
Photos by Ralph Freso
Jason Lewis moved 28 times.
He was hauled to many states by heroin-addicted parents, then “bounced around to foster homes, shelters, institutions … I packed up my stuff 28 times,” Lewis said.
No more. His home is on Grand Canyon University’s campus – 365 days a year. The year-around board and tuition is part of the Fostering Futures Scholarship, including summers, when a vast majority of students are at home with families or traveling.
“It’s easier for me to understand that this is where I am supposed to be – there’s really nowhere else to go,” said Lewis, an incoming junior majoring in Christian studies. “Other kids who haven’t gone through the foster care system, and they have parents and families to go back home to, they’re like ‘get me out of here, I’m gonna go back home.’
“But I’m good here. I like this. This is nice.”

Twenty students in the Fostering Futures program live on campus this summer – working, studying or attending events, such as trips with nonprofit organizations or pizza parties planned by Brandi Turner, the program’s student administrator.
Turner is launching a food pantry in the department’s new headquarters, now under Campus Health, in Papago Apartments, where students will have closer access to dietitians and behavioral health case managers.
“Their dining dollars run out and they don’t have the support, so I found myself so often at Walmart, or utilizing CityServe to get food items that the community donates, and had so much food in my office – oatmeal and peanut butter and ramen,” Turner said. “So now those are things I can stock up and give to students.”

Finding home in community
Lewis lives in Verde River Apartments and is not spending the summer fooling around. He is taking classes, toward the goal of graduating in three years, and interviewing for jobs. How he got here was improbable to him.
After he was removed from his home by Arizona Child Protective Services, he bounced around to different living arrangements but was able to keep in contact with his father – until a 2021 text message.
“He committed suicide and sent a group chat suicide note,” Lewis said. “I felt really depressed, numb to everything. I was drinking, smoking, cutting myself to feel something, to fill a void.
“My freshman year of high school I had a 1.2 GPA, when I ended up selling weed to a guy on the wrestling team. He invited me to join the team. I joined and my wrestling coach was a sponsor for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. He was like, ‘you wanna get some food?’ I was like, ‘dude, yes.’ So we went to the Wendy’s across the street and he shared the gospel with me.”
He wrestled at Greenway High School in Phoenix and only went to his group home to sleep, sometimes even sitting in his car outside it until bedtime. He needed a supportive environment, so when he heard about GCU’s scholarship for Arizona students transitioning out of foster care, he felt called by his renewed faith.

“I was prepared, bouncing around and learning to be comfortable in uncomfortable situations,” Lewis said of arriving at GCU. “I’m like a golden retriever personality. I found a good community with friends.”
He joined Bible studies, the swing dance club with his girlfriend, but carried the stress of needing to work – 35 hours a week as a car mechanic last year because he doesn’t have the financial backup of many other students.
But he also learned to tell his story; finding his testimony inspired others.
“A lot of people came up to me and were saying, ‘You really encouraged me to keep fighting,’ being this person for kids who don’t have people,” he said.
“Community is what brought me out of difficult times.”
In his apartment are reminders: a lamp, a vacuum cleaner and dishes that Turner got for him.
Home is where you make it
Sunshine Weather also has a home filled with donations on GCU’s campus this summer – a table and chairs, sofa and dish rack and other items from GCU’s CityServe, an outreach ministry for people in need.
“It’s like a mini home,” she said, showing visitors her apartment in Jerome. “I mean, I do call it home. It’s nice to be in one place all the time. Because I came from the foster system, all that home is is where we make it.”
Born in Haiti and raised in Colorado, Michigan and Arizona, she was placed in a group home at 16 to be free of a “dangerous environment,” she said.
“I mean, I survived,” Weather said of the group home, where after being emancipated, she changed her name to one that reflected her bright smile.

There she was told of an opportunity to attend GCU for free.
“I thought it was a scam,” she said.
Then she came to campus, and by fall 2023 was a new student “with a lot on my shoulders and a lot to prove to myself.”
She had written this out on her phone and was reading it, because it meant a lot to her:
“It was like someone finally said, you deserve to be here. For someone like me, with the past I came from, that meant everything. I’ve had classes that completely inspired me, especially in behavioral health and psychology. I finally felt like I was learning things that actually matter and connected to my purpose.”
Weather joined Bible studies and The Gathering on campus and found her anxiety eased. She learned that she wants to become a therapist – “not just hearing, not just listening, but really connecting the pieces and trying to solve the problem, just being there for someone.
“In my teenage years, when I was in middle school, it was a very, very dark place, and honestly, I didn’t think I could make it, so I wish I had someone like the someone I am today to help me.”
This summer she’s working as a waitress, taking classes and trying to find ways to get outside (“I love nature. Hello, my name is Sunshine.”)
Weather is home – with her own feelings about what it means.
“Every place you go you literally make your own little landmark. I used to do that, leave little rocks or random stuff, and I would go back and say, there. It’s like a reminder you set your foot there, a sign of that time.”
Grand Canyon University senior writer Mike Kilen can be reached at mike.kilen@gcu.edu
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