About Us
The Anna’s House Foundation 
Mission Statement
To work alongside state agencies and services, medical professionals and biological family members to establish healthy, stable homes for Oklahoma’s newborns, infants and toddlers. To offer a future of hope and faith to foster families by providing housing, support, training and resources in a Christian community setting.
How The Anna's House Foundation came to be.....
Our journey into full time ministry began several years ago when we welcomed our first foster child into our home. During this time we have witnessed total depravity at it’s most heartbreaking; as the depraved lifestyles of the parents are visited upon their children. Those children are then thrust into a system that is too big to focus on their individual needs, too disorganized to keep them from “falling through the cracks”, and can ultimately end up doing them more harm than good as they are shuffled from place to place, many of them never having one place to call home. The statistics show the rate at which these little ones are suffering from various forms of disrupted attachment disorders is staggering. The very system designed to help them, is hurting them*. In the early spring of 2007 God began to define and create in our hearts what would ultimately become The Anna’s House Foundation. The day we met our little miracle, Anna Marie, would change our lives forever. (Click on the link to "Anna's Story " to read more)
Anna’s story is just the beginning of the profound change that God allowed in our lives. We will do our best to express into words the deep emotions involved with our journey into full time ministry. There is no way to adequately express our hearts on "paper", but please allow us to try.
Three years ago we felt the gentle voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to us to look into foster care and adoption. God had brought several families into our lives that were on this same journey and the more we prayed the clearer God’s will for our lives became. We have had 15 foster children in and out of our home over the past three & a half years, and during that time the burden on our hearts for the babies and toddlers in the “system” has grown into a deep desire and passion to serve God in whatever ways he would have for us to make a difference for His precious children. With that passion, and much, much prayer came His vision for The Anna’s House Foundation.
Two years ago a group of us met in our living room with an idea that seemed a near impossible task. We wanted to find a way to nurture and care for the some 1600 babies and toddlers in foster care here in Oklahoma County, while maintaining a solid Christian foundation and still be able to work within the government system. We learned that there are no less than 11,000 Oklahoma children in the foster care system today. Of those 11,000 children, 1600 are babies and toddlers in Oklahoma County alone. There are less than 3000 foster homes in the State of Oklahoma today and just over 300 in Oklahoma County– we did the math, our hearts were broken, and our calling became clear. It was time for us to do our part to care for “the least of these”.
After much research, we learned of the many programs available to school age children, and teenagers while there were no programs in place to care for infants and toddlers. After many, many hours in the hospital with Anna, visiting with physicians, nurses and other hospital staff we began to unravel what would prove to be a broken, inefficient system where Oklahoma babies are left in hospital beds for weeks at a time -after they are ready for release - because there are no foster homes available. We learned of gross overcrowding of our county shelter, often times over double capacity, with as many as 5 babies in cribs at any given time with only hourly workers to care for them. As we began to ask even more questions of the foster care workers and state foster care administrators, we found they shared the same frustration; however their hands were tied by the lack of foster homes, and the difficulty in placing infants due to the level of care that is required of a family with a baby in the home. Sadly, the average number of moves for a baby in the Oklahoma County Child Welfare system is five…before their first birthday.
The damage done to these precious little ones during this most important stage in their lives is indescribable. They are never allowed the chance to bond with a mother, in the most basic sense, and the research results showing the damage this does is staggering. Over 70-80 percent of children in the United States suffering from Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) – an environmentally created disorder, not a birth “defect” – are children in the foster care system. Sadly, Oklahoma ranks 50th in neglect and abuse cases in the foster system, 49th in foster parent reimbursements & our child welfare system is consistently one of the worst in the nation. It didn’t take long for God to open our eyes and show us our mission field. It was just outside our own front door.
Our “living room meetings” have now grown into a Board of Directors that not only shares our passion for Oklahoma babies, but is deeply committed to seeing God glorified through this ministry. As we step forward in faith and trust the Lord to provide the means for us to serve Him full time, we would respectfully ask for your prayers and financial support.
We would love to talk more with you should you have questions or are interested in learning more about the ministries of AHF! Please feel free to get in touch with us!!
Under His Sovereign Grace,
Greg & Elizabeth Harkins, Caroline, Katherine, Jessica, William, Trenton, and Anna Marie
* for more information on this, please see the Hornby-Zeller Audit, in it's entirety on the News & Notes page on this website.