very young age, I just wanted to help people, and that seemed like the best thing for me was to help them through grief because I've felt enough of it and I kind of know, you know, the ways to handle it and cope with it. And I've always loved the science behind it as well. You know, my uncle used to own a funeral home, and so I guess that's kind of how I got drawn to it. So, yeah, that's my hopes and my goals is to own my own funeral home and take care of the family legacy and how maybe if legend wants to and he can own it afterwards, you never know. Life is an open book.
[00:59:35] Speaker A: I love that so much. And I love just in the theme of our podcast, life reviewed, I have this idea in my head of who a mortician is. And it's not a cute, tiny, little spunky, sparkly eyed, brown haired girl who's the funeral director and the mortician. In my head, it's like, you know, some old bent over guy with a top hat for some reason.
But I mean, I'm sitting here looking at her and she just has a smile that lights up her face from ear to ear and dimples, you guys, if you could see her, but you would definitely be the type of person that would bring joy to people in that time when it there's not a lot of joy, and it's hard. So I so look forward to getting to see you meet that dream. But tell us about another dream that you've had and that you've worked so hard for. Coming from moving around so much, sleeping on the floor, living in renting apartments, where literally people were raising your rent indiscriminately, and you never knew when you were going to, like, get slapped with another rent increase. Tell us about where you are today and how you got there.
[01:00:36] Speaker B: Yeah, so I'm very happy to say that on this month. So March 1 was the first mortgage payment that I've made that I will continue to make every month on the first.
It shows me that I worked so hard for this. I never gave up, even though there was multiple times where I just wanted to give up and not go through with it. But there was something, God in Hope house, telling me that you have to do that you can do this. There's just no way that you can stop now. You're already so far, you know, and paying that first mortgage payment and watching the money go out of my bank wasn't a sad feeling like it usually is when I paid rent. It's like, this is mine. This is something that is mine in legends, you know, and I can do what I want with it and, you know, keep it up the way that I want. And it just feels great to not have somebody tell us, like, oh, you know, we're raising your rent 500 more dollars and to where I can't afford it, or I can't afford to keep, you know, groceries in my fridge or gas in my car to get places. This is to where I know that I can make it every month, and I know that I'm going to be safe, and I know that I'm going to be happy.
[01:01:45] Speaker A: And what are some of the ways that Hope House has been a part of that journey of, like, preparing you for home ownership and kind of even now decorating?
[01:01:53] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. So Hope House held these home buying classes, and so I took two of them before I actually got into the process. It's just to make sure that I understood most of the lingo and the terms used and everything, and to make sure that it was actually going to be a doable goal for me at this point in time. And so I worked with Eamon Leonard, which he's become family to me now. He's one of the old high school teachers that used to teach at my high school, so we already had that sort of relationship. He never gave up. He answered his phone from 09:00 in the morning to 09:00 at night, Monday through Sunday. You know, he was always here for me. He was working around ways to actually make sure that we got it.
[01:02:35] Speaker A: Wait, so he just so happened to also be a Hope house volunteer and he worked at your old high school? Yes. Yes.
[01:02:40] Speaker B: So that was the funny part. When I first seen him here, I was like, he looks really familiar. And I was kind of staring at him, and I was hoping that he wouldn't get the wrong idea or, like, think, oh, my goodness, what is this? You know, lady looking at? But no. And he's like, you, what school did you go to? And we just started talking, and he's like, I used to teach at that school. And I was like, mister leonard. I was like, I remember it was just. Just crazy. Like, just the way the world, the universe works. Everything is supposed to happen for a reason.
[01:03:08] Speaker A: I really believe all those connections. I love, love, love that about hope house, how God just weaves it all together and he weaves together all these connections and all these people that right when you need them, like, right when you need it to learn more about home buying. And then here he is. Kind of came alongside you guys and tell me what it was like to get the keys.
[01:03:30] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness. Getting the keys was such a surreal moment. It didn't feel real at first until I was jingling them in my hands and making sure that the key fit the door. Oh, my gosh. That was the main thing. I held my breath and I put the key in the door and I turned it and everything worked. It was a sense of relief and a big sense of accomplishment that I've never felt in my life before that moment.
[01:03:54] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh, I love it. And tell me about kind home painting. Yes.
[01:03:57] Speaker B: Oh, kind home. They're amazing team and amazing people.
They came to my house, spent hours with me and legend and Dom, just picking out house colors and making sure that it was going to blend well together.
They kept on saying, in a perfect world, would this be done? Would this be done? And I was like, well, yeah, in a perfect world, but I'm not going to ask for it. I don't want to go too much into asking for things. And by the time I got the keys back, after only the two and a half days that they worked on it, it looked amazing. I had backsplash in my kitchen. I had my accent wall door is purple. That was the biggest thing. You know, she asked me, she's like, would your door be a different color in a perfect world. And I said, yes, ma'am, it would be purple. And so I come back to a purple door.
[01:04:44] Speaker A: I love it because there's a purple door on Hope House. That's so awesome. Yep.
[01:04:49] Speaker B: So it was just an amazing, surreal experience to walk into a freshly painted house that, you know, somebody cared enough about my family to do something like that for us.
[01:04:59] Speaker A: I just love that we had the privilege of getting to do a little video with kind tone painting. And the young man who was doing the videoing said it was just so crazy because he's like, we're house painters. But to get to do that and to donate that work and be a part of seeing the joy, especially of legend in his room and picking out the colors of his room was, like, so cool for them. And kind of another example of the way we view, even kind of. Of view our jobs and going to work every day and a job is just a job, but when we all are coming together to do beautiful things, it can be so much more than that. So give us kind of to cap things off. Tell me, what would you say to some of the brand new mamas walking through the doors at Hope House? Because they probably have this. This view or lens that you maybe had when you came in the door the first time. Tell me what you would say to them.
[01:05:54] Speaker B: This is completely a judgment free zone. Be yourself. Do what makes you comfortable.
Know every staff member, whether it's a hi or how are you, or a hug in the morning or whenever you see them, you know, do that for them, because they will definitely remember your face. They will always say hi to you, always hug you, and always congratulate you, even over the minor accomplishments that you may think so small. You know, they do notice, and they will. And take every class that they have to offer. That is one thing that I am so grateful that I did before I aged out of the program was that I took every single class, whether that was budgeting, healthy relationships. I took it, you know, twice, three times when I was here, you know, just to make sure that, you know, I was doing good in life and I was making the right decisions, not only for me, but, you know, for my child. Because once you have children, you know, you don't only make decisions for yourself, you make it as a whole family.
And I think Hope House really helped me, you know, distinguish what was important and what was, you know, what I was feeling was important and that it didn't need to be pushed down anymore. So, yeah, take all the classes and know all the staff members, and it's worth it.
[01:07:01] Speaker A: I love that. And I just have to say, before we say goodbye today, I am so incredibly proud of you, Tymia. Like, I have watched you grow from a fairly shy young girl coming through the doors with your baby to this confident, mature, strong, beautiful woman. And it's such a privilege to be a part of your life. So thank you for joining us today.
[01:07:25] Speaker B: Thank you, Lisa. And thank you, Hope House, for having me. I really appreciate everything. And to all the new mamas out there, we love you already.
[01:07:32] Speaker A: Bye, guys.
[01:07:33] Speaker B: Bye.
Outro Music: Precious soul? The things I didn't know? The things I didn't know? About you?
O precious soul? The things I didn't know? The things I didn't know? About you?
About you...
