[00:00:00] Lisa Steven: I think those moms, whether they're young or not, when they become a parent who had really really difficult struggles as a child or a teenager that they had to overcome, probably bring that grit and determination and resilience to their kids. to their parenting. I will say I always tell people if you want to hire a really good employee, hire a teenage mom because they are problem solvers 

[00:00:20] Dori Durbin: Hello and welcome to That's Good Parenting, the podcast that provides simple steps to reduce parenting stress. I'm your host, Dori Durbin, and as a children's book coach, author, podcaster, ghostwriter, fellow parent, I too am on a mission to find simple steps to reduce your parenting stress and actually help you enjoy those precious moments a little bit more.

[00:00:42] Dori Durbin: Okay, so as a parent, I'm going to assume this, that you felt completely overwhelmed by the challenges of parenting and maybe even found yourself questioning I don't even know if I'm even doing this quote unquote now imagine if you were a teenage mom in the same situation. Today's guest is here [00:01:00] today to inspire you and provide hope and remind us that there's hope, not only for you, but for everyone, because resilience is in this all.

[00:01:09] Dori Durbin: Joining us today is Lisa Stephen, the founder and executive director of Hope House Colorado, and an author of the book, A Place to Belong. Lisa's parenting journey began as a teen mom herself. She found herself facing the harsh judgments and the statistics that often surround parents as teens.

[00:01:28] Dori Durbin: Fueled by her own experiences and a deep faith, she co founded Hope House in 2003 to create a place where teen moms could find support, resources, and a sense of belonging. So welcome Lisa. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Dory. I'm super excited to be here today. I am honored that you would take the time to be with us and your story is just so compelling.

[00:01:50] Dori Durbin: You're so brave because at a young age, you made the decision to just remain a parent. So can you talk to us through your decision [00:02:00] making process and how it shaped you as a parent? Parent today. 

[00:02:03] Lisa Steven: Oh, thank you for asking. It's so interesting because I feel like many teenage moms both back when I became a teen mom, and even still today, all of the teenage moms that we work with through Hope House, they're yeah, Take on becoming a mama is maybe sometimes a little misunderstood.

[00:02:20] Lisa Steven: I think there's a feeling people have a sense that, oh, when you find out you're pregnant as a teenager, you're like, oh, no, my life is over and I'm not going to be able to meet the goals that I had set out for myself, which is in all honesty, a really middle class way of thinking. Whereas many teenage moms really come from a poverty class background.

[00:02:41] Lisa Steven: And so it's really common for teenage moms. And I say if I had 100 for every teen mom who's ever told me becoming pregnant and having a baby saved my life, I wouldn't need to fundraise anymore. And for me, It was somewhat similar becoming a mom, finding out that I was pregnant and that my [00:03:00] then boyfriend and I were going to be parents was in many ways a blessing as much as that sounds crazy because we were 17 years old.

[00:03:09] Lisa Steven: It was. Oh, now I can start my life. I can create something different than what I grew up with. I grew up in a really chaotic family home, a lot of domestic violence and alcoholism. And my dad didn't work a lot. So there were a lot of times where we were like, we were on food stamps. They called them back in the day and just.

[00:03:30] Lisa Steven: Knowing that it was almost this oh, gosh, I have the opportunity to do this differently now. And that's really the way that a lot of our teenage moms, even today, feel like, how can I build a stable life and a better be a better parent than what I feel like I am? I had not that they didn't our mamas don't love their own parents, or I didn't love my own parents, but we definitely are aware that there's something that we want to do differently than what we grew up with.

[00:03:58] Lisa Steven: Yeah, I really, [00:04:00] to me, it was a, yes, it was a, because I still, I came from a middle class background. Even though there were a lot of issues in my home, it was still, we were still middle class in that we grew up, Feeling education is important. You're supposed to go to college. You're supposed to save money or, working toward home ownership someday in your life.

[00:04:20] Lisa Steven: Those are concepts that aren't really understood in generational poverty. So those who are experiencing generational poverty really don't have a value set around completing education or going on to a career. They're more looking at having a job, making enough money to pay the rent. So it, it's just a, It's a different kind of way of thinking.

[00:04:40] Lisa Steven: For me, it was a little bit like, oh, gosh, I thought I was going to go to college. Now I'm going to have to wait until my kids, my son at the time being pregnant, whenever this little one is big enough for me to go to school. I still had it in my head that I'd go to college someday, which never happened, by the way.

