I’m sure several of you who’ve been following my tweets and Facebook status updates have wondered, “who is this Marlon kid?”  For those of you who don’t know his story and for those of you who may have forgotten I decided to give a condensed version of our story with Marlon here on my blog.  I’m sure in the days to come I’ll be posting about him so I wanted you to know a little of the “backstory”.

I first met (or actually heard of) Marlon in March of 2007.  We took a mission team to work at his orphanage in Honduras that spring and I remember people talking about the deaf kid, but I don’t really remember meeting him.   I spent a week at his orphanage and could not identify him if you had put five of the kids in front of me.  In my mind I had this thought, “I don’t want to play with the deaf kid because I can’t communicate with him!”  I confess that sounds harsh, but that was my reality.

So what changed?  God gave us a deaf kid!  Really, it was that simple.  We adopted Mariah from Guatemala and within seven days we found out she was deaf. That discovery changed my thinking about deaf kids.  In 2008 when we went back to Marlon’s orphanage I sought him out.  For three days we kicked a soccer ball back and forth.  Both of us had an ear to ear grin!  At times, I had to walk outside the gate of the orphanage to make a cell phone call.  As I would walk down the fence on the outside, Marlon would walk down it on the inside.  We communicated.  We didn’t need words to communicate that I cared about him.

It was in 2008 that we began pursuing getting him some help with communication.  We had been able to get cochlear implants for our daughter and wanted to explore some options for him.  There was an audiologist from Charlotte who had visited his orphanage and was willing to help if we were able to get him to NC.  So after almost two years of work with the legal system of Honduras and hours at the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa we were finally granted a one-time entry medical visa for Marlon last week.

After a whirlwind trip to Honduras this weekend He’s finally at our home in NC.  In the next couple days we’ll begin testing to see if he can be helped by advanced hearing technologies.  If he can then there will be a long process ahead of getting him hearing and language.  If hearing technologies can’t benefit him then we will explore options of sign language schools.  Either way, our goal is to help him get a language so that he can communicate better and improve his options of success in the world.

I know I’m not always a good blogger, but I promise I’ll keep this blog updated with his story.  If you have questions you can email me or if you want to help with some of his expenses while he’s here you can do so through our ministry at his website – http://tinyurl.com/yyj6qga.