With these thoughts in mind, you probably ask what is in the future? Well, I am at a loss on several fronts. I wish I had the answers. ODFT is in a "wilderness" state. (see Psalms 107:4-6)

We are continuing to advise those who come to us with all sorts of problems. Many times it is just helping them get on the right path to others, who can really give them the help they need. Other times it is Jill and I who offer some degree of advocacy and peace of mind. We continue to uphold parents in their quest to solve problems with their children and this often turns to their own relationship first. Because of this we spend time with couples or single parents finding the helpful spiritual and temporal techniques of correcting, forgiving, and gaining control of their emotions and households. Jill and I try to help those foster parents and families we work with to hold it together long enough to see God working, which He already is, in their lives. We spend an inordinate amount of time in restaurant, parks and coffee shops talking. For me, most often I'm with teens themselves. We are not shrinks. We are parents with experience, missionaries to the families of DuPage County, leaders in the Wheaton Bible Church Youth Group, Student Body, we are frail, weak people trying to do God's will.

Why Wilderness?

So, why am I in the "wilderness"?

Like everyone we have our challenges, problems, and illnesses. My biggest challenge and worry is that Open Door appears to be more than prepared to return to using the Coloma Place home for the intended ministry we purchased it for. God has chosen differently, but why? I have thought for about a year that God wanted the neighborhood to heal from the damage done by our former foster parents to our reputation and the property. We have had many work projects by dozens of volunteers from Wheaton Bible Church small groups, a core group, and the Local Missions work day, as well as the "Interact Rotary Club" at Oswego East High School. They have exemplified the support and dedication of diverse groups of people for the teens we provide for.

Our Morse St. Home has been very active, just like our home on Glencoe Street as well. Both homes have each had about four teens all year long. What is next for this year? We want to get the Coloma Place Home manned with a Christian family (if you know a family willing let me know). This family could minister to girls or older young women.

Jill and I have experimented in the area of providing a home, mentoring, and discipleship to many older teens and young women for several years now. It has a different feel and it takes different skills (mostly patience and perseverance). It has the same goals: bring Jesus to all, keep the women safe, and help them develop into women who will be a blessing to God and to the community.

Waiting for God

I am in the "wilderness" personally as well.

I have for many years based what I am on what I can accomplish. It is not happening the way in which I wanted it. I have witnessed many miraculous things in my life but they were not from my effort. I have had more jobs than most people have had and a grifter like that should not have had much success. I have seen many people come to Christ, and change their lives for the good of others, but I continue to maintain the same "old man" inside me. He is just not so evident on the outside.

I become jealous of other organizations with what appears to be greater success. I get jealous of the youth I work with because the have the opportunity to do it all better than I ever did or will. I worry in ways I never have before - retirement funds, old age health for Jill and I, Jill's Mom's health, my children's and grand children's faith, morals (faith and morals most of all) and health, their futures on this earth, and for some their futures in eternity.

Will the girl that sleeps in the next room from Jill and I be alive the next morning, or will she starve to death, or cut herself and make a mistake with the razor? Even with these issues in our lives and being in the "wilderness" of our lives we can be effective for the Lord. ("In season and out of season") (2 Tim 4: 1-8) We must be prepared to be called on in His good time. I am! I just wish He would give me the encouragement of Foster/House Parents for the Coloma Place Home.

Jesus - Lord & Savior: Worthy of Obedience

What I now want to hand down, and be my life's work for all who listen to me, is to realize our worries are not of much consequence. We may have them, but they change little in the longevity or quality of our existence. We often hear platitudes that may influence you, or you may have heard them too often to be anything but drivel. I personally believe the platitudes but they still are all too often spoken and these may be a couple: Jesus has taken all your worries, and He bore your stripes on the cross.

He did this! Can you believe it? No! Why? Do you believe in Jesus as your Savior from your sins? I do, but the above mentioned platitudes do not change my behavior. What does? The knowledge that God through Jesus has provided the salvation but I must believe then act! Correct? Act!!!!

Act how? Act good? I don't think I can. I do think I can be changed by His Holy Spirit as I work out my salvation! I work out my salvation! Heresy! No, it isn't. (Philippians 2:12 -18) (Editor's Note: "work out" is not the same as "work for".)

I live in this body today and someday I will have a new body in what we evangelicals call "eternity". Fun word - hah! Nevertheless, now we must act in this body! The two acts we need "to do" are to allow the slow process of God, through the Holy Spirit: to peel the onion layers of our sin, and to do His work of healing our sins, physical & mental aliments and worries. Our acting is "to do"!

