Meet Cherith Craft – Abundant Life Alumni Hall of Fame Recipient

Cherith (Vince) Craft entered Parkview in the 8th grade along with her 3 siblings. She participated in choir, theater and was part of the worship team in high school. Because of the opportunities to live out and grow in her faith as a student, she credits her time at Parkview as some of the most spiritually impactful. She graduated from Parkview in 2000. After high school she attended Louisiana State University and completed a Bachelor of Science degree in Animal Science. Although she planned to attend veterinary school God had a different path for her life. She married Brandon Craft in 2004 and hoped to be on the mission field. Realizing that God had in mind for them to start a family and a business instead she learned again that His plan is far better than hers and she has been yielding her life’s plans ever since.

In 2016 the Crafts felt the call to become foster parents in order to serve the community and have a family ministry. To date they have fostered 5 children.

Cherith felt the Lord leading them to do more in 2018 and became a volunteer foster care advocate with The Forgotten Initiative serving Baton Rouge’s Department of Children and Family Services. She works to bridge the needs of the foster care community with the church and does this by bringing awareness, offering encouragement to those in the trenches (foster parents and agency workers) and does so through her role as an advocate encouraging others to move to action.

She’s continually looking for churches and businesses to partner with her and even uses her own interior design business to further these efforts, delivering secondhand furniture to parents looking to reunite with their children in foster care. Cherith has dreams to one day see every family in the church serving and caring for another vulnerable family in the community thus ending the need for foster care. It’s a lofty goal but with God all things are possible.