[00:04:57] Dori Durbin: It's interesting because I think I [00:05:00] didn't even make that distinction in my mind between the social classes. And now that you say that, I do see how that would be a life giving thing to somebody who maybe didn't have direction, didn't have these aspirations, but to come from your background and, believing that had to be quite the struggle.

[00:05:18] Dori Durbin: Initially. 

[00:05:20] Lisa Steven: Yeah. Yeah. Initially it was definitely I think for me it was mostly I so loved and admired my boyfriend's parents, my now in laws of many years. And they had the kind of family that I had always wanted. To have they ate dinner together at the dinner table. His parents were respectful of each other.

[00:05:38] Lisa Steven: They supported each other. His mom struggled with kidney disease. And so they had a really hard things happening in their family life as well. But I watched them take care of each other through that and support one another through that. So I was like, Oh my goodness, that's the kind of family I want.

[00:05:55] Lisa Steven: And so I joke with my husband still today. I married you for your parents, just so you know. I really wanted to [00:06:00] have parents like your parents and they were just such a beautiful example to us. So my biggest concern and his too, when we found out we were pregnant was really, are we going to just disappoint them?

[00:06:10] Lisa Steven: Like they're going to be so disappointed. And I was more concerned about them being disappointed in us than even my own parents being disappointed in me. And the crazy thing was I remember Telling my in-laws and my mother-in-law at the time was on dialysis for her kidney. She did dialysis at home.

[00:06:28] Lisa Steven: They were her parents. His parents were watching a movie together. So here she is on dialysis and he's okay, we gotta go downstairs and tell my parents. And I'm like. Do you think this is a good idea to tell them while literally her blood is going through a machine? We don't want any major problems here.

[00:06:41] Lisa Steven: And it was just such a, very difficult thing to tell them. And it took us a, we stood there for half an hour before we finally, blurted out what was going on. But I'll never forget their response was, Yes, I know they were disappointed. Obviously that's not something any parent wants for their 17 year old son.

[00:06:58] Lisa Steven: But their response really [00:07:00] was okay. How are we going to handle this? So when are you going to get married? Here's what marriage looks like. Here's our expectations around how you're going to handle marriage and in a loving way, especially considering the fact that they had just gotten this kind of shocking news.

[00:07:14] Lisa Steven: It wasn't like we're so mad at you were so disappointed in you. It was. Yeah. You're going to take accountability from their perspective and we're going to help you figure out how you're going to do this well, because you're going to have a baby. 

[00:07:24] Dori Durbin: That's so awesome. That just even exemplifies exactly why you love them so much.

[00:07:33] Dori Durbin: Yes. Giving you a path, giving you a path to follow where other people maybe would just spin out. They gave you direction and guidance. Straight on from there. 

[00:07:43] Lisa Steven: Yes, it was a beautiful support and truly one of the things that makes the difference and whether a teenage parent really can find some success in their parenting is having that sense of support, at least from somewhere.

[00:07:56] Lisa Steven: For us, we were so blessed that we had that support from his family. [00:08:00] For many teen moms that I work with today, they don't have support anywhere in their life. There are no family members. That are healthy or supportive. And so Hope House really is, that is why the book is called A Place to Belong.

[00:08:14] Lisa Steven: Because it really is the only place they have where they feel like they belong and have the support that they need to be the mom they really want to be. 

[00:08:23] Dori Durbin: Yeah. Tell our audience, they may not know what Hope House is and that it's in Colorado. What is it, what does it do for teens? I think you've touched on it a little bit, but maybe you could tell us a little bit more.

[00:08:32] Lisa Steven: Yeah, sure. So Hope House really started because I was working with teenage moms in a support group sending through mops. They had mothers of preschoolers. They had started teenage moms mops groups back in the late 90s. And I was seeing our teen moms in that group then and now struggling with. Some of the things I talked about domestic violence in their home, alcohol addiction, all sorts of things that caused home to be super chaotic and even dangerous.

[00:08:59] Lisa Steven: We even [00:09:00] very sadly lost 1 of our moms in that group to domestic violence. Her boyfriend killed her and then took his own life and 2 at the time ended up with the teenage mom's sister. And it was such a shocking and difficult, thing to be a part of. And it just really cemented the fact that there needed to be a safe place for teenage moms to go.

