Nearly 12 years had passed since Marty and Jackie Montgomery had been married, and still they had no children. Since the couple did not feel God wanted them to pursue infertility treatments, they automatically considered adoption when God prompted them to think seriously about having children in 2004.
But it soon became obvious that God had a different plan for them.
A few months after the Montgomerys began attending group preparation and selection (adoption and fostering) classes in 2005, they were approached by several friends and co-workers who told them about children in need of foster homes.
"It was really strange how all of a sudden in one week we were led to about four sets of children that needed a home," said Jackie Montgomery, a member of Grant’s Creek Baptist Church, Fosters, in Tuscaloosa Baptist Association. "You could see how God was leading us to have children that way."
Immediately after finishing the training courses in September 2005, the couple received their first foster children, a 14-year-old girl and her 6-year-old brother. About nine months later, the Montgomerys took in a 2-month-old baby, and a few months after that, they received three siblings ages 16, 14 and 6.
In less than one year, the couple went from having no children to raising six foster children, the state’s maximum. As the family grew and its 3,600-square-foot, five-bedroom home filled up very quickly, the Montgomerys saw God’s constant provision for their family.
"God has blessed us with our house and our finances and it’s totally Him," said Marty Montgomery, youth minister of Grant’s Creek Baptist.
To have more time with the children, Jackie Montgomery quit her job as a Mary Kay cosmetics sales director after 17 years with the company. "The needs of foster children are greater because they have emotional stuff going on from what happened to them," she said. "It’s not like raising your own children from birth. You’ve got to be more available."
Marty Montgomery added, "These kids have been entrusted to us. We just take them like they are our own."
The Montgomerys see foster parenting as a ministry in which they help the children become involved in church and stay connected to their biological families.
And the couple is seeing the fruits of their labor. In September 2006, one of their children accepted Christ, and recently one child’s grandfather became a Christian after the family referred him to a church in his community, according to Jackie Montgomery.
"To me, that is the ultimate goal — to raise them to hopefully be Christians," she said. "The state doesn’t want you to force your beliefs on the children, and we don’t want to do that. We want them to gravitate to what we believe because of what they see in us and our church family."
The Montgomerys’ willingness to open their home to six children has touched many of their fellow church members, according to Michael Griffin, pastor of Grant’s Creek Baptist.
"To give children who have not had an opportunity to know what real love was about an opportunity to receive that genuine love of Christ and of a family that they would possibly never receive (demonstrates) their genuine commitment to the cause of Christ," he said of the couple.
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