Good Morning friends! What a great Monday morning this is. I’ve been so excited, anticipating this post, the first post of many this month in this journey to help my good friends, The Miller’s adopt.
I have always been the person where I thought my life was completely planned out. Go to college, get married, have babies, be a mom. Married for almost 7 years, my husband and I have been blessed with 2 beautiful children, but my point is that I feel as though I lived in this naive world when it came to people who struggled to get pregnant or when it came to how many children in the world NEED a loving home, but don’t have one. This is hard for me to fully admit since I grew up in Southeast Asia and saw first hand the poverty that has stricken that part of the world. Then a year ago a friend of mine changed my life in a huge way. She told her story about infertility and asked us, her friends, to help her though spreading the word and donating our handmade products towards a raffle. It was LIFE changing for me to watch people step up from every where, people we knew and didn’t know, and they were able to raise over $6,000 to go towards their adoption. Since then I’ve had it on my heart be involved in another families dream to be able to adopt. Now I have my chance to step up, give back and tug at your heart to help me help the Miller family.
I’ve known the Miller family for 4 years and they are AMAZING people! When I met them they served as part of a church plant in Long Beach, but after many months of serving, moved back to Orlando, FL, to resume their mission work with Youth With A Mission (YWAM). They have an amazing story of God’s calling on their lives to adopt their entire family. To rescue children across the world who are impoverished and don’t have homes. They already have one little boy, Tysen {Adorable!} that they adopted several years ago, but recently they’ve felt God asking them to take that leap of faith with him again.
I’m so excited to introduce you to the Miller family and let them tell you a little bit about their story:
The Miller Family
The day they picked up Tysen
Here’s their story in their own words:
“When I was 18, I had the chance to go to India on a mission trip. The first thing that hit me upon my arrival was all the children there. Not just children in general, but children who were homeless and living on the streets. One encounter I had was with a little boy who had no arms and no legs. According to my host, this little one had his arms and legs cut off by a “pimp” type individual. Having the boy this way would manipulate compassion into people to give the little boy money for food to live. His pimp however, would give the little boy just enough to eat and keep the rest of the money for himself. As I picked this little boy up, my heart was broken and horrified at this situation.
When I started dating my now husband Andy (15 years ago), I told him that it was in my heart to adopt all of my children. I wanted to be a part of giving children who had no home, the opportunity to have a mommy and a daddy, and not have to live a life like the little boy in India.
Since then it has always been our aim to adopt. We always said our first child will be adopted and then we can proceed from there. After Tysen, we felt God challange us if we would adopt all our children – we have gladly proceeded with a big YES! We are passionate about this and we believe we will be a voice for others to encourage, challange, and inspire them to adopt.
In 2006, we adopted our son Tysen from South Korea. The last 5 years have been life changing as he has changed our life forever. The adoption process took 18 months at times it became exhausting. The cost of it being $20,000 in itself stretched our faith in God well beyond what we had imagined, but in the end, after fund raisers, friends selling items on EBay, offerings, stock donations, etc…God provided every penny.
About 5 months ago, we found ourselves in the ER at 1 am in the morning. Tysen had a 106.7 degree temperature, which to my understanding is close to brain damage and even death. By the grace of God we made it through the night as the doctors restored Ty’s temp to normal. The next day, I found out that I had just had a miscarriage. It was a very exhausting and emotional fall season.
We haven’t aimed to prevent having our own children, but the miscarage and not getting pregnant was not the main reason for adoption – It is who we are and what we long passionately to do.
About a month ago, we had really been praying about pursuing a second adoption. In the midst of this, Tysen began to appeal to us saying he wanted a sister that looked like him. He said he wanted to take a van and go to Korea and get about 10 kids who needed a family and bring them back home to live with us. After much family conversation, we applied again for adoption and received our acceptance package in early January 2011.
Things were going well until last week, when our agent (who is a wonderful lady that helped us with Ty’s adoption), emailed me saying, “I wanted to mention that South Korea now requires you to have almost all the $30,000 for the adoption fees, in your bank account showing you can afford it.” For Tysen, we had been allowed to gradually pay and raise the funds over an 18 month period. But now we are targeting in on an April 30th target date of raising the $30,000. Basically about 3 months. This would not seem like such a desperate thing, but one additional piece of information from our agent is that Korea is looking to close their adoption program @ the end of 2011 (unless you are already in process), and that our agency is taking limited applicants. Currently, we are one of those applicants. But we need to keep our adoption moving forward and we look too passionately, with the hand of God do everything we can to raise this $30,000 and bring our little baby home.
You may ask any questions you want. We are an open book for the world. Thanks again for your heart towards our lives and this adoption. We are eternally grateful. Much Love – Andy, Rachel & Tysen Miller”
After hearing that they wanted to adopt again I felt the Lord tugging on my heart to get involved. The Miller’s have decided that whether they are blessed with a boy or a girl, they want to name their little one Paxton, and so The Paxton Project was born!
Do you want to get involved? Here’s How:
I have decided to put together a raffle together, and I’m hoping to collaborate with all you AMAZING people. I’ve already sent out an email to people I know, many who have
already responded and are generously donating items that you can purchase raffle tickets to win and ALL the money will go to the Miller’s. Don’t worry, if you didn’t get an email and want to donate an item(s), keep reading to find out how. Here are a couple sneak peaks of some I’ve heard from already:
The raffle will be held from Monday, February 28 – Friday, March 4, 2011
This is where you all come in, dear friends.
If you’d like to participate – first of all, let me say a huge thank you. Please email me and I will send you all the details for how to get involved.
Prayer Support – I truly believe God has His hand on this whole event, but any and all prayer support that God will provide for this family through this raffle would be so amazing.
Spread the word – Please email the link to this post to all your family and friends letting them know about this event, blog about this upcoming event, tweet about it, facebook about it, and I’d love it if you’d add The Paxton Project button on your blog.
Ready to donate? – I’ve already added a “Donate Now” button to the upper right corner of my blog. If you feel led and want to donate money to help this family, please feel free to do so by clicking on the “Donate Now” button. Your financial support is so appreciated.
bethany says
Alissa,
What a beautiful project! It can be done! 🙂 Let me brainstorm a bit and get back to you, but I'd love to help out!!
Bethany 🙂
Jennifer says
I love people who have a heart for adoption. I have always wanted to adopt also. I would love to help out or donate something to the your raffle as well. I make my own body scrubs that I could donate, you can see one of the flavors here: http://www.alwaysinwonder.com/2010/12/vanilla-sugar-salt-scrub.html
but I would also love to donate a shop credit to one of my friends etsy shops, she makes adorable hair bands and hair bows for little girls.
I also gave you a little blog award for being a Versatile Blogger, you can see it here: http://www.alwaysinwonder.com/2011/01/nicest-thing-thats-happened-all-week.html
Cathy says
So sweet of you to do this for your friend! I have 2 beautiful sons that came to us throgh the blessing of adoption. I know first hand how expensive it can be and I hate that it is. So many folks desperate to be parents and so many sweet children in need of forever families!
I will be adding this family and your auction to my prayers and would also love to donate something from my shop. http://www.redrabbitstudios.etsy.com
I will e-mail you for more details.
Blessings!
Cathy
http://www.ceddington.blogspot.com
@cathysvoice
Mary says
gave $30.00 marysliter@gmail.com Put all on 1st prize.
Lisa Willer says
Lisa Willer lisamaywiller@hotmail.com–20.00 (1 entry each 1st and 2nd please)