Wow! Where to even begin! If you would have talked to us 6 weeks ago, we wouldn’t in a thousand years have anticipated what these weeks would hold. But here we are! God is so incredibly kind and gracious to us, even in the midst of difficult challenges.
Well, let’s start with the calm before the storm! Richard has become more involved with an organization called CarePortal, which helps connect churches with needs for vulnerable children in the area. We were able to get involved with two events, one called Life in Limbo and another Memphis Ignite. In Life in Limbo, it is a simulation of what the foster care experience is from the perspectives of the birth parents, foster parents, and children. Both Ximena and Richard were children from the same family, but since we came from a large family group, Ximena was placed with her other “siblings” and Richard was placed in a home by himself. It was such a gut-wrenching experience to see what it was like to have the case workers in the simulation “give away” kids to whoever will take them, but a DCS worker who attended the event shared that it does happen like that. The kids in foster care will be sitting next to them as they call foster families, begging them to take them for the night so they don’t have to spend the night at the office.
Richard then helped out with the Memphis Ignite event as well. It was an event for pastors and others in leadership to get involved with taking care of vulnerable children in Memphis. There were over 100 people in attendance and it was so beautiful to see the desire of the church to get involved. Also, Richard was able to team up with Adam Weis, who is the new Regional Manager of the CarePortal. We ended up finding out we had friends in common, as he used to be a youth pastor in Corpus Christi! Small world! The portal (website) for Memphis is now open and local organizations will begin to input needs that vulnerable children and their families have, as well as local foster families, allowing the church to be the one who serves these children as the body of Christ was meant to function. It is so exciting to be a part of this ministry and be an ambassador for what they are doing!
Richard has also started a partnership with Tennessee Kid’s Belong (he wrote about their video day in the past update). One of their programs is providing training for something that is called WRAP, which stands for Words of Encouragement, Respite, Acts of Service, and Prayer. It is the idea of surrounding a new adoptive or foster family with multiple people who could serve in those four areas to make sure that the family does not burn out. As Richard went through their training to become a WRAP Coordinator, our church approached us about being the first family to be WRAPed around. We were blown away and so encouraged to be the first family, while also being scared to be the guinea pigs. A few weeks later, on March 27th, we had our WRAP meeting after church and had multiple families, some we knew and some we had never met, commit to walking alongside us in the upcoming journey…that we still thought was at least a few weeks away. Little did we know that it would start just a few days later!
At this point, it was the beginning of April. Richard was in full “planning-mode” for a Parent’s Day Out event for foster parents that is coming up in May. We had just finished the approval process to open our home for foster care, but we had requested to not begin receiving placements until April 25th, because Richard was going to be traveling out of state a few weekends for class. On April 1st all of that changed! Maybe it was just an April Fool’s joke, but we acted on it anyway. Richard was at one of our foster/adoptive families house, helping them fix their ice maker on the fridge, when Ximena texted him a Facebook post from another foster mom involved with DCS. There were multiple teenagers who were at the DCS office, and they were going to sleep at the office over the weekend. Our foster room wasn’t completely ready, but we didn’t have any big plans over the weekend, so we could offer to take someone in.
A few hours later, we had a 15-year-old girl at our home with all of her luggage. She shared that she is a permanent “floater,” so she moves to different homes during the school week and different placements on the weekend. So many different homes that she doesn’t remember how many. At 10pm that Friday night, we received another message. Another 15-year-old girl was the last one at the DCS office and they still hadn’t found a weekend placement. Would we be willing? Well, we already had one teenage girl…why not another one? Around midnight, another sweet, 15-year-old girl showed up with one bag of her things after being removed from a previous foster home. She was so tired that she actually fell asleep on the chair in her room. And the journey began!
The next day, we had a big pancake breakfast and one of our co-workers at Orphanos, Denise, came over to help wash and condition their hair. It was so beautiful to see Ms. D laughing with them and just joking around! It was a super sweet morning and then the discussion about their dream hair came up. Both of the girls shared that they have experience doing hair, so they decided that they could fix each other’s hair. In between soccer games, Ximena headed to Beauty Land to help them pick out hair. We learned so much! Rose* started doing crochet braids on Zara’s* hair and she was so fast and amazing at it. It still took over 4 hours and there were many hand cramps in the process. She even continued to braid her hair in the car, as we were heading out to the skating rink with 6 kids! It turned out great and Rose was so proud of her work. We were able to meet up with one of Zara’s sisters at the skating rink. It was definitely an interesting experience, as the week before, there had been a shooting there, so security was really aggressive and protective. But it was a fun time, even if it was a little outside of our comfort zone.
