We have just received the first batch of Mei shirts and can't wait to show them off!! As we get down into the home stretch for this adoption, we are about $8000 short of our goal. We are praying this fundraiser will help get us over the last hump.
We are so excited about this t-shirt that my amazingly talented brother designed because it tells our adoption story with Mei in a few short lines. For those of you that don't know how Mei came to be part of our family, I will share that God story. Tracey and I talked about adoption from the very beginning and always thought that if we ever adopted, it would be from China. We were thinking a cute little China baby girl. Years passed and we had our biological children with adoption in the back of our minds but there was no urgency around the thought. Tracey became a campus minister for Middle Ga College in August of 2008. In December of 2008, we were walking out of Target and a little boy with Downs Syndrome walked by us, Tracey and I looked at each other at the same time and said, maybe we need to look into special needs adoption. We didn't know what that meant for us at that point nor did we know the number of special needs orphans. We just knew God had blessed us with 4 healthy biological children and that there were surely special needs kids out there. In March of 2009, Tracey was at a campus ministers retreat and sent me a text that said, "the GBC needs a campus minister to lead a mission trip to China this summer and I wanted to know your thoughts.". I said," you'd be crazy not to go, what an awesome opportunity!". So Tracey spent the month of July of 2009 in China. Tracey and his team of students were hiking a mountain trail in Meizhou China one day while they were there and their young guide said, "do y'all want to visit an orphanage where we do some volunteer work?". The team all agreed to go but then she warned them..."this is a special needs orphanage.". Tracey and the student went inside and began meeting the children but one little boy in particular really caught Tracey's eye. Tracey played with this little boy and held him for the last hour they were there. When he placed him back in his crib, the baby cried and cried. Tracey knew he had formed an immediate connection with this baby and even asked the workers what the possibilities were of adopting this child. They all told him that China didn't work that way, that you couldn't meet your child and then start an adoption process. Tracey had one more opportunity to visit the orphanage and bonded with this baby all over again. He promised him this time when he placed him back in his crib that he would do everything he could to make him his son. Tracey left the orphanage in tears crying out to God to move mountains. At that moment Everything changed! You see, adoption was just an afterthought until Tracey met Mei. We could easily ignore the need before we saw his face and before Tracey held him in his arms but once he did we would have moved heaven and earth to make him ours. Tracey came home telling me about this baby boy. We started calling adoption agencies and all but one told us it was impossible. God began moving mountains making this little boy that was classified as "unadoptable", adoptable. Mei Gwat Fung went from orphan to our son in November of 2010. It was an amazing journey of God provision throughout our adoption process.
This quote by David Platt is our story with Mei in a nutshell. Knowing this was Mei's story, my brother designed this t-shirt using Meis face on the front and his blank profile on the back. We are now in our second adoption journey and hope to make Eli and Zoe our son and daughter in December this year.
We are selling our Mei shirts for $20 and we have both child and adult sizes. For those of you that aren't local, we are glad to ship. We can either do that through a check in the mail (135 South Second St Cochran Ga 31014) or we can do it via PayPal. Our paypal is tied to Traceys email at bamabro@gmail.com and You can either email me at deaverszoo6@gmail.com and tell me the size and number you would like or you can facebook message me.
Would you prayerfully consider joining our adoption journey by purchasing a t--shirt or two or three?;). Would you help us sell our shirts and spread the word to family and friends? If we can sell 300 shirts, that is $6000 toward our adoption! We are hoping to have to reorder shirts and finish funding our adoption and help other families in the process. Please help us not only fund our adoption and spread Mei's story but also spread the need of orphans around the globe. The Bible calls us to look out for orphans and widows in their distress and what a great way to make the need known!
