Ben and Julie Agee

We have been married for almost 25 years and are parents to 6 children.  Over the years we have worked with children at risk in a variety of different ways.  We first encountered the overwhelming needs of orphans when we began the adoption process to bring our first daughter home from China.  But our eyes were not truly opened until we experienced not being able to complete the adoption of another daughter because she aged out before we could bring her home.  It was then that our hearts were broken for those children who never get adopted and have a forever family.  It was as if God was asking, “Who is going to tell these children about me?”  After our daughter aged out, “House of Hope” opened it’s doors in Central Asia.  This home was a transition home for teens who aged out of the orphanages.  We had native house parents in place in the home country and we ran the organization from the states.  At the same time we also began working with more at risk children in orphanages in Honduras and Nicaragua.  We began taking teams to join us in these works.  During all of this we began the process to Foster-to-adopt in the United States.  We completed all of the requirements and were matched.  Just as we were getting to begin the adoption process, our foster daughter’s biological father was found–and he wanted her.  Our hearts were ecstatic that she was able to begin the healing of the trauma she endured, but also hurting from the loss.  Fast forward a couple of years, we hosted an Orphan Sunday Event at our home church.  As a result of that event we fell in love with a picture of a little girl in China who had a special need of blindness in one eye and began the process to bring her home.  Along the way, our adoption agency asked us to advocate for a teenage girl who was also blind in one eye and was about to age out.  For a second time we fell in love, and started the process to bring her home also.  Both girls came home in November 2011.   We both had planned to retire in our later years and then spend our remaining years doing orphan ministry in a variety of countries.  But during the summer of 2015 while on a mission trip to Honduras, God clearly gave us the marching orders to not wait till retirement, but to go–“Now”.   It is in obedience to our God that we are moving to Honduras to begin a new mission to children at risk.  It is our hearts desire to help them to create a New Beginning in their life.