Meet the new addition to our family, Gavin Michael!
Here are the answers to a few questions you may have about Gavin.
How old is Gavin? Â Did you name him Gavin?
We aren’t allowed to post specific details about him online at this time, but we can tell you that he is about 11 months younger than Noelle. Â He does have a Chinese name, but we will name him Gavin Michael. Â This is a name we have talked about since before Ethan was born, and knew it would be the name of another boy in our family. Â Ethan’s middle name (Daniel) is Jason’s middle name and my dad’s first name. Â Michael is Jason’s dad’s first name. Â Gavin is currently living in an orphanage in southeastern China.
What do you know about him? Â Does he have a special need?
Not a whole lot, really. Â These two pictures are the only ones we have. Â We have requested a video, but haven’t received it after over 4 weeks. Â We hope to get some updates eventually, but it’s completely up to the orphanage as to whether or not we actually get them.
Gavin has the diagnosis hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE). Â It sounds pretty scary, but it is a diagnosis given to a lot of kids in China. Â And it is a diagnosis that really can’t be given to an abandoned child since it is a birth related event. Â Some of these kids come home and are rediagnosed as cerebral palsy, but we don’t think this will be the case with this little guy. Â He is developmentally delayed, but there are lots of things in his medical file to encourage us to believe he will catch up.
To learn more about HIE, I highly recommend reading this article.Â
When will you go get him?
We currently have several more steps ahead of us, so we won’t know exact travel dates for a while. Â At this point if we don’t have any holdups, we are estimating we will travel in March. Â Please pray for minimal bumps in the road! Â We trust that we will go get him in God’s perfect timing.
How did you find out about him?
Our agency called us to review the file of a little boy. Â Our agency representative told me she couldn’t leave for the day until she called us because he was just so handsome! Â When she told me his birthdate, I initially thought it would be a no, because I would prefer to keep 2 years between our kids. Â But after review his file and looking at his pictures, we knew the age difference was a bad reason to say no. Â We requested a video to have a better idea of what he was like developmentally, but asked several close friends to pray for us, as we knew that feeling peace from God was much more important than a video would show us. Â We had a limited amount of time to review his file before we had to give an answer, and at the end of that time the peace Jason and I felt about him being our son was overwhelming! Â I thought that when we accepted a file I would feel overwhelmingly exciting – it was a shock for me to feel overwhelmingly peaceful. Â But we know that no matter what – even if he comes with more medical issues than we anticipated – he is our son.
“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” John 14:18