Eagle Ranch
October 7th, 2008 by BrandonSmithThis is an amazing organization that has a proven track record of helping troubled youth and their families gain stability and the opportunity to find success. I love to tell everyone about it any time that I get a chance.
Go to www.eagleranch.org to check it out! It has some opportunities for those of you who are looking for ministry positions.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:44 PM
What an amazing ministry! I Know you’ve done your research on programs similiar to this. So what makes this program stand out? What makes Eagle Ranch different from Connie Maxwell or The Fold? Are you a houseparent or a teacher or what is it exactlythat you do there?
October 8th, 2008 at 6:14 PM
Eagle Ranch is similar to Connie Maxwell, but it is smaller and more specialized. Connie Maxwell is basically a well designed foster home where as Eagle Ranch is more like an alternative to a Juvenile Jusice Facility. It specializes in helping the student reunify with family after about two years of intense wholistic ministry. They have an on campus school and a counseling staff that works very closely with the house parents and each child. It is very similar to The Fold Family Ministries out of Vermont and Heartlight out of Texas.
Technically, I don’t work there! When I was younger, I had a vision of building a Ranch of this nature in South Carolina. I even wanted to call it Eagle Ranch because of Isaiah 40:31. My family life inspired my own need for a place like this, so I really became obsessed with Eagle Ranch. My Senior year of college, The Fold Family Ministries found out that Eagle Ranch was a real place, and they were surprised that I had known so many details about it before I had even known what it was. It appears that I had been having visions of this place for some time.
Concurrent to the visions and discovery that this place was a real place, I was deciding whether to marry my wife or not. She has a little boy, so I realized that I would basically be adopting him. Gainesville was on my mind because of Eagle Ranch, and there happened to be an opening at the local YMCA there (I had worked for the Y through out high school and college). I had to decide whether to marry my wife and work at the Y or move to Eagle Ranch. I prayed about it, and I decided that it was really my calling to marry my wife and raise Shannon. I live five miles from Eagle Ranch and work at the Middle School below it now as a teacher, and I really believe that God put me at the foot of Eagle Ranch for some reason!