It is Saturday lunch. The Moncada family sits together in the dining room and there is chatter. Alex helps 16-month-old Rose with her pasta. Her attention fixes on a tiger appearing on the family room’s television. Her eyes widen as she lets out a big roar. Her sisters, seven-year-old Hayli and six-year-old Lynlee, pay little attention and Claudia encourages them to finish before they can be excused from the table. Older brother 12-year-old Joshua asks
for seconds. The scene is heart warming—a modern-day Norman Rockwell painting in 3D.
It is a stark contrast from the life Hayli and Lynlee lived before being placed in foster care and ultimately adopted by Claudia and Alex Moncada along with baby sister Rose last October.
The older sisters were severely neglected and abused. The trauma they had experienced impacted them with life-altering force. There was no dining table nor meals at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They did not have baths every day, sleep in warm beds, or wear good clothes, unsoiled and untattered.
“The situations children in foster care come from are heartbreaking,” BCH’s Director of Foster Care Jada Cable says. “It is challenging when a child leaves that life and comes into a loving environment. The child’s brain has to be rewired back to what God intended.”
Claudia and Alex moved to New York City from Colombia, South America pursuing careers in information technology. Claudia had been recruited and sponsored by the company for whom she worked. Alex worked in Colombia for another company and came
to New York when he was assigned to a project Claudia managed. Romance bloomed while working together, the two fell in love, and they married in 2007.
Beginning the family they wanted proved difficult as they dreamt of having a baby. After nearly six years of marriage, Joshua was born in 2012.
“Joshua was everything we had hoped,” Claudia recalls. “We felt complete, but Joshua had other ideas. He was six when he began praying for a baby brother.”
The couple moved to North Carolina in 2020 during the pandemic and worked remote. Although a fostering experience in New York proved heart wrenching, the Moncadas were intent to try again. They became BCH licensed foster parents in March 2021 and set
their attention on fostering a boy—hoping to answer Joshua’s prayers. “They knew boys,” Cable says. “They got girls—sisters. You could hear God laugh when I called.”
Through the EVERY CHILD Foster & Adopt partnership with NC Baptists, BCH recruits and trains Christian families to become licensed foster care families. Families commit to care for and love a child for a brief or extended period of time with the goal of the child returning to their biological families. When reunifi-
cation is not possible, the focus shifts towards finding a permanent home for the child. The ultimate goal then becomes adoption.
Hayli and Lynlee came into the Moncada home in November 2021 at ages four and three. Baby Rose was born on Sunday, November 27, 2022 and five days later, Friday, December 2, she joined her sisters.
“We were a little unsure, but when you know you are supposed to do something, you do it,” Claudia asserts. “This was meant to be. They were not going anywhere else.”
Joshua was not convinced his prayers had been answered. He had hoped for a boy and now he was living with three girls. The change was going to be challenging for everyone.
The two little girls had suffered big trauma. It would take great
patience, compassion, and commitment. The adjustment was especially difficult for Lynlee. There were outbursts and times when she became violent, striking out at Hayli and children in her preschool class. The Moncadas did not give up. She was struggling, coming from a bad place to a good place, and needed assurance. The change was not sudden, but Claudia’s and Alex’s efforts began to bear fruit. Lynlee smiled more often, played, and laughed as the cares of her past became more and more distant.
Hayli had her struggles, too. After one trying time, she announced her plans to leave. Claudia was suspect, but went along, offering to help the girl pack. Hayli was defiant until Joshua came down the stairs and learned of the news. Instead of turning and going back upstairs, he looked at Hayli and tears began to fill his eyes. She was
not the brother he had hoped for, but she was part of his family. Hayli began to cry and confessed she did not really want to leave.
The girls becoming part of the Moncada family was not a joke but a divine plan—one that was “meant to be.” A plan in which God moved two people from another country to North Carolina so Hayli, Lynlee, and Rose could be adopted and find the care they desperately needed.
NOTE: There are more than 10,000 children in the NC foster care system. Learn how you and your church can be the answer to this incredible need through the EVERY CHILD foster and adopt partnership between Baptist Children's Homes and NC Baptists.
By Jim Edminson, Charity & Children Editor