Washington Family Ranch welcomes thousands of people every year for a chance to unwind, have fun and connect with God and the outdoors. There are a million reasons to love WFR, but De’Sean and Carter Wagner are our two favorites!
Lance, Carter, Jan, De’Sean
The Wagner family has lived at Young Life’s Washington Family Ranch for over 20 years and love seeing the joy the camp brings to middle school and high school students, young moms and families alike. They are a part of the 150-person Property Staff that lives at the Ranch all year, helping make sure that the camp is running well so campers can experience the “Best week of their life!”
Their family of six grew to a family of eight, with the adoption of De’Sean (8 years old) and Carter (4 years old)! Lance and Jan adore how generous De’Sean is and how good he is around little kids. De’Sean’s smile lights every room he enters and is beloved by everyone he meets. Carter has so much personality — he loves to joke and tease but loves to snuggle just as much. He’s content, full of joy and a wonderful little brother.
Here at Choice, we are incredibly grateful for “Superfamilies” like the Wagners in many ways. Adoption is not a smooth, easy road. It comes with many twists and turns, challenges and learning curves. The Wagners have faced these moments with patience, humility, compassion, and grace over and over again. The desire they had for any child they’d adopt was to experience “a loving home and safe community, and an amazing place to grow up with lots of adventure and freedom…” and that’s precisely what De’Sean and Carter have received!
Our “Superfamilies” aren’t super because they’re celebrities or famous in any regard. What makes them super is actually quite simple: they’re willing to love and to learn. Raising a child, adopted or biological, requires an immense amount of sacrificial love and a large dose of humility to consistently learn how you can do better. But adoption specifically requires learning about your kids’ likes and dislikes, their history and story, their ethnicity and culture which may be different than your own. Families like the Wagners have leaned in all the way, giving their kids everything they’ve got — learning, growing and loving day after day.
Today we celebrate De’Sean and Carter: their perseverance, their joy, and everything that makes them the two incredible boys that they are.
Today we celebrate Lance and Jan: their humility, their sacrifice and their love.
Today we celebrate countless other families just like them: it’s you all that put the super in superfamilies!