Thanks!
Amber
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
New Fundraiser Info!
Okay, newest fundraiser is ready. We only have
a few weeks between when we pick up our finished HS in the morning, and
when our dossier will hopefully be to China. So we've got to ramp up
our fundraising efforts. I'm hoping that our big Project
Sole shoe drive coming up, in partnership with a local radio station,
will be really successful, but we need to have multiple things in the
works at all times. We will be giving away FOUR incredible quilts. We
will be giving away this very quilt here, as well as three others, most
of which will be made by our sweet friend, Darlene Cunningham, to the
winners specifications (with some restrictions). All the quilts are 4
feet by 4 feet, best suited for a twin bed or for a television or
reading type of blanket. Donations of $10 (or more, if you like, we
won't fight) to our youcaring account http://www.youcaring.com/adoption-fundraiser/adding-andersons/104719,
puts you in the running for these gifts, or just because we love it
when people help us out, we'll throw your name in the hat if you share
the specifics of our fundraiser. Once we have another $500 towards our
dossier, we will gift five of our awesome friends and supporters with
four quilts and an Amazon gift card. So there will be FIVE gifts we plan
to give away. Please let me know if you donate any time soon, or if you
share the information with friends!
Thanks!
Amber
Thanks!
Amber
Saturday, April 5, 2014
Wayne's Story
This is such a long story, so full of the hand of God, that I have hesitated getting started on it, but I hope you guys will bear with me and read about our journey to finding our second China child, "Wayne".
After we found "Daniel" in late Novemberish, (though we did not actually have PA on Danny until December 20th because of paperwork, etc.) we started looking for the second child we felt that God was telling us was still out there for us. Since we now knew we would adopting from China we could narrow our search (See the previous post for clarity) and just look there. Almost immediately after we found Daniel, maybe the next day, I saw a post on the China Waiting Child group on Facebook about a boy with Cooley's Anemia, who was doing very badly, had taken a turn for the worse, and would not live without a family. He was sitting at a table in something that looked kind of like a mall food court, though it could have been anything, eating a McDonald's hamburger and smiling away. I recognized him from Reece's Rainbow, from way back before we were even adopting.
Much like Daniel, though not quite as semi-truck-in-the-face but certainly recognizable, we thought, him. He is the one. Immediately, I started looking for him. What agency had his file? Was he on the shared list? I was looking myself, but I was also composing an email to Reece's Rainbow's Asia coordinator to ask if she knew what agency he was with. But almost simultaneously, the Reece's Rainbow Asia coordinator posted in the same China Waiting Child group that no one could find this boy's file and help was needing to track him down. That meant the one source I thought would be certain to know where he was wasn't going to come through.
Let me explain a little here, for those not in the know about the way the China program works. It wasn't that we didn't know where this child, known as "Wayne" on Reece's Rainbow, and by other W names on other sites, physically was. Because we all knew what orphanage he was in. No one could find his file. Without a file, a child can't be adopted. The China Center of Adoption Affairs, CCCWA, that handles all adoptions, can't process an adoption without the child's file. They start with a Shared List, to which all the files go. Then agencies will either pick children's files or the files will be sent in batches matching to certain orphanages with which the agency might have a partnership. CCCWA is not willing to search for children who are missing unless, just maybe sometimes, you are an agency. But for a person, the only option for finding a child is asking around and searching.
I started looking for "Wayne's" file in November along with several other people with an interest in seeing him adopted considering his grave condition. I will tell you that it is not an exaggeration that we looked everywhere. People were scouring the internet, looking for his face on the listings for all of the American agencies. Americans can only use American agencies, but there are also foreign agencies, in France, Italy, Canada, everywhere in the world, that people adopt Chinese babies. I had my agency look for him on the Shared List over and over. I probably contacted her to look again at least once a week. All through December, eyes were out for any sign of his file. I must have emailed every agency in creation with a "Have you seen this boy?" milk carton kind of request.
On New Year's Eve, we were devastated to be told that his file was no where to be found, no matter how hard people looked, and that it was obviously with a foreign agency, meaning, no matter what, he would not be available to us. We took a few days to days to digest this information and decided we'd better move on and start looking again. We found a six year old girl with CP that we decided we wanted more information about. It wasn't lightening, but it was a warm feeling that she would fit well in our home. The agency who had her file not only wouldn't consider transferring her file, they wouldn't even let us see it! I will tell you, personally, I think that's dirty pool. A non-mobile child over the age of four isn't going to have a lot of chances. It's cruel to take them away. This agency had already had her file for six months. They've now had it for over eight and are just now saying the would "consider" the possibility of transferring, but they probably wouldn't still. I'm not mad about this for me, because God's hand is in our story, but I do think it's cruel to this child, who will only get so many chances.