[00:09:28] Lisa Steven: And so we really started out as who in the Denver metro area is providing housing for teenage moms. And as we looked at. What was out there? It just became obvious that there literally was nowhere for a parenting teenage mom to go. There were maternity homes you could go to if you were pregnant, but not if you were already parenting.

[00:09:46] Lisa Steven: And so even today, we are the only residential home or program in the state of Colorado where a parenting 16 or 17 year old can go on their own. We have treatment facilities where [00:10:00] sometimes Because moms get court ordered if they have addictions or other types of like criminal history or something like that.

[00:10:06] Lisa Steven: But nothing where if she is just a 17 year old who got pregnant, chose to keep her child, and wants to build a better life for her little one, but has nowhere to go to learn how to do that, we're the place. We're where they come to learn to learn. have healthy relationship all around them and learn how to build that life.

[00:10:25] Lisa Steven: So today we started Hope House as that residential program back in 2003. Today we have a campus in the West Metro Denver area. We serve about 265 teenage moms each year. We have that first residential home and then we have a very large 15, 000 In square foot resource center, that looks a little bit like a cross between a school and a home.

[00:10:50] Lisa Steven: So we have an education program where our teenage moms can get their GED go on to college and career. We provide all sorts of financial literacy, [00:11:00] legal advocacy, economic navigation, and then we have a housing support program where we help our mamas to find stable housing, navigate a lease, navigate working with a landlord.

[00:11:10] Lisa Steven: Eventually, hopefully move into home ownership and then we have an early childhood education program. So we have just completed the building of a brand new child care center on our campus where we're able to serve 100 children of our teenage moms full time so that mama can go to school or work full time.

[00:11:31] Dori Durbin: That is so amazing. And it all came from your own experience really of what you really needed. Is that kind of how it all started? Yeah. 

[00:11:40] Lisa Steven: Yeah, that's so true. Yep, absolutely. Definitely. I think the, for me, I'm a person of faith and I feel like it was, it just was a calling to be able to give to teenage moms the way I felt like I'd received from my mother in law and then later from my involvement with mops, where I just found a group of women who Like loved me the way I [00:12:00] was because when you're a teenage mom you face judgment everywhere you go.

[00:12:03] Lisa Steven: If you walk into the grocery store with a baby on your hip someone's looking at you funny is that your baby sister or your kid? And that's just like the light version of judgment. Like the hard versions are like being accused of child abuse when you haven't done anything. And being scared that your kids will be taken away.

[00:12:18] Lisa Steven: I had an experience of having a doctor make a report that my son had Come into her office with like deep scratches on his back and some other things that were completely made up because she just judged that I was a teenage mom and I had social services come to the door and ask to see my son and check him out.

[00:12:36] Lisa Steven: And it was absolutely terrifying because as a teenage mom, you don't feel that you have any power or agency in your own life. Someone else can always make a decision that would impact you even getting to stay Okay. Bye. Bye. a parent. And so it's a terrifying way to to parent when you're very young.

[00:12:53] Lisa Steven: But those experiences really, for me, turned me into what we call now a mama bear for our teenage [00:13:00] moms. So all of our staff are just we're just a whole bunch of mama bears for our teenage moms. We are their place to belong. We are their safe space. This is where they come to, not face judgment where they're just loved exactly as they are for And we believe in them because mamas across the board, whether you're a young mama or not a young mama have an innate sense of strength and resiliency and bravery that they don't even recognize.

[00:13:28] Lisa Steven: A lot of times, whether you're a teen mom or not, you constantly live in this state of all the mom fails the things that, I yelled at the kids on the way to school and then I dropped them off and then felt bad the whole rest of the day. Hey that we've got a had a bad drop off this morning.

[00:13:42] Lisa Steven: We live in this kind of tension of I didn't do it well enough. I didn't do it good enough. And it's even harder today. When I was a mama, we didn't have social media and 1, 000, 000 voices telling you what looks good and what doesn't look good. And that's true for our teenage moms, too. They're always afraid that they're.

[00:13:59] Lisa Steven: That [00:14:00] they're not doing it well. And unfortunately, the world at large reinforces that you can't do it or you're going to be a statistic. So our job is to help just encourage and love and show those moms that they can draw on that innate mommy motivation and mommy strength, and they can break the cycle of poverty for their Children.

