Fifteen-year-old Tre’Von describes his foster mother’s smile as a slice of summer in the middle of a cold November day.  Her smile sticks with him.  It is the first thing he saw when he emerged from his social worker’s car two years ago and landed at Brenda William’s modest home on a bitterly cold autumn day.  Brenda met him with a smile and a coat.

Today, when you ask Tre’Von how it is living with Brenda, her biological son Emeka (age 16), adopted son Zechariah (age 15) and three other foster boys, he says with a huge grin, “It’s spectacular!  Every day is a brand new day ----learning to cope with people!”

Learning to cope is just part of what this Kansas City, Kansas mother teaches her boys.  “I don’t assume any of them know manners or how to do things.  I don’t know what kind of environment they came from.” 

The background for these boys wasn’t good.  The teens Brenda accepts are the ones who have had troubles in other foster homes. She has mothered more than 25 boys since she began foster care in 2001.  Today, Brenda’s mom is also a foster mother, and her best friend (Sidonie Walker-Reid) recently adopted three siblings.

To teach the boys, Brenda takes them out to dinner and on vacations. They’ve been to St. Louis and Omaha.  She is planning a Back to School Splash this fall.  She always looks for a hotel that has a pool and serves breakfast.  Vacation dinner is sometimes hotdogs in her crock-pot. 

At home, it takes two refrigerators and six gallons of milk a week to keep the family fed.  When Zechariah arrived at Brenda’s home, the first morning he walked into the kitchen and exclaimed, “You guys cook here!”  Walter (age 16) says Brenda needs to be on the Food Network.  His favorite-----“Macaroni and cheese, collard greens, yams, biscuits and a big glass of milk on the side.” 

When Darrian (age 15) arrived, he was completely withdrawn.  “I didn’t expect nothing.  I didn’t talk.  Now, I express my feelings.”  

Like any mother, Brenda feels the frustrations of parenthood.  “When that happens, I just call my KVC Family Service Coordinator, Barbara Schachter.  She just listens, and that brings it all back into perspective.”

“Emeka was the only boy in the family, and I knew he would benefit from being around other boys,” said Brenda.  “That’s why I started foster care.  But now it’s a ministry.” 

Often that ministry takes the family to the Lenexa Christian Center.  Three of her boys play in a gospel rap band, New Salvation, and they went to summer church camp, ministering to the homeless and cleaning neighborhoods.   Everyone attends church service, and all the boys play Thursday night basketball with the men of the congregation. “We call them the Big Dogs!” said Diamond (17). 

So while a difficult childhood and the influences of society and drugs lurk just beyond Brenda’s front door, inside it’s warm, safe and full of love. “I just know they can do better than the situation they came from,” said Brenda.