A Legacy Remembered Thank You

A Legacy Remembered

Nearly a decade ago, a dream that began in the hearts of Dr. Thomas R. Horn and Juanita Horn became Whispering Ponies Ranch a place of refuge, healing, and restoration for children who had already experienced more pain than any child should ever have to know.

Over the years, we watched that dream become something truly extraordinary. We watched children who had experienced abuse, neglect, trafficking, and terrible trauma come to this Ranch carrying fear, hurt, and sometimes very little reason to trust anyone. And then we watched them laugh. We watched them climb a rock wall when they were certain they couldn’t. We watched them love on a horse, make a friend, sit around a campfire, pray with someone who cared about them, and often simply get to be a kid again. Most importantly, we watched so many of them encounter the love of Jesus Christ.

And you made that possible.

For almost ten years, you prayed for these children. You gave. You believed in what we were doing. You helped us open these gates year after year and welcome children here without asking the ministries that brought them to shoulder the financial burden.

Our family will never be able to adequately thank you for that.

It is also why this is so incredibly difficult to write.

The last several years have brought changes and deeply personal challenges to our family that have been incredibly difficult to navigate. We have experienced tremendous loss, ongoing health challenges, and circumstances that have changed our lives in ways we never anticipated. Through a great deal of prayer, we have had to accept that our family needs a season to step away, to heal, and to listen for where God is leading us next.

And so, with heavier hearts than we can adequately express, our family has made the incredibly difficult decision to discontinue operations at Whispering Ponies Ranch. It is a decision we never imagined we would have to make, and one that has come through some of the hardest conversations and decisions our family has ever faced.

But we could never close this chapter without first saying thank you.

Thank you for every child you helped send through these gates. Thank you for every prayer you prayed over this place. Thank you for supporting this work so faithfully and generously through the years, for every encouraging letter and email, and for believing alongside us that these children were worth fighting for.

Because they were.

And they still are.

We don’t know exactly what God has planned for our family next, but we know that our love for these children and our commitment to child advocacy does not end here.

What happened at Whispering Ponies Ranch mattered. Children were loved here. Children found courage here. Children found hope here. And children encountered Jesus here.

Those are memories our family will treasure for the rest of our lives.

From the entire Horn family, thank you for believing in this dream, for loving these children alongside us, and for giving us the privilege of doing this beautiful work for all these years.

We will never forget it and we will never forget you.