[00:14:20] Dori Durbin: So inspiring. Like I'm sitting here listening, thinking, okay, I needed that. And I was supported and, you've got these girls that are entering a dimension of their lives that they never, maybe never expected to go and not knowing anything stable themselves already. That's really impressive. I know your book mentioned something, and I think this is related.

[00:14:44] Dori Durbin: It was called mommy motivation. Yeah. 

[00:14:46] Lisa Steven: Yeah, we call mommy motivation our secret sauce. So all of the mothers who the teenage moms who participate in our programming do so voluntarily. They're not court ordered to do. So they're not like, trying to reunify with a child who's been removed from their care.

[00:14:59] Lisa Steven: [00:15:00] They're all participating because they want to build a better life for their little 1. And so we draw on that mommy motivation to help them work through what are really some of the hardest things they have to work through. So we measure self sufficiency, which is our mission. Our mission is to help our teenage moms to become self sufficient and break that cycle of poverty for their kiddos.

[00:15:20] Lisa Steven: We measure in both economic domains, and also what we call personal domains of self sufficiency. On the personal side, what's really hard for anyone, whether you're a teenager or not, is. Dealing with those. How do I deal with unhealthy family relationships? How do I set boundaries around?

[00:15:36] Lisa Steven: Maybe my mom is an addict, and as soon as I finish school and I get a job, she wants me to pay her rent. She's my mom. How do I say no to her? Even though now I can't pay my own rent. So how do we build those healthy boundaries with maybe unsafe or unstable family members who you're not going to just cut off relationship with?

[00:15:52] Lisa Steven: But you have to figure out how to how do I begin to find enough value and worth in my own self, which for us is really, how does God [00:16:00] see me like we want our mamas to know that literally there is nothing you've ever done or anything that's ever happened to you that's so bad that God would stop loving you or stop having a plan for your life and they don't As they begin to see that wow, like I'm actually loved by God.

[00:16:18] Lisa Steven: That helps you change your worldview to what do I accept into my life? Do I accept into my life? Those, abusive boyfriend relationships are really toxic. Boyfriend relationships that tear me down, but I'm worth more than that. And it takes a long time. So we serve our mamas from the time they come into our program.

[00:16:36] Lisa Steven: They come in between the ages of 15 and 20, already parenting. And we serve them until they turn 25. So by the time they've gone, we've been in relationship with them for seven, eight, nine years. They just have a whole entirely different view of who they are. And that. informs how they make decisions about what they'll allow into their life and into their children's lives.

[00:16:55] Lisa Steven: And that mommy motivation, when you can make that through line to [00:17:00] my decisions now impact my kiddo in this manner that's when they'll make those really difficult decisions. Yeah, I'm going to have to stop supporting my mom. Because it's impacting my baby or my one year old in this way. 

[00:17:12] Dori Durbin: That is, that's so powerful.

[00:17:15] Dori Durbin: I was just thinking I know people that the relationships are toxic. And if you put it in terms of your child, going back to that whole mama bear concept, you are not going to let somebody tear your kid down and let yourself get torn down. So yeah, that shift is huge. I love it. 

[00:17:38] Lisa Steven: Go 

[00:17:38] Dori Durbin: ahead. 

[00:17:39] Lisa Steven: Oh, no, I was gonna say it's just it's such a huge perspective.

[00:17:41] Lisa Steven: And I think this is so true for every mama that we always put our Children first and we it's the you. We always hear this example of the airplane put your own oxygen on and then put the oxygen on your little one. But to really begin to believe that I have to care for my own self in order to care well for [00:18:00] my child.

[00:18:00] Lisa Steven: That's a hard mom concept. And certainly if you've grown up in a Mhm. the type of a home where you were in charge of things you shouldn't have been in charge of. At eight or nine years old, you're caring for younger siblings. It's really hard to come to a place of saying, I gotta take care of myself.

[00:18:16] Lisa Steven: I need to learn self care. And so many of the moms we serve will, will say, like when you ask them what class they love most at Hope House, they'll say, gosh, at Hope House, I learned it's okay to take care of myself. It's okay to take a shower and just. Have 10 minutes while the baby's in the crib to make myself feel good and able to care for my kiddo.

[00:18:39] Dori Durbin: Do you, and this is a strange question, but do you feel like the teen moms have a different kind of strength or a uniqueness about them than maybe other moms do? 

