Our good friends at Project 1.27 shared some very encouraging news from Colorado yesterday.  According to the Colorado State Division of Child Welfare, the number of foster children in need of adoption has been reduced to only 365 for the entire state.  Just five years ago, that number sat at 875.  This means more than 500 fewer children today are waiting to be adopted than were five years ago.  Sharen Ford, who helps oversee the state government’s efforts to find homes for foster children, has shared with me that Project 1.27 has played a vital role in this success—recruiting, training, and supporting foster families through ministries rooted in local church communities.   (Incidentally, the 100^th adoption directly facilitated by 1.27 will be finalized on February 23.  The soon-to-be-former-foster-youth is 16, currently recovering from cancer and is stabilizing now with the family that will stick with him forever.)  Alongside 1.27, another Alliance member organization, Focus on the Family, has played a key role as well.  The powerful “Wait No More” events hosted by Focus and a wide array of church partners to stir Colorado’s churches to embrace foster children has resulted in hundreds of Christian families entering the process to become foster and/or adoptive parents.   What a tremendous picture of Christians rising to God’s call to care for orphans in their distress…changing the reality for an entire state’s foster system, and countless precious children, as a result!