Haven Acres

Our overarching goal is to "Heal hearts and homes through horses and the love of Jesus." When we break this down we have four pillars through which we seek to accomplish this: To restore hope, to rescue horses, to mentor children and adolescents, and to serve families.

Haven Acres follows the proven model of Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch in Oregon. The founders and a couple of their volunteers have traveled to Oregon on a couple of occasions to attend training conferences in order to implement best practices at Haven Acres. The staff from CPYR are available to consult with the leadership of Haven Acres when there are questions. The Board brings various business and nonprofit experience to the organization. They meet quarterly to assess financial needs and evaluate program strengths and potential areas of improvement. Key staff also consult with other local similar ministries to obtain counsel and guidance as the program continues to grow and develop.

Haven Acres will continue to build on relationships with current individuals and church donors while acquiring new ones. They will hold various fundraisers throughout the year including but not limited to: Pizza Ranch Tip Nights, Cub Foods bagging grocery days, the annual Bowling for Bucks Fundraiser, Booster t-shirt fundraisers, and GIVE MN Give to the Max Day. There is also a season ending program called the Round-Up in which family and friends of the participants are invited to observe a special program put on by the participants. This serves as a fundraiser as well. Haven Acres staff are also submitting grant proposals to foundations and have acquired several grants in previous years. Haven Acres has been privileged to participate in an annual local Ministry Fair at Celebration Church which showcases multiple local services to the community. Haven Acres will continue to reach out to organizations within the community and create partnerships in order to further their impact within the community. One such partnership is with MN Hands and Voices. This partnership has allowed for expansion of services to deaf and hard of hearing children.

Over the last four years we have sought to accomplish our goals and every year we are able to pursue them more fully.
In seeking to rescue horses, we have given homes to four donated horses and also adopted two rescue horses since our beginning. Our first rescue horse, Trixie, was from a case where the horses had been so neglected that they had eaten all of the manes and tails off of each other as well as all the manure off of the property. Also due to neglect she has lost the vision in her left eye, but she has become a good little pony for the participants here. Our second rescue horse, Jedidiah, was just rescued fall of 2016 from going to slaughter. After gaining weight he has turned out to be an amazing horse.
In trying to mentor children and adolescents we have grown from reaching 8 our first season to serving over 60 this past season. With that comes the need for extra volunteers, and we have expanded our volunteer base at the same rate as we have gained participants. Every year we have been working more and more on training the mentors, such as making training videos for the mentors and having group and individual training sessions before the season starts.
In serving families we have also increased the number of families that we have reached with our program expansion. When parents bring their children to the ranch they have the opportunity to sit and just breathe in a peaceful environment that our property offers, or go and run errands that they might not usually get to run on their own. We also try to catch up with the parents and offer to pray with them when we can.
Finally, in restoring hope we have been taking time every few weeks to have spiritual lessons during the sessions. We've been seeking to teach the participants about God and His love for them through analogies where we use horses to teach the lessons about sin, trust, and the gospel. This also gives somewhat of a doorway for the mentors to take to pursue farther conversation about life with their participants that they might otherwise not have had.