At any rate, January was rolling around and we still hadn't found another child. Considering how much time it took us to find Danny, we should have been patient, but I really wanted to find the second child Heavenly Father had assured me was out there. I didn't want to wait anymore and I didn't want to look anymore. The patience that God had given us to wait until we found Daniel had waned for me, and my earthly heart just wanted to get this thing going.
We decided that we would consider young children. We hadn't ever put them on our list of desirables, because everybody wants young children and we felt that God would not call us to bring one home, considering how many older children would never be chosen. Also, we just aren't baby people. We like older kids, we enjoy our older children, and neither of us were particularly keen on the baby stage, or particularly keen on going through it again. But we'd already seen almost every waiting child above the age of five in the whole system because of our search to find Danny. There were other children with orphanage partnerships, but partnerships don't trade files, and that wouldn't work for us. There was really nowhere left to look. We could either wait for more older children to be listed, or we could look at little kids.
Hesitantly, we decided that we would consider children under five. My agency has a sort of sister agency deal with Wasatch, another China agency. Wasatch had several young children. Including three boys that seemed like possible candidates. I contacted Wasatch and they were happy to forward me all three boys' files so I could take a look. One of the boys stood out to us as a possibility, primarily because he had a special need, one that Mike has a profound love and affection for children with that particular special need. We kept the file and sent back the rest and spent the day thinking about it.
At this point, I am embarrassed with myself. With my lack of patience and with my lack of faith that the right child would come along. I told my dear friend, Kelly, who is adopting a boy from China and got her preapproval on her son the same day we got ours on Daniel (I was considering adopting her son! That's how we met! I knew he wasn't right for us, but turns out he was right for them!), that I was just so tired of looking. Months and months and hundreds and hundreds of files on nothing but faith had worn me down. I was defeated we couldn't find Wayne, tired of looking at files, and desperate to feel like we were done with that stage of the process and ready to move on to the next step. We strongly considered just giving up on a second child entirely, even though we both distinctly felt there was another child who belonged in our family. We just didn't have the energy or stamina for anymore heartbreak and searching.
Because we felt directed by God to add another child, we eventually decided to go with the young boy, primarily because of his diagnosis. We felt a great deal of discomfort about his young age and discussed it back and forth. Neither of us felt that explosion of truth we'd felt with Daniel, but he was cute and he was available to us and not lost on another continent. I distinctly remember standing in front of our bedroom door, looking down over the stair railing, talking about this sweet adorable boy and both of us kind of sighing and going, okay, let's do it. It wasn't exactly a celebration like it had been with Danny. I have a very firm memory of feeling very uncomfortable. I told myself it was because he was only two years old. But I think both my husband and I knew that we had just given up. This divinely cute little boy most certainly deserved more than us. We most certainly would have loved him with all of our hearts. We would have cherished him as he grew. We would never have treated him as less. But we were acting outside of orders from God. We were looking for a replacement for Wayne, the child we felt we were meant to adopt, and we lost our faith and we lost our focus. I'm ashamed of myself for that.
Luckily, however, God never loses faith in us and he never loses focus. There was more to this story!
We contacted Wasatch back and told them we'd like to move forward with this boy (who now has a family coming for him that probably can't wait to get him into their arms, and I am SOO happy for him!) and asked what to do on our end. She told us to contact our agency, remember they are partner agencies, and they would work it out quickly and get him transferred for us. It's sometimes very difficult, if not impossible, to get a file transferred from another agency. As aforementioned, it's entirely the right of the agency to just simply refuse your request for a transfer and they very often do. But in this case, we knew that if no one at Wasatch was looking at this boy as a child they would transfer to our agency, one of their partners.
We contacted our agency and asked for the transfer to happen. There was no response. After a couple of days, Wasatch emailed and asked if we had heard back from our agency, which we had not. She said they had contacted our agency multiple times but hadn't received an answer or a call back. At this point, it was somewhere around the end of the first week of January. We heard tale through the grapevine that our caseworker was very sick, maybe with the flu, maybe with something else. No one was really sure, but it was clear she wasn't in the office. The press to get things done wasn't really on us. As aforementioned, our energy for the search was gone. We figured she'd be back eventually, and we could just take care of it then.
A couple days turned into weeks and we heard she was back in the office, but we still didn't hear back from her. I emailed her a couple of times but she was clearly as unmotivated to get back to us as we were to press the issue. We were in a holding pattern. As it turns out, literally that's what we were doing. But we don't have eternal perspective and we can't see the things that God is cooking up with our limited view.
