Today is one day of the year that is always a big day for Joey. It is graduation day at his alma mater Shepherds College, a day when he sits in the ever growing alumni section and rises when the alumni are called upon to be honored. Today he will be joined by his roommate Ray, who has become in the past couple of years the brother Joey never had. Ray graduated three years before Joey but because he is lower functioning than Joey, Joey takes him under his wing with crossing streets safely and other things that are harder for Ray as they make their way to Bible study, the Dairy Queen, or other places in their very walkable small town. Ray’s mother Lynn and I are often awed as we text about our two boys doing the normal guy things any two friends would do!

It is probably time for me to write down for posterity the way God brought us to a small special needs college in Wisconsin, half an hour north of Chicago. I had known of Shepherds Ministries as a child growing up in Michigan; our church supported them. They were mainly a children’s home back then because a majority of families gave up their special needs children at birth. Shepherds strove to be a place that was not an institutional setting but a place that nurtured special needs people in the love of Christ.

As years went on, and I moved away from Michigan, Shepherds kept their children as they grew into adults and aged. New children arrived but not as many of them as people began to keep their special needs children home with the rest of the family. But several generations in Union Grove got accustomed to rubbing shoulders with special needs adults everywhere.

Then the special needs population started to grow old and require medical care Shepherds could not provide them. Like many elderly people, they started to move to retirement homes. Shepherds Ministries had trained several generations of young people to work with disabled people and now their client population was shrinking.

Shifting back to the Martin part of the story, many of you know that in 2008 I faced a year of treatments for breast cancer from which the Lord has graciously healed me. That summer as I went through chemo, one of the biggest cries of my heart was asking what would happen to Joey, then aged 16, if I did not survive the cancer. God is always good; I cried out to Him with many questions.

Little did I know it then, but that very summer at Shepherds Ministries the plan was laid to convert much of the ministry into a residential college for people with intellectual disabilities. God was directly answering my prayer.

Now we found out about that college when we needed it, in 2012 as Joey completed his homeschool program here. Our beloved Roberson family had attended a church in Rockford, Illinois that supported the ministry and often visited there. Our family toured the college that summer and Joey was enrolled in August of 2013, graduating in June of 2016.

Joey stayed on in Union Grove, Wisconsin after graduation, with state supported assistance from Shepherds Ministries in a case manager oversight program called Catalyst that has allowed him to live in the same apartment on Main Street ever since then. As the college has grown and needed more space, Catalyst eventually ended but a few of its trained managers started another program called Anchor. Anchor helps Joey and Ray with grocery shopping, cooking, and doctor/medication management so they can live independently.

Shepherds taught Joey so many of the life skills he has now and always encouraged his walk in Jesus. Their graduations always make us smile, remembering how good God is, giving each individual just what he or she needs to thrive!