On Sunday, we were able to have some time as a family. We kept on encouraging Zara to start on Rose’s hair, but she continued to give excuses of why she couldn’t. At 4pm on Sunday, Zara shut herself in her room and didn’t come out until the following morning, when she was picked up by her case worker for school. On Sunday evening, we were scrambling! Rose had done such an amazing job on Zara’s hair and sacrificed her time and energy. We wanted her to have the same experience. So, we called up one of our friends from Ghana to see if she knew how to do box braids, because we had no clue. Adjoa came and saved the day! She taught us how to section out the hair, twist, start the braid, and add hair in. Richard was the first one to try it and it actually turned out pretty good! We stayed up until midnight, braiding hair and talking about her life and what she had come from. We weren’t able to finish all of it, but she knew she would spend the day at the DCS office waiting for a new placement, so she was planning on finishing it there. On that Monday morning before she was picked up, she was showing her hair to Zara and was so excited to show her the braids that Richard did. Ximena has still kept in touch with her via Instagram and thankfully she was able to be placed in another family.
That Monday morning, we received another request. There was an 11-year-old boy who was looking for a 3rdplacement in four days. It touched Ximena’s heart and so we agreed to take him in, as he was looking to be reunited with his mom in a few weeks. Ximena had a hard time saying his name, so she loving called him Kenito*. To say he is a handful is an understatement…there are so many handfuls that we have lost count! We were just joking around that even the devil is saying, “Oh, Jesus, take the wheel!” He has been with us for over a month now and it definitely has its challenges. He was on a lot of medication when he first came and was like a zombie, so we have been working with his psychiatrist to remove medicines and then try new ones. He is our runner! He has run away four times and said that he is leaving, but he always comes back. One of the biggest episodes was while Richard was in Chicago, so Ximena had to deal with it by herself. After a few minutes, he came back and laid down in the middle of the street…drama king! He’s so sweet and cute, so if it wasn’t for that, it wouldn’t be as easy to forgive those outbursts. There have been changes, but there are just so many changes to be made. The whole first week, Kenito would try new things (he said he would usually just eat candy and drink Dr. Pepper) and he would always say, “It ain’t that bad!” Thankfully, he is trying new things…although we did go to Costco and he tried the organic keifer…he made the most disgusted face I’ve ever seen and started sharing how horrible it was. Honestly, I couldn’t disagree, so I just let him share his mind! He said it tasted like rotten sour cream and the poor Costco lady didn’t know what to make of it. He kept asking the other Costco employees, “Have y’all tried that? It’s disgusting. Don’t try it!” It had me dying laughing.
That following Wednesday, Ximena’s family was coming in from Ohio for Easter weekend, so we were moving around beds and mattresses for the 7 of them. Half of the family had arrived, but we still had a twin mattress, a toddler mattress, and our living room couches empty when we received a message from a friend. A 12-year-old girl from Guatemala and her brothers (6 and 4) had just been removed due to sexual abuse, and they needed a place to stay for the night until they could be placed with relatives. It was 11pm when it was confirmed that they were on their way. They each came with a blanket and one backpack between the three of them. It was heart breaking to see, but they immediately sacked out after having dinner. It was a short amount of time, but it blessed our hearts to provide a safe place for them in the evening.
We were able to spend Easter with Ximena’s family and it was a really fun time. Our WRAP team had also put together Easter baskets for our kid’s, which Kenito was super excited about. It was definitely a packed house for a few days, but the food that Ximena’s mom always makes has to be a highlight! It was beautiful to see how much J has grown since our last visit to Ohio in December. He was playing with our nephew, Nico, the whole time and would always share how much he loved playing with Nico.
