There are some nights where a community gathers for a banquet.
And then there are nights like the Hope in Action Awards, where people gather to remind each other that even in the hardest situations imaginable, compassion still exists, families still fight for children, and ordinary people still quietly change lives every single day.
Tuesday evening, Live 2 Give Hope hosted its first-ever public Hope in Action Awards ceremony at the Laclede County Shrine Club in Lebanon, honoring foster care champions from Missouri’s 26th Judicial Circuit, including Camden, Laclede, Miller, Moniteau, and Morgan counties.
The room was filled with foster parents, adoptive families, kinship caregivers, social workers, volunteers, children, pastors, donors, and supporters. Some had spent years inside the foster care system. Some had lived through it as children themselves. Others simply believed nobody should have to walk those roads alone.
The evening opened with prayer from John Angst, Outreach Director and co-founder of Live 2 Give Hope, who reminded the room that the work being celebrated was rooted in service, sacrifice, and love for others.
But as the evening continued, the true heart of Live 2 Give Hope began to emerge.
Before it was a nonprofit, before it had a building, before it served hundreds of families across Missouri, it started with a simple idea in a small church in Eldridge.
For 32 years, John Angst pastored at Prosperine Baptist Church, where he gathered neighborhood kids on Saturdays to cut firewood, mow yards, and help people in need. He called the group “Live to Give.”
Years later, that mission evolved unexpectedly when Laura Garton agreed to what was supposed to be an 18-hour respite foster placement. A baby arrived with no diapers, no formula, and no warning. Sitting in a Walmart parking lot late that night after scrambling to gather supplies, she asked a question that would eventually change hundreds of lives:
“What if people didn’t have to do this alone?”
That moment became the beginning of the Fostering Hope Closet and eventually Live 2 Give Hope.
Today, the organization serves foster, kinship, guardianship, adoptive, reunification, and crisis families across 11 counties. In 2025 alone, the organization served 598 families and provided more than $531,000 in direct support.
But the numbers only tell part of the story.
The evening’s award recipients reflected the different faces of foster care and the people willing to step into difficult situations for the sake of children.
Ross and Amber Kula were named Foster Parents of the Year.
Originally from Arizona, the couple landed in Lebanon almost by accident after traveling east searching for work and a fresh start. What they found was purpose. In just three years, they welcomed nearly a dozen teenagers into their home — specifically children many others considered “too difficult” or “high needs.”
Those who nominated them described a home where traumatized children found consistency, patience, stability, and unconditional love.
“Most people only talk about helping,” one nomination explained. “They actually opened their door.”
Chris and Janelle Keith were honored as Kinship Caregivers of the Year for raising children with significant behavioral challenges and complex trauma histories. Organizers described them as the kind of people who simply keep showing up, even when life becomes overwhelming.
“They do it with a smile on their face,” one nominator wrote.
Devon and Megan Zimdars received recognition as Adoptive Parents of the Year.
Megan’s own life story shaped the family they built. Diagnosed with a rare childhood cancer at just two years old, she underwent major surgeries and grew up believing motherhood would look different for her. Years later, after fostering children who had experienced abuse, neglect, drug exposure, and instability, she and her husband adopted three boys and created a home rooted in patience, advocacy, healing, and persistence.
Their nomination described them as parents who never stopped learning what their children needed, researching late into the night and advocating fiercely at school meetings and appointments.
Social Worker of the Year Heather Lovell was recognized for going beyond the expectations of her job every single day.
Raised around foster care and eventually drawn into Children’s Division work herself, Heather became known as someone willing to help families navigate housing, applications, resources, and reunification efforts while building genuine trust with the children she served.
“Their children call her Aunt Heather,” organizers shared during the ceremony.
Volunteer of the Year Connie Dunham’s story reflected another side of the foster care community.
After growing up in difficult circumstances herself, Connie dedicated her life to creating safety for children who needed it. Once a client of Live 2 Give Hope, she now serves as one of the first people families encounter when they walk through the organization’s doors.
“She doesn’t have much,” one speaker said, “but what she has, she gives away.”
One of the most emotional moments of the evening came during the presentation of the Fostering the Future Scholarship, created to support young women who overcame painful childhood circumstances and continued pursuing their education and future despite enormous obstacles.
Yet the moment many people will likely remember most came near the end of the night when Laura Garton compared foster care to roses.
Children in foster care, she explained, are beautiful, layered, resilient, and full of life.
But roses also have thorns.
Those thorns, she said, often appear as trauma, fear, distrust, emotional outbursts, or behaviors developed through survival.
And while many people see those thorns first, they are not what defines the child.
“They grew those thorns to survive long enough to bloom.”
The room grew quiet.
Foster parents wiped tears from their eyes. Social workers nodded. Volunteers sat silently listening.
Because everyone in the room understood the truth behind those words.
Foster care is not clean or simple. It is messy. It is heartbreaking. It is exhausting. It involves sleepless nights, difficult conversations, court hearings, reunification plans, emergency calls, behavioral struggles, and children carrying pain they never should have experienced.
But it is also filled with people willing to keep showing up anyway.
And for one evening in Lebanon, those people were celebrated not as superheroes or perfect families, but simply as human beings willing to love children through some of the hardest moments of their lives.
By the end of the night, the Hope in Action Awards no longer felt like a ceremony about individual winners.
It felt like a reminder that healing happens through community. One open door. One safe home. One meal. One volunteer. One social worker. One child at a time.
Click Video Below to Watch Highlight Reel
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