Let me say that again, "to do" I must walk and let Him guide my feet. I must "do acts" that bring worship and honor to the Almighty Lord of Lords, the one and only God.

The two parts of our "to do's" are one, OBEY and, two, TO ACT FOR GOD!

Yes, I must obey, as I do my parents, and I must "do" as an independent adult does. The "obeyer" is often still an immature Christian. The "doer" has overcome the guilt given by Satan and knows he must act for God, regardless of what he may have done only moments before. God will take the pain for the sins, but He has mandated we "do" for Him. (Matt 28:18-20) Satan wants to cripple us with guilt and not allow us "to do" for God. He can not stop us from being saved. It is sealed. But he can ruin our work for God. Don't let him! That is my life's message, even as I am in the dessert. We, you, and I must be "doers" even when we are not ready ("in season and out of season").

That is where I am going this year. I will not be robbed of the joy of serving Him, even if I don't think I am accomplishing what my ego thinks is successful.

The Disciple of Jesus: Paul (PJ)

In Christ's Service for the Community,

Paul & Jill Keenon
Open Door for Teens, Inc.

You have helped us financially, and as what we do for others produces no tangible product, we have been truly blessed with friends that have believed in our vision. They must have faith in the cause, and that we are called to it by our Savior. We often don't see the results of our work, and if we do, it is many years later. Our work is esoteric and appears to be fleeting. So much of it is spiritual or private that most people will never know what we do or who we help. It all seems so mysterious!

Many years ago our mentor, Chris Ellerman, told us, "you may never know what influence you will be having allowed young people to see your family" in all its raw reality. Well, that may be the case: many teens, families, therapists, and case workers have looked long and deep in to our lives from the moment of truth in 1983, when I called Jill and told her about a girl. She was living in a home for girls having problems with their families. A young teen friend of mine introduced us to her and Jill and I, together, miraculously agreed we would like to "get a hold" of this girl.

We both longed to teach her how to be a lady, help her control her aggrandizing and deceiving behavior, and to love again for the first time in her life. She is still in our lives today, is in her late thirties, and is married to a man whom she has been with for many years. When we fostered her, we were confident that we could change her, but she was a challenge. We didn’t, but she made choices to grow and be her own person. Since then, many other successes and failures have lived in our home. Chris's advice was prophetic, and we would realize after many years how important it was. It became the purist form of "Life Style Evangelism."

Taught by Many Mentors
Many mentors were not only an encouragement but of great importance as well! Jim Nyquist at Inter Varsity Press taught me to think quality, with a plan. Bill Burns, West Chicago School District, taught me to not look back at mistakes, but to look forward to what we do to fix our mistakes. My father, Jerry, and mother, Kay, taught us to serve children with pride as a calling from God, always accepting them with unwavering, unconditional love, not matter what their sin or problem. AG and Shirley Sutton, our spiritual grandparents, encouraged us when they sponsored us to go to our first parenting conference, upon which we base all of our parenting principals. They have taught us how important it is to say what you believe and stand by it.

Our Board has changed members over the years. All have been mentors in one or more areas. Many have provided more than we could ask for.

• Dr. Paul and Janet Jordan were inspiring through their confidence giving advice and their believing in the needs of the teens Jill and I described to them.
• Dennis and Jackie Bentz have been mentors from the day we darkened the door of Warrenville Bible Chapel, over thirty years ago and have taught us to be humble and to endure.
• Ed and Norma Felske have sharpened us with the steel of exhortation.
• Paul Van Der Molen and his wife, who have given of time, talent, and the financial foundation for all the foster homes, taught us to ask the hard questions.
• The stalwartness of retired Board Members, Curt and Sue Wallace, the original Golf Marathon organizers and promoters will never be forgotten. Exuberance and the love of life is their forte.
• Many other board members have provided enumerable assets to numerous to mention and we are grateful to all of them. As you can see even some non-Christian people have mentored us. God can use all of us.