Sometime in early December I'd given up on checking Rainbow Kids, a site with waiting child listings. Because the kids that showed up there were just all children we had already seen, just being reposted with a different agency. Occasionally, every two or three weeks I would go check new additions, but I was burned out on the emails. But I got about seven Rainbow Kids emails on January, 19th. I get sometimes as few as two and sometimes as many as a dozen a day. Still, since I am abysmal at cancelling memberships. By that point I deleted them. On January 19th, I got, I think, seven emails from Rainbow Kids. I deleted six of them. One of them, I just "randomly" decided I would click the link. Of course, it wasn't random at all, because when the link opened it was Wayne!
I just couldn't believe it. After all of that, there he was. Just sitting there on Rainbow Kids, listing his agency as an American agency, WACAP. I was freaking the crap out. I called Mike at work and told him. Then, just to be sure, I posted the link on the Waiting Child page on FB and asked, "Hey, is this Wayne?" WACAP had given him another name. I was sure it was him, but another part of me said, 'hey, don't get too excited. We've already lost hope in this happening, remember?' But the immediate answer was a lot of excited advocates saying, 'yes!'
I posted again on the Waiting Child page and asked for a WACAP advocate to contact me. If I had to, I would call them before another hour passed, but I like feeling out a situation first and I have a phone phobia. Within a couple of minutes, a woman I didn't know had private messaged me on Facebook and asked me what I needed. I didn't know it at the time, but she's the woman who runs things over at WACAP. She told me later that she almost never gets on Facebook, but that morning she just felt like she wanted to. So she logged in just in time to see me say it was something of an emergency and I wanted to talk to someone from WACAP. I asked her if they ever considered transferring files, and specifically if she would transfer Wayne's file.
She told me that they'd gotten the file maybe the day before, and frankly she wasn't sure where it had come from since she was certain they had not requested it. I think it's not too big a mystery to guess who set it up so that an agency with a history of amiable trading of files ended up with his file! She said she would check and see if any families already with their agency had requested his file and if none had, she was more than happy to release his file to us! I don't remember exactly how long it was (too long!) before she got back to us and said, 'no, no one has requested it.' I sent an email to my agency saying something like, 'wait don't do anything. Don't move, don't breathe. I found the boy I've been asking you to look for over and over for months. I will get back to you.'
I told WACAP I would get back to her in the morning. We still had Wasatch ready to transfer this other boy's file. A mistake we were never able to make because our agency wouldn't get back to either myself or Wasatch. But really, it was a mistake we couldn't make because Heavenly Father wouldn't let us! He had kindness for us, even when we had lost our spirit and made a move acting without faith. I talked to my husband about Wayne and about the other boy. Both of us felt very guilty about the other boy, even though, so far, absolutely nothing had happened and no one knew of our plans except Wasatch. We were keenly aware that it was our, mostly my, lack of faith that had created this situation in the first place.
We were torn. Wayne's file said he was very sick. A doctor we showed his file to felt he would not make it through the whole of 2014 before dying, without the intervention of American medicine. We came into this process with almost no money. Just our meager savings which had already gone to the 1500 to redo our American homestudy for use in China, and the 2500 for agency fees for Danny. We were, by that point, totally broke. From them on, every dime we would need was coming from somewhere unknown. Medical expedites are expensive and they have to happen fast. We didn't have the money for expensive and hadn't anticipated the need for fast. We thought we'd have the normal 12 to 18 months to take one extra jobs and make enough to pay for the majority of the adoption without help. This wasn't going to be an option anymore if we adopted Wayne. We would have to beg for help, something neither one of us is good at. There was also fear. What if we couldn't raise enough to get him home? What if we failed in doing this thing fast enough to see him home soon enough to regain his health?
There was also the matter of the other boy. We hadn't committed to him yet, but we had specifically requested actions be put into motion. And there are repercussions for asking that actions be put into motion. Even if they were only in our own hearts. Wasatch wouldn't be hurt if we didn't follow through. The child's chances wouldn't be hurt. No one even knew, except a very few people. Our agency certainly wouldn't care. But I cared very much, because either way, there was one child who would not have a family by the end of the night.
I will tell you now that I suffered for my foolishness and impulsiveness. I didn't sleep all night. I tossed and turned, praying and trying to decide what to do. I wished with all my heart that I had listened to that discomfort at the top of the stairs and not decided to ask at all. And I wished again and again that we had received some notice of what God had in our future, even an inkling, so we could have better prepared a way to pay for adoption in dollars and not faith. I had no clue what I was doing, but by morning, I had a strong feeling that our first impression from Heavenly Father had been the right one and we should move forward with Wayne. I talked to Mike and he said his impressions had been the same. We had a resolution.
I contacted Wasatch first when it got late enough. I agonized about telling them that we didn't want the file transferred after all. In reality, they were totally cool with it. They said, basically, sure, it happens. No harm, no foul. Even though I still felt awful, it was heartening to know that Wasatch felt the boy's chances of being adopted by another family had been in no way effected by our actions.
