Thousands upon thousands of families are new ones patched up from previous families that have split up and broken.
Our hope for this Web-Site is that regardless of experience, good or bad, everyone who visits us will know that they are not alone in any of the circumstances that they face as a result of being a Step Family.
We are a Christian family and firmly believe that the power of God DOES change lives.
We hope that STEP into PARENTING will become an encouraging meeting place. If a local church set up a meeting place for Step Parents we'd be there - so why not on the Internet ? :- Hebrews 10 : 24 + 25 says "Let us consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another."
We were married in 1998 so we can't be described as being experienced, yet, never mind experts, but that does not matter.
What we do know is the value of encouraging and supporting one another and allowing God to work in our hearts.
Our prayer is that STEP into PARENTING will be a place where we can offer and recieve such support in a place where we can learn more about how much God loves us and that HE DOES have a good plan not to harm us but to prosper us. (Jeremiah 29 : 11 - 14)
When we launched our web site in January 2000 we had no idea what to expect.
Although obviously hoping for a positive response of some kind, we decided that if only one person visited us and was encouraged in some way it would be worth it.
When we started getting visitors we were really excited, but then Matthew realised that that most of the "hits" on our counter were probably made by us as we looked at it to check things !
After a while however, we began to get "genuine" visitors and have now began to receive personal E-Mails from different kinds of Step Families.
For people to feel they can trust us enough to share their difficulties with us is an enormous priviledge.
Although there has not been an overwhelming volume of letters we are pleased about that because we are able to give each family the attention they deserve.
It has been a blessing to us to be able to reply individually to each family and to spend time in prayer for every one.
We have had occasional delays in getting a reply out when we have had problems with our PC, but we have still been able to pray for those families.
Sometimes we have not been able to reply because the E-Mail address has been insufficient or even incomplete but we have still had time for every family.