At that point, we both talked and said that we needed to pause for a little bit. We still had a bunch of pending house projects to get our home ready for foster care and a few big community events. Plus, did I share that Kenito was a handful??? But then we received a message on April 18th that a 15-year-old Guatemalan girl, who didn’t speak English, was just put into custody. We both knew who it was. We had been contacted several times by about these girls who Ximena helped put on the quinceañera for (we wrote about it in the last update), asking if we would accept them in our home. The foster mom didn’t want to continue fostering the two girls, because the language barrier was too difficult. We had only had Kenito for a short amount of time, so we didn’t think we could handle taking on more cases. But when we heard that she had been officially asked to leave by her previous foster mom, we knew that we had to help. We started making calls and Clau* was placed with us the same day. She has been so fun to have in our home and made us realize how much we missed having Mayumi at home. Clau merged into our family so well and it has been so sweet to have her with us.
But then we immediately started thinking about the other girl, Nati*, who was still with the previous foster mom. We reached out to her and asked her if she was still wanting Nati long-term. She shared that she didn’t and would rather her be moved to our home as well, where she would be able to be around people who understood her and who she could communicate with. We were able to work with her previous foster mom to have her spend this past weekend with us, as Clau was missing her friend and someone she considers to be her sister. Thankfully, after a long fight with DCS because the case worker didn’t want to deal with a school change, we were finally able to get custody this Monday! We were just talking about how it feels like she was a missing piece and now we are complete.
We now have 6 kids in our home, which is definitely a big shift from 2 kids just a year ago! There are so many doctor’s meetings and what we call “fights” for these kids. Even today, Richard was dealing with 4 different school meetings at three different schools, trying to correct previous mistakes that have been made. One example is that Nati was in the 7th grade, even though she finished 8th grade in 2020. Another “fight” meant Richard translating via Zoom in the Chicago airport for Clau’s court proceedings, as they couldn’t find an interpreter and were going to postpone her case a few months if he didn’t push to translate on her behalf. Then, we are heading to speech therapy and visitation with one of our kid’s families this afternoon. We feel like we haven’t been able to catch our breath yet, but things are starting to normalize. Our WRAP team has been amazing and have loved on us so well, including letting us spend the day at a pool, taking Kenito fishing, tons of meals, and even helping to go pick up a refrigerator an hour from our house on a Saturday morning! Also, our church and some very close friends have stepped in the gap to provide a new hot water heater and lots of furniture for our home! It has been beautiful to see how God is loving on us and spoiling us, even in the middle of so much going on.
One sweet redeeming story was regarding M, J's mom. We were at baby C's one-year old birthday party when Kenito decided to run one of the times. M decided that she wanted to go talk with him. She told him that he could keep on running, like she did when she was younger, or he could stop. That our home is fun, we love him, and we would take care of him. And then, of course, M told Kenito he had better be careful with her son! A few weeks later at one of our visitations, she brought a few bags full of snacks for our family, because she knew that we had a lot of kids in our home. It was one of the sweetest gestures, especially as she had just lost her job a few days before. It just brought tears to our eyes to see how she is changing.
So this is us! It ain’t that bad! We are tired, but we are also supported and loved on. It has been heavy as our kids start to share their burdens that they have been carrying and it has meant a lot of calls to the abuse hotline, as we are required to report things. It has been overwhelming at times, but God has been so gracious and sweet.
Prayer Requests:
1. Gustavo: We know many of you have been praying for Gustavo, as he hadn’t been in touch since Father’s Day last year. Well, he had a big accident, where the taxi he was in flipped over, which caused him to reach out again. It has started conversation again, which has been so nice, and he is even looking at going with us to Ecuador when Mayumi has her baby. Please pray that the communication can stay open!
2. Mayumi: Mayumi is due the end of June, so she is getting big! We can’t wait to meet baby Tristan (current name chosen!) and spend some time with everyone
3. Inti and Nico: Both of our babies applied to the University of Memphis and have been accepted! We are still working on some of the logistics, but if it works out, then they will be moving to Memphis in August. It will take lots of people shifting rooms, but we are excited about the possibility of them moving home again!
4. Us: We really are tired and it has been a really heavy season emotionally. We are doing good, but we know that it can’t go on forever like this. Please be praying as we find new rhythms and care for ourselves.
5. Our extra babies: Please pray for us to be able to find good academic, immigration, and medical/medication solutions for the kids in our home. There are a lot of moving parts!
We do receive some assistance from DCS to cover food expenses, but we have had additional expenses (like a new fridge after the old one went out!). If you are interested in supporting our family financially, CLICK HERE! If you are interested in helping out with ministry expenses as we serve our community in Memphis, CLICK HERE!
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