[00:18:51] Lisa Steven: I'm such an advocate for teenage moms, so I would say maybe I do, but I think most mamas have an innate sense of So many [00:19:00] things, strength and resiliency and determination for their kiddos.

[00:19:04] Lisa Steven: I think those moms, whether they're young or not, when they become a parent who had really really difficult struggles as a child or a teenager that they had to overcome, probably bring that grit and determination and resilience to their kids. to their parenting. I will say I always tell people if you want to hire a really good employee, hire a teenage mom because they are problem solvers.

[00:19:24] Lisa Steven: They are multitaskers. They're figuring out 15 things at once. And that is probably true of most moms. But for me, I will say our teenage moms are just definitely they're so motivated and such go getters 

[00:19:36] Dori Durbin: and you're supporting them for several years. I was thinking it was like months. But you're yeah, 

[00:19:42] Lisa Steven: so we only in our residential program, we have space for just 6 or 7 of our teenage moms.

[00:19:48] Lisa Steven: The vast majority of those 260 moms we serve are not living with us. They're living somewhere in the community and we're helping them with finding housing through partnerships or oftentimes. Sadly, they're still moving around a lot from [00:20:00] mom to grandma to the typical story is, mom gets a new boyfriend.

[00:20:05] Lisa Steven: New boyfriend doesn't like. Having this teenage mom and her kiddo in the house or the apartment. So teenage mom ends up getting kicked out and she moves in with grandma. Grandma's on section 8 and then section 8 finds out she's got too many people living with her. So teen mom and baby get kicked out again.

[00:20:20] Lisa Steven: And then they end up back with abusive boyfriend because they have to have a roof over their head. So it's this constant moving around from place to place. And how do we get to a place of stability? 

[00:20:31] Dori Durbin: So very complex very complex. 

[00:20:34] Lisa Steven: Yeah, they have, they truly do have such complex situations.

[00:20:38] Lisa Steven: And I guess I would say what is so beautiful about getting to work with our mamas is that in the midst of all of that, they're still trying to put their kiddo 1st. They're still trying to figure out, like, how do I continue to put my child 1st? While I'm dealing with all of this chaos that kind of rules my life.

[00:20:55] Lisa Steven: And so we're, it's you're working on goals, one at a time. If we're not stable [00:21:00] in housing, we need to work on getting stable housing. Then we can work on stable, mental health and getting counseling and kind of working on our traumas. So it's step by step and it just takes a really long time.

[00:21:11] Dori Durbin: Yeah. Any kind of big change like that's a whole mindset shift for them and a lifestyle shift too, really. 

[00:21:18] Dori Durbin: That's amazing. So their stories, is that kind of what inspired your book, A Place to Belong? Is that? Oh, thank you for asking 

[00:21:27] Lisa Steven: that. It's so funny because the whole concept of the book is what if you feel like you're being asked, called if you're a Christian or just if you're not a Christian, just I have something that is in my heart that I feel like I should do.

[00:21:40] Lisa Steven: What if I said yes to that? What would happen? And for me, writing this book was one of those moments where it was like, okay, yeah. God's calling you to tell these stories because there are so many miracles. Like I can't talk about Hope House without talking about God, because there are just these really, truly crazy God sized miracles that happened to make [00:22:00] Hope House happen.

[00:22:00] Lisa Steven: And they're all in the book. And I really wanted to tell those stories. I really wanted to tell the stories of our moms and their beautiful resilience and how they've, gone from homelessness to home ownership and how God gave us a house and we had to move it off of the property it sat on to land that was donated for it to go on.

[00:22:19] Lisa Steven: And then this like massive community barn raising to put in a new basement and then all the way up to the roof of the house, it was like people coming together to make this happen. So it's these crazy miracle stories, but I knew deep down that if I was really going to write this book, I'd have to tell my own story of my childhood.

[00:22:35] Lisa Steven: And I just, I don't talk about that. When I talk about Hope House and being a teen mom, but I don't share a lot of the really hard things that happened in my own childhood. So saying yes to that, when I felt like that's what God was calling me to do actually took almost three years for me to finally say yes to okay, I can do this.

[00:22:53] Lisa Steven: I'm going to write the story and the whole world, can just know. It's here you go. It's all out there now. And I struggled with [00:23:00] that, but I did finally say, I just have to, I have to say yes to God because I feel like this is what he's asking me to do. And I'm so glad I did, because I just, I want people to know when they read the book that the God I know doesn't, he didn't just do miracles in the Bible or like overseas in some other country.

