Mivinsley
It is my pleasure to introduce you to Mvinsley. At 4 years old, Mvinsley is the youngest child living with us and that is very evident! He is cute, loving, naughty, headstrong, and to sum it all up, he is a 4-year-old boy. He can be the cutest child with the biggest smile and then less than a second later be throwing a fit because he cannot find his toy car. He can have a day where he gets all 3 of his points (on our behavior scale) followed by a day where he spends 80% of the time in timeout for not listening to the housemoms. Basically, like I said before, he is a 4-year-old boy and we love him a lot. He has so much potential and we cannot wait to see how GOD continues to work in his life.
(Please click here if you missed the last blog about Fedeline)
Mvinsley’s Mom is still alive and lives very close to the old orphanage. We know her very well and she was always involved in Mvinsley’s life even after putting him in the orphanage. She would come to visit him, sometimes bathe him, and even bring him food from time to time. The troubling thing about this relationship is that it was very “on-again, off-again” and she only seemed to come around when it was convenient for her. This was VERY hard on Mvinsley from an early age. There were times that he would spend 2 weeks at home with his Mom followed by 6 weeks at the orphanage where we never even saw her come around. Then she would enter his life again for a season (sometimes days, weeks, or even months) just to leave again. This was very confusing for Mvinsley and he was very emotional for a long time. In fact, just when he would get used to his Mom not being around, she would show back up and it would throw him for a huge loop. Other times, just when he was used to living at his Mom’s house, she would bring him back to the orphanage and just disappear and he would spend the next 2 weeks crying and wondering where his Mom was. This was a very sad situation and leads us to the decision we had to make…
When we moved the children off campus, we had to decide if Mvinsley should come with us. He had a Mom who clearly cared about him (some of the time) and we had a chance to keep him together with his Mom. On the other hand, if we brought him with us, his Mom would only be able to see him on visitation Sundays for 2 hours at a time and not even on weekly basis (some Sundays we do not do visitation). We decided to keep him with his Mom and help provide for his education and even to make sure that his family had all of their needs met. So, we met with Mvinsley’s Mom and told her that we wanted her to keep Mvinsley with her but that we would provide for their needs because we still loved him. This was maybe the biggest turning point in Mvinsley’s life (and he will never even hear about it) because it was at this point his Mom basically begged us to keep him. This had nothing to do with being able to provide for his needs (we already offered to do that), this had nothing to do with the Mom seeing us as a better life for Mvinsley (we had already offered to provide that for him and her), this was solely about the selfishness of Mvinsley’s Mom. She only wanted him when it was convenient for her. She wanted to be the one that brought him a Tampico occasionally or who brought him a plate of rice as a snack, but she did not want to put the time and the love that was necessary to raise Mvinsley. She was also pregnant again and definitely did not want to have to take care of 2 children at the same time. At the time, we were heartbroken for Mvinsley. He loves his Mom, and it was a loss for him. While many of the other children had not seen their parents for years (if they were still around) Mvinsley had a relationship with his Mom and she chose to end it.
So, what has this done to Mvinsley? I don’t think we can really know right now. I am sure that this is still a huge loss for him that he, at this point in his life, does not even understand. I do know, however, that Mvinsley is very well loved and very well taken care of. The House Moms just adore him and treat him like the “baby” of the group, which he is. Teams gravitate towards him because he has a huge personality and he is very cute. Jess and I love him very much too. He can be difficult and loving, and he definitely seeks out our attention. Any time we are coming up for service at around 7 pm when shower time is coming to a close, you can always hear Mvinsley screaming. Not really about anything, he just really likes to scream and make noise. Every night I come in and have to tell him to please not scream at which point he usually comes and sits in my lap while we wait for the other children to get ready. He used to fall asleep every single night during service until all of the children told us that Mvinsley should not sit on the sofas during service because they make him go to sleep. So we moved him and he has to sit in the metal chairs now every night…He has not gone to sleep once! He loves to play with his matchbox toy motorcycle, he enjoys playing soccer with adults (not really other children yet), and he especially loves one-on-one attention from the House Moms or us. He has a wonderful laugh, he loves to tell jokes and be funny, and he is a very smart child. In fact, he is only 4 years old and in the first grade! He is really supposed to still be in pre-K, but for whatever reason he just keeps moving up. Our guess is he will repeat first grade this year, but I do think he has a wonderful opportunity to make it through his classical education (graduate high school). He will have every advantage and he will have a group of people who truly love him! In fact, if you have met him, you have already loved him and if you have not met him, I would encourage you to come down as soon as possible.
The one thing I can say for Mvinsley is that he is so blessed to have people like you in his life. His life could have turned out so much differently had All Things New not come in and begun to take care of him. He probably would have ended up raising himself (as I mentioned before his mom was never 100% in the picture) and never had the opportunity to go to school, eat on a consistent basis, hear the Word of GOD, and be loved in a way that every child should be loved – unconditionally! Now he has these opportunities, and we are so excited to see what GOD has in store for His child, Mvinsley Nelson.