HOUSTON—Arrow Child and Family Ministries is preparing for what could be the agency’s biggest endeavor yet: an influx of young girls taken from a polygamist compound in West Texas.

CPS took custody of hundreds of girls earlier this week, and some of them could be heading for shelters in the Houston area – shelters like the Arrow Retreat Center.

“We have two group home-type settings that can take in 24 kids comfortably and then a camp kind of setting for another 75 beds or so,” Mark Tennant of Arrow Child and Family Ministries, said.

The Arrow Retreat Center was built to be just that – a retreat center. But after Hurricane Katrina, they turned it into a shelter.  Now that, once again, hundreds of children are being forced from their homes in West Texas, the center could be used to house them.

“We called our staff anticipating the call would come,” Tennant said.

Patricia and Rex Childress could become foster parents to some of the girls.

“You’ve got to break down those barriers. You’ve got to show them that people do care about them, and that there are people out here that are willing to help,” Rex Childress said.

AP Photo

Young girls in traditional dress near a polygamist compound in West Texas.

Right now, the Childress family has five teenage foster sons.  They’ve not yet received confirmation that any of the more than 400 girls from El Dorado will be moving in with them, but they’re preparing to expand their family.

“We tried to talk to the boys a little bit about the girls that would be out here. They come from different cultures than they come from,” Patricia Childress said.

Patricia and Rex believe that, just as they broke down the walls and barriers that once stood between them and their boys, they could do the same with the girls from West Texas.

“Just trust the good Lord will guide us through this,” Patricia said.