Then I contacted WACAP next and said we wanted to move forward and asked what to do. She told me to have our caseworker call her and they would take care of it together. I called our caseworker. That was something that I had literally never done, in the almost two months since we had started working with them. Calling people is not my forte. I don't like phones and talking on them makes me very nervous. But this was too important for an email that she might not respond to. So I called and gave her the information. I tried to be very firm (also not my forte) that it needed to be taken care of immediately, before anything else happened. She asked if I was sure. And that was a resounding yes, without any hesitation. I had played out all of my hesitation in the sleepless night before.
The two agencies worked it out that WACAP would release Wayne's file to the Shared List where my agency would pick it up. Talk about a nail biting 36 hours where I was deathly afraid his file would go missing again. There was every chance another agency could pick it up if our agency wasn't on the ball. He could just disappear again! But it didn't happen. Thankfully, there was no trouble at all. I wrote our Letter of Intent to adopt while we waiting for Wayne's file to make the transfer and the second I heard my agency had the file, I forwarded the LOI packet. It took an agonizing six days to get preapproval from China, but it eventually did come, at the very end of January.
We still don't know how we are going to pay for every step of this adoption, but our faith has not truly wavered since that night spent praying, that He would help us find a way. So far we have perpetually been just slightly ahead of what is due. Never able to get really far ahead of the next agency fee or translation fee, but always just enough. Adopting Wayne was not only something we have been commanded to do, it was a clear and moving picture of God's hand directing our lives and the lives of the fatherless. He moved mountains to help us find this child, His child, and add him to our family. If ever we had wondered what his will was for us and for this child, Wayne's story certainly cleared those doubts away.
Do we know exactly what we are doing? Oh, heck no. We still live in fear we won't be quick enough and Wayne won't survive. Especially considering the absolutely ridiculous mistakes and errors that have happened at every step of the process. Things we have no control over. Honestly, the whole process of adoption is stuff you have no control over, but we've had ridiculous things like fingerprints being wrong and being kicked back, not once, not even twice, but three times! We can't make these things change or go by faster. All we can do is pray and know that we are following God's will and that He's got this thing. And that He loves one tiny, pale, sick boy in a poor Chinese orphanage just as much as he loves all of us. One in millions of needy children. He knows WeiQiang. And He knows all of those other orphans. Knows their names. Knows their hearts. Knows what they need.
And that He knows is all we need to know.
Amber
After we found "Daniel" in late Novemberish, (though we did not actually have PA on Danny until December 20th because of paperwork, etc.) we started looking for the second child we felt that God was telling us was still out there for us. Since we now knew we would adopting from China we could narrow our search (See the previous post for clarity) and just look there. Almost immediately after we found Daniel, maybe the next day, I saw a post on the China Waiting Child group on Facebook about a boy with Cooley's Anemia, who was doing very badly, had taken a turn for the worse, and would not live without a family. He was sitting at a table in something that looked kind of like a mall food court, though it could have been anything, eating a McDonald's hamburger and smiling away. I recognized him from Reece's Rainbow, from way back before we were even adopting.
Much like Daniel, though not quite as semi-truck-in-the-face but certainly recognizable, we thought, him. He is the one. Immediately, I started looking for him. What agency had his file? Was he on the shared list? I was looking myself, but I was also composing an email to Reece's Rainbow's Asia coordinator to ask if she knew what agency he was with. But almost simultaneously, the Reece's Rainbow Asia coordinator posted in the same China Waiting Child group that no one could find this boy's file and help was needing to track him down. That meant the one source I thought would be certain to know where he was wasn't going to come through.
Let me explain a little here, for those not in the know about the way the China program works. It wasn't that we didn't know where this child, known as "Wayne" on Reece's Rainbow, and by other W names on other sites, physically was. Because we all knew what orphanage he was in. No one could find his file. Without a file, a child can't be adopted. The China Center of Adoption Affairs, CCCWA, that handles all adoptions, can't process an adoption without the child's file. They start with a Shared List, to which all the files go. Then agencies will either pick children's files or the files will be sent in batches matching to certain orphanages with which the agency might have a partnership. CCCWA is not willing to search for children who are missing unless, just maybe sometimes, you are an agency. But for a person, the only option for finding a child is asking around and searching.
I started looking for "Wayne's" file in November along with several other people with an interest in seeing him adopted considering his grave condition. I will tell you that it is not an exaggeration that we looked everywhere. People were scouring the internet, looking for his face on the listings for all of the American agencies. Americans can only use American agencies, but there are also foreign agencies, in France, Italy, Canada, everywhere in the world, that people adopt Chinese babies. I had my agency look for him on the Shared List over and over. I probably contacted her to look again at least once a week. All through December, eyes were out for any sign of