Paul and Kymberli Vasquez are part of the marrieds ministry in the Greater Houston Church. Paul and Kym were both baptized in the Los Angeles Church, Paul in 1999 and Kym in 2001. They met at a singles retreat in San Diego while playing spades during a game and fellowship time. They dated for nine fun and joyful months and were married on March 22, 2003. They love serving in the church and they love to travel. Kym has a great career in recruiting and Paul works for Illumination Publishers with the dream to get good biblical teaching of the gospel to every corner of the globe.
In addition to the adventure of living the Christian life, they also had the dream of building a loving family. It seemed that they were trying to have children from the beginning of their marriage…not by doing any infertility treatment or counting days, just praying and hoping God would handle the rest because they both kept frantic schedules. For most of their Christian lives they have served the children in the church including the pre-teen ministry, teen ministry (LA and Houston), as coordinators for Kids Kingdom, and even leading a marrieds’ Bible Talk, hosting Bible lessons for the 19 children in their group (yes 19 at once!)
A number of the children they helped become disciples are leading their own ministries in the teen ministry and campus ministries around the country. They always wanted children, yet their hearts were full serving everyone’s children and loving them like their own. It took fourteen years but they finally decided to make concrete steps toward the dream. Paul was working with Toney and the Mulhollans encouraged him to consider the idea of adoption (Kym was already open to it). Toney shared there was a deep need to adopt all over the United States and especially Houston with over 8,000 children in need of adoption.
They had the typical fears that potential adoptive parents have. Can we love children we’ve never met, can they love us? Will our biological family accept them as our children and love them the same? Will we really be able to help them? Can we help them know God if they see all of our sin first-hand? Will we have their previous family members following us or looking for the children? Should we do open adoption? Should we only foster? Will we be able to say, “Yes” if God asks us to adopt someone with a disability?
With eyes wide-open, Paul and Kym pursued adoption. They fostered two boys and just last month finalized the permanent adoption of Paul Myles and Mason Diesel. They shared what a tremendous blessing it’s been to their lives. They said it definitely is refining their own characters. They’ve grown an amazing love…bigger than they could’ve ever imagined. The boys are a perfect match for their family! Adoption has helped them focus on what’s really important in life. In the process they have been introduced to so many people with lovely hearts for children through courses they attended, organizations that served them, and through school functions. They were concerned about their flexibility to reach out and serve and impact the community but have discovered they have many more opportunities because of the boys.
Having gone through the process of adoption they encourage everyone who has the heart and the room in their home to consider doing it. There are so many organizations that can help financially and with resources. They suggest people do there search and pray that God will put the desire in their heart. Prayer works and God is in the answering business. Paul and Kym wanted to adopt two toddler boys, half Caucasian and half Hispanic like them. They also wanted them to be brothers and they wanted them to love God. There is NO way they would’ve guessed that God would find the perfect boys for them and how it would all happen! They exclaimed that the boys are MORE than they could’ve dreamed of or even made with their own genes!
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Author’s note: Every child deserves to be raised by a loving family. More than 110,000 children throughout the United States are waiting for permanent adoptive families. These children are currently in the custody of state agencies, which means that their only permanent parent is the state in which they live. The thought of being welcomed into a family seems like a dream for most of them. Many disciples need to take this step of faith and help live out pure and undefiled religion (James 1:27).