[00:23:17] Lisa Steven: He does miracles in our own lives and in our own backyard. And he uses the most unexpected people like myself. A teenage mom who never ended up going to college. Literally, my background consists of working at JCPenney's and doing home daycare. And here I am thinking I'm going to start a non profit.

[00:23:37] Lisa Steven: I don't know the first thing about a non profit. I've never had employees. I don't know what a Financials in quotation marks looks like there was so much to learn and it's such a crazy story of how God will call the least and most unexpected people to do the craziest things and then surround them with the most amazing people to make that actually happen.[00:24:00]

[00:24:00] Dori Durbin: That almost makes me want to cry, to be honest with you. Just think about where you were and what you're doing now is it's just amazing. And I think about the fact that you not only put yourself out there as far as like reaching out to people, but you put yourself out there as your history and what you went through which I can't imagine would have been easy in any way, but.

[00:24:25] Dori Durbin: In the same vein, somebody heard something that you said and felt the same feelings that you felt, or at least felt like they could relate to you and then heard hope right after it. And I think that's so powerful, Lisa. 

[00:24:39] Lisa Steven: Thank you so much. That is such an encouragement. I appreciate that so much.

[00:24:43] Lisa Steven: And my heart's desire. So where Hope House is today, our next big thing at Hope House is really to see. More Hope House affiliates open across the country. So 1 of my hopes for the book is that someone else who, for whatever reason, whether they were a teenage [00:25:00] mom, or maybe they work with teenage moms through a support group or something like that.

[00:25:02] Lisa Steven: But if they, for whatever reason, have that call on their heart to provide a home, just a safe place for teenage mamas to be able to do what They want to do more than anything in the world, which is just to be a good mom that we would be able to come alongside that person to do that. And so we're, we now have 3 affiliates in different places Hope House affiliates, and if any of your listeners had just happened to love teenage mamas and want to learn more about starting a home for teen moms or a center for teenage moms they can find us on our website, hopehousecolorado.

[00:25:35] Lisa Steven: org. 

[00:25:37] Dori Durbin: That's amazing. I sure hope somebody listening has that in their heart because I feel like Just you being on here today is a reason that somebody should be reacting and responding to something that's been pulling at them. So that's thank you. Oh, awesome. So awesome. So to wrap all this up, if you had one to two pieces of advice to give parents who are listening right now, [00:26:00] they might feel discouraged, overwhelmed.

[00:26:02] Dori Durbin: Like it's just all too much. 

[00:26:04] Lisa Steven: Oh, my goodness. Mamas, you are stronger, braver, and more beautiful than you give yourselves credit for. Our little ones, we so often, the judgments that we put on our own selves, we think that, this is how my kiddo feels, or these are the ways my kiddo looks at me, and trust me, I, from being a teenage mom, when you're 17 years old, and not having a good example, my, I have three adult kids now, but that, My first son, poor guy, put up with so much when he was, between the ages of zero and three because I just didn't know what I was doing and I was parenting the way that I parented was parented.

[00:26:41] Lisa Steven: And I yelled so much and I finally learned, what healthy discipline and good discipline looked like. But boy, I had this picture in my mind of that boy's gonna grow up and not invite me to his own wedding because I was the worst mom in the first few years of his life. And. That didn't happen.

[00:26:59] Lisa Steven: He [00:27:00] definitely invited me to his wedding and now he has three beautiful little granddaughters who are like the center of my life, or I have three granddaughters through him. I had to learn to not be quite so hard on myself. And I think many mamas, whether you're a teenage mama or not, just need to learn to not be quite so hard on yourselves.

[00:27:18] Lisa Steven: Give yourself the same grace that you give your babies because you deserve it. And because God picked you. Like God doesn't make mistakes when he chooses a mama. He picked you to be the mama to your little one. So embrace that. Love that. Know that you've got this and know that he has your back.

[00:27:37] Lisa Steven: Awesome. 

[00:27:38] Dori Durbin: Lisa, I hope people check out your book, A Place to Belong. I hope that God is working in their hearts right now and stirring up some sort of desire to help you and that they'll just reach out to you and let you know. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me today, Dori. Thank you for being here, Lisa.