Louisiana Baptist Children's Home- Day 1

We spent January 21-27 at the Louisiana Baptist Children's Home in Monroe, LA to job shadow and see what life is like on a children home campus.  The next few days cover our adventure there.

We arrived at the Louisiana Baptist Children’s Home around 11am and met with the Children’s Home Director of Cottage Life, Tommy Frost. He spoke with us for a few minutes, went over some basic rules, and then introduced us to the first set of cottage parents we would be shadowing, Jimmy and Missy Pierce. The Pierce’s took us to lunch at O’Charley’s where we just jumped into getting to know each other and learning about what their cottage- Joy Cottage- was like. They were very open and honest about their way of life, how their cottage was ran, and answered any question we had. After lunch we settled into the cottage relief house parent’s room and also took a tour of the campus. Michael went with Jimmy to pick the kids up from school and I spent time with Missy getting the after school snack prepared for when the kids came home. We made peanut butter crispy treats but because she does not have any marshmallows we made it with corn syrup instead. They tasted just fine and lesson learned about making due with what you have.


When the children get home from school they have different “meetings” they attend. Some may have an appointment with a social worker or counselor. Others may be required to attend tutoring or do some work in the computer lab. They also offer some music classes, ceramics, and a recreational time with college students. On Thursday we visited the Rec time and watched the kids do a team building activity and then play dodgeball.

Dinner was at 6pm. LBCH has cooks that come and make the evening meal for the cottage. The dietician makes the menu for the week but the cottage parents have some flexibility to modify it. For example, the menu said Taco Soup but instead we just had tacos. After dinner is when the kids do their evening chores and homework. However, our Thursday evening also involved a “deep clean” (changing sheets, cleaning bathrooms). Joy Cottage usually does this on Saturday but this weekend was a day visit and Friday evening we were going to attend a basketball game so it had to be moved to Thursday. So we watched and sometimes helped as the kids straightened their rooms and had them checked by the house mom. After the chores and cleaning were done we settled into doing some homework. I helped one of the girls go over her spelling words as well as do some math. I looked down at the paper and it was subtraction with fractions. Not only fractions but where you had to borrow from the whole number…took me a minute to figure out what to do! But all in all we figured it out and the homework was completed. We helped put the kids to bed and were sleeping by 10pm.