Elroy's Family
We got married in 2012 and Maryland for Emily to serve on Young Life staff. Part of her role on staff was to be the director of Capernaum ministries. Capernaum is a Young Life ministry directed towards teens and young adults with disabilities. Getting to lead this ministry together gave us both a passion for people with disabilities. When we were called away from Young Life staff, Sean and I knew that we would revisit this God given passion to serve this community in some capacity in the future. Alongside a passion for special needs ministry, the Lord also placed a desire to either foster or adopt a baby in our future. When we decided to stop having biological kids after our youngest, Avery was born, we prayerfully considered if it was the right time to begin the adoption process. After seeing friends at church and in our community go through the Foster/Adoption process, and understood it would be an investment of time and money, we had peace that it would have to be whenever the Lord truly brought it to the forefront of our minds and hearts. After attending a local Down syndrome association event in January 2022, it was instantly clear that the Lord was calling us to adopt a child with Down Syndrome. As we looked further into what this calling would look like for our family, we found NSDAN and it felt like an answer to prayer. We were “all in”! We started the home study process a couple months later and were officially on the NDSAN registry in June 2022. We went into the process praying for 3 things:
We prayed that God would give us the opportunity to meet a need - to provide an option to a family who felt that they could not meet the specific needs of a child with Down Syndrome. We prayed that God, in His sovereignty, already knew our child and would give us the chance to adopt a child with Down Syndrome.
We prayed for an opportunity to not just care for the needs of a child with Down Syndrome but also that adoption would be an opportunity to invite an entire family into a relationship with hopes to share the gospel over time.
We prayed that our kids would catch the same vision that we had for this adoption. We wanted them to have eyes for the marginalized, to be inclusive, and to be genuinely excited for a sibling with unique needs and different abilities. We waited for 10 months until we were matched with Elroy on March 22nd, 2023.
God answered all of these prayers in very specific ways by bringing us our sweet, Elroy Kai.
Elroy was born on January 9th in Taiwan. His diagnosis of Down Syndrome came as a surprise to his mom and dad about 6 weeks after he was born. His parents had already made arrangements to move from Taiwan to Southern California once his mom received her Green Card post the birth of Elroy. Elroy’s dad is a first-generation Taiwanese-American man, who had moved from Taiwan to the US at the age of 13 and was the only one in his family (both immediate and extended) that spoke English. Elroy’s mom would be moving for the first time from Taiwan to the US. Upon receiving the news of Elroy’s diagnosis, his parents tried to imagine what their life would now look like with a newborn with Down Syndrome. As they researched and pondered this idea, they came to the realization that amidst also caring for their 18-month-old son and transitioning to a new country which involves overcoming language barriers and adapting to a new culture, they may not be equipped with the right resources to raise him. They wrestled for a month or so before they made a decision to create an adoption plan and soon after found the NDSAN which led them to our family. Elroy’s parents were searching for a family that had the desire to come alongside them to lovingly care for and offer resources they felt they couldn’t offer. They love him deeply but felt based on their research of Down Syndrome, that if Elroy could have better access to the correct resources, be valued and included, and be given opportunities to grow - he would without a doubt, be successful in life.
We had the privilege of going out to California to spend an extended weekend with notonly Elroy’s parents and biological brother, but uncle, great-aunt, grandparents, and great-grandparents. The time gave us the ability to get to know them and their story, earn their trust, and get to share our heart for adoption with them. It really was a sweet time, in the midst of a difficult situation, that felt God-ordained. Conversations with their family, despite cultural and language barriers felt natural, uplifting, and insightful.
It was clear in the big and little details of our time together that the Lord had gone before us to merge our two families together. After spending the weekend together with Elroy’s family, his first parents signed relinquishment papers that Monday and transitioned him to our care. The Lord made this process seamless. We received the call that Wednesday afternoon that we had permission to leave the state with Elroy and bring him home. This meant we could surprise our kids, get to spend the last half of their Spring Break together, and celebrate our daughter’s 8th birthday as a new family of 6! Elroy was greeted by our kids with warm embraces and genuine celebration. The kids have decided that “Elroy is perfect” and “he completes our family”. We have seen Avery step into her role of being a big sister with great pride as she looks for ways to be helpful. Hudson has taken on a new leadership role as he finds ways to play and engage with Elroy every chance he can. Harper Grace has always been our nurturer, but she has taken this to another level as she is able to help feed, dress, and watch over her new baby brother. Our kids have created a rotating schedule for who gets to sit next to Elroy in the car as well as who gets to pick out his outfits each morning. What a joy to see how quickly, genuinely, and deeply they already care for their brother. The Lord has answered our prayers. We have had Elroy in our home for 4 months now and we couldn’t be more in love. We have watched him persevere in therapies and already make progress physically and socially. In PT, Elroy has been continuing to work on his neck control and we have seen tremendous improvement! We can tell he is eager to start moving, especially when he sees his brothers and sisters moving around him, but he can’t quite figure out that part yet. He will start to kick his legs as if he wants to take off crawling, yet is still right where he has been laying on his tummy the whole time. He continues to work to strengthen the position of his arm extension to move toward crawling. We are impressed by his ability to be pushed to his limits, persevere, quickly learn new skills, and engage with her exercises for the entirety of our sessions. Elroy began eating solid foods and continues to be on a consistent schedule with napping and eating. So far he has tried broccoli, green beans, and carrots. The feeding therapist has been impressed with his ability to manage new textures with his mouth and start mastering the movement of using his tongue to eat off of a spoon. We will continue to work with her on this and feed him meals during our lunch and dinner meal times. We are also working with her to start to teach him baby sign language.
Some of Elroy’s favorite things include: playing on his water tummy time mat, interacting with people (babbling, smiling, and giggling), and chewing on his teething toys. He is obsessed with watching his older sisters and brother play around him and gets excited when he meets a new
