The Snyder Family: Heidi, Slate, Ridge, Tripp and Kenton

Eden: The Snyders are eagerly awaiting to welcome Eden home.
 

BFG Employee Spotlight: Heidi Snyder

One fall day last year, Heidi Snyder held her phone to her ear in disbelief.

She and her husband, Kenton, were told to pack their bags—they were going to Africa. Three weeks later, they stood in the Ivory Coast holding the daughter they had prayed for.

“There are still many unknowns, but the time we got to spend with Eden was a beautiful glimpse of God’s faithfulness,” Heidi said. “We are so thankful for how far He has brought us, and we are waiting for the day we get to bring her home.”

As Heidi and Kenton prepare to bring Eden home from Africa, they also pray for another little girl who they have loved from afar for years.

In 2019, an adoption agency matched the Snyders with then-2-year-old Willow. In 2020, their plans to take their three boys to China to meet Willow were put on hold.

When the pandemic hit, China paused its international adoption processing. For five years, the Snyders advocated with hundreds of other waiting families for a path to bring Willow home. Then in September 2024, China announced the official end of its international adoption program.

“While this door feels closed, we continue to pray for a miracle. We believe our God is big and trust that He is good, even if the door never reopens,” Heidi said.

Though it remains unresolved, Heidi and Kenton continue to trust God’s faithfulness in a story still being written. “God doesn’t distance Himself when we have questions,” Heidi said.

That trust was formed long before her adoption journey.

Growing up, Heidi’s world was much smaller than the international paths she would eventually walk. Raised on a farm in Taylor, Mo., she was deeply rooted in rural life and never saw herself anywhere else. 

But her horizon expanded significantly during high school, when she took her first mission trip to the Jamaica Deaf Village in Mandeville, Jamaica. The experience sparked a passion in her for missions, drawing her back to that community several times over the years, including the entire summer of 2005, following Hurricane Ivan. 

Witnessing the joy of Christ in both the children and the staff—and seeing God’s presence alive in a community so often overlooked—changed Heidi’s heart, planting the seeds for both missions and adoption.

“They radiated joy, even though we didn't speak the same language,” she said. “It made a profound impact on my heart. I felt the Holy Spirit moving in a way I had never experienced before.”

While missions shaped her life, Heidi’s lifelong dream was to be a mother. 

This dream began to take shape when she married Kenton in 2007 and their first child, Ridge, was born two years later. After Kenton returned to school for nursing and later earned his nurse practitioner degree, they were blessed with two more boys—Slate in 2012 and Tripp in 2013. 

While parenting is the joy of their lives, it has not come without struggles and challenges. Through each season, they have learned to lean on God, in both the good and the hard. 

One trying season came shortly after they took home Slate. At nine days old, they took him to the clinic after he became agitated and stopped eating. The clinic doctor instructed them to immediately take Slate to a St. Louis hospital for a higher level of care. There, they discovered he had an aortic coarctation, a severe constriction in his aorta that was blocking blood flow to the lower part of his body.

Slate underwent heart surgery at only 11 days old. While it was a routine surgery for the medical staff, it was a pivotal time for Kenton and Heidi.

Slate was released from the hospital a few days later. Returning home without the constant monitoring they had relied on at the hospital was a sudden shift.

“At first I couldn’t believe they were sending us home so soon,” Heidi said. “I remember thinking, ‘How do I trust that he’s going to be okay?’

“But we really felt the Holy Spirit with us,” she continued. “God was so faithful and present through it all with us. That’s really the theme of our lives together.”

Requiring no long-term medication, Slate is now an active 14-year-old and—along with his brothers—involved in sports and other activities.

For years, Heidi balanced raising her family with working part-time at her dad’s accounting business. But when he retired and sold the business, her position would soon come to an end. 

“I mentioned to Kenton on two separate occasions that I thought Benson Financial Group seemed like a wonderful place to work,” she said. 

Then one October afternoon, BFG Executive Assistant Jen Kovar called unexpectedly. Instead of scheduling an appointment with her, Jen invited Heidi to interview for a position with the firm.

"I thought she was asking us to come in for a review," Heidi said with a laugh. "I asked if Kenton needed to come too, and she said, 'No, just you.'"

Knowing it was a Christ-centered workplace, Heidi prayed about the opportunity. Offering the flexibility to keep her family a priority while using the business experience she had gained alongside her dad, she took the job.

Now, as she and Kenton raise their teenage sons and wait for the day to welcome Eden home, Heidi continues to lean on this passage.

“…we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”  –-Romans 5:3-5

“These verses remind me that God uses everything for his glory and our sanctification,” she said. “I believe that no part of our story is ever wasted.”