Looking Back: What Encourages Us To Move Forward
The most encouragement comes in the form of prayer. What would we do without our prayer partners? Since our family founded Open Door for Teens we have had a weekly prayer letter that has gone out in many different forms. First, it was hand carried to churches every Monday. Then came fax delivery and snail mail. Next the big time e-mail entered our world. Currently, we have about four hundred prayer partners both e-mail and snail mail recipients. We never see each other in person as a large group. Instead, we are united in the calling of writing, printing, and delivering the needs, desires, and prayers of all the families and teens with whom we are associated. Most of the needs are from ODFT homes. Praise God for the changes that are directly associated with the prayers of many. We have seen literally hundreds of teens accept Jesus as Savior and then work through His lordship as a result of His hearing your prayers. Jesus has healed many and helped hundreds of families draw together and witness the changes He can bring. He alone! He even heals many who never call on His name. He loves us all. We are only instruments of His as in surgeon’s hands.

This season of reflecting back in the "New Year", with the purpose of rethinking what we have done, in order to make changes in our future behavior, is not very traditional to me. I am a forward looking person, but because of the death of my father, Jerry, and mother, Kay, a few years ago, I look to the future more than ever. My long developed nostalgia for my siblings and Mom and Dad grows stronger everyday and minute and then forces me to look towards the here and now. As our mentor Chris said (above) about Jill and me, my family influenced me in ways that only we can see many years later.

The "Old Man" Is Alive and Kicking
I often have thought, and recently remarked, that I am concerned with the future because I know the "old man" in me still exists. He is nasty, as I am in my former-self. The Holy Spirit has indwelt me from the moment of my committing myself to Jesus as my Savior in August of 1976.

But, I worry the "Old Man" will raise it's ugly head one day when I loose control of my thoughts and behavior in senility or Alzheimer's. This scares me! I pray to God that the inner, ugly man is never exposed to my family and you friends. Why will it matter when you are old? I wish I could say it was exclusively for the sake of Christ! It is, but the "Old Man" is still working in me behind the vale of religion and apparent godliness. I will be mortified, and I will mortify my children, if the things I think come out of my mouth. My hope is that God, through His Son Jesus, will change me enough that I will no longer recall those things I think and might repeat in senility, that I might be renewed in mind and spirit. That is what I hope my future holds. This may appear to be a selfish and not so godly thought still routed in the "Old Man", but Jesus has made me sanctified, and He will give me possession of that sanctification at the time of my death, as I pray He did for Mom and Dad.

Until then the future looms in the temporal distance of my life as a fallen being striving to do and be what God has created me for, a worshiping person. He, in His sovereignty, gave me a choice to either love Him or to chose to sin. All too often I choose sin, but He sent His Son, the Christ, to save me from myself.

What has this to do with my respect for each of you and with my thinking about the coming year? It has every thing to do with it. At our home this Christmas we had more than fifty people for dinner. Many of us spent time answering the question, what can me give to the "Birthday Boy?" It is Jesus's birthday, and we get the gifts. What's with that? We should be providing Him with gifts of in celebration of His birth and in gratitude for what He sacrificed for us. He became a human to provide us with the perfect sacrifice to His Father. He not only died but He became our sins and took all the idiot things the "Old Man" in us does and bore the stripes" (cuts and rips and holes in his flesh) for those sins. He then, in His sovereign will, gave us a free choice to accept that gift or die forever in our sins and personal cuts, scars, and holes of pain.

With that in mind, what gift can we give Him? One young woman in our family said, if memory serves me correctly, that she would give Him her alcohol. She boldly confessed what you would not expect! Many of us, likewise, had the idea that we should give Him our hearts, or souls, or not eat candy anymore; or maybe we wanted to give Him our fat, our work, or our children. This woman knew what God sent His son for: and the gift Jesus longed for, taking our sins, our rips and cuts and big black holes in our lives. He wants our permission to fill the gaping holes in our being. He wants to die for us. That is the gift He wants. "God, I don't understand it, but I know deep in my being that you would die for me and I will keep sinning. Why can't I love you the way you love me? The "Old Man!" Take Him God with our niece's Alcohol!" That is my prayer.

God has saved us if we believe it! He saved me and I will take possession of my salvation upon my death and judgment. Today I want to do for Him what is good and right, not to avoid punishment (which He did for me) or to go to Heaven, but because I love Him. I don't want Him to suffer more because of my choices. I want Him to ask me what you have done with me since you have known me?" and be able to have Him see at least one good thing I have done to further His kingdom and have more worshipers in Heaven.

God bless you this New Year and I hope you share the hope my family and I have in Jesus. We who know Him are all adopted into His kingdom.

Thank you for your prayers, mentoring, and financial support in the year 2005!

In Christ's Service for the Community,

Paul & Jill Keenon
Open Door for Teens, Inc.