Jacob and Nicky are houseparents at New Song Mission in Freetown, Indiana. New Song is actively hiring houseparents!

How long have you been married?
We met while working at a camp in North Carolina and we have been married for 7 years.

How would you describe each other?
Nicky is kind, loving, resourceful, and fun to be around! All these gifts that God has given her enable her to be a great house mom to the boys.
Jacob is funny, energetic, compassionate, patient, creative, and always up for an adventure. He is very talented at building and creating things.

When did you first realize God gave you a heart for vulnerable children?
January of 2020, we got a phone call asking us if we would be willing to foster a baby that was born the day before. We had about 12 hours to give them an answer. After a few hours of prayer, we said yes and a few days later we met Joshua for the first time. After a few years of foster care God allowed us to adopt him. Through the process of fostering and adopting Joshua we saw and heard of so many vulnerable children. While it was not easy, we are so thankful for this time in our life and how God used it to shape our hearts desires.

What experiences did you have before becoming houseparents at New Song that have helped you in your house parenting role?
We have had the privilege of working with children and teens for many years. We have had the opportunity to work at camp for several years in many different roles in our college years. Jacob has served as a youth pastor at two churches and an afternoon director for a boys’ home that worked with intercity teenaged boys. Nicky was a nanny when we first got married, a super involved youth pastor’s wife, and an amazing mom to our three boys.

What has blessed you the most since coming to live and work on campus?
We love working at New Song!! The campus is amazing and we love getting to live in the middle of God’s awesome creation. One of the greatest blessings is the opportunity to serve with the amazing team that God has put together at New Song.

What activities have you most enjoyed doing with the boys?
Anything outdoors!! God has blessed us with an incredibly mild winter and we have been able to enjoy riding bikes, watching all the awesome wildlife on the property (we even named of few of the deer that come around all the time), playing in the snow the couple of days that winter wasn’t so mild, and several basketball and soccer games. We have also enjoyed having the boys stay with us one weekend a month and having the ability to experience activities off campus such as snowtubing and going to a trampoline park.

Have you had any meaningful conversations or experiences with any of the boys so far that have stood out to you?
We love the family setting that New Song allows us to give the boys. There have been several times we have been able to share an experience that is new to the boys. It might be a new food that they have never had, or a new experience like cooking, woodworking, or a new game. While it may be a little outside their comfort zone at first, they typically end up loving it. We have also been able to have meaningful conversations during discipleship time. We have been able to present the Gospel to our students. One of our students enjoyed learning how what is in our hearts comes out in our actions, and that the root of all of our sin starts in the heart.

How have you managed to both do your ministry with the New Song boys while also parenting your own three sons? Has that been challenging? Has it worked out well?
God has blessed us with three incredible boys, Jonathan (5), Nathaniel (3), and Joshua (3). This has been our biggest challenge, but God has given much grace. For our boys, learning to share mom and dad in the afternoons has been an adjustment for them but one they are doing well with. Overall, it is working out well. The students interact well with our boys. If our boys miss out on an activity because they are too young to be involved, the New Song students often try to figure out a way they can participate in the future. They will often be in the living room playing with toys together or swinging on the swings together. Our prayer for our three boys is that God would give them a heart that desires to serve others and that they would realize that they can do that even at a young age.

Now that you have been house parenting the last couple of months, how does it compare to what you had envisioned it being?
It’s everything that we have hoped it would be and more!! Before we came to New Song we were praying for an opportunity to serve vulnerable children together in a family setting and we get to do just that on a daily basis. God is so good!

What has been your experience so far working together as a husband and wife in ministry?
Working as husband-and-wife team in a home setting is so wonderful! Working together at camp, youth pastoring, and now at New Song we have always had the opportunity to serve together, and we find that we are most effective in serving God when we can do it together! We love that we can be a part of modeling what God wants a family and home to look like. It is cool to see how God uses our strengths and weaknesses to compliment each other while growing each of us in those areas at the same time.

How have you seen God moving at New Song?
One of our favorite things about working at New Song is the daily opportunities for discipleship! Whether that is in a formal setting or an informal setting as we do life together, we love that we get to share Christ’s love on a daily basis to the boys in our home. As we look back over the last couple months we have seen a growing appetite for spiritual things, an increased respect for others, and an increased desire to do right. We are thankful for the progress they have made and continue to pray that God would give them a heart for Him.

If you would like to learn more about houseparenting at New Song, view their profile page!

(This blog post is re-posted on houseparent.com with permission from New Song Mission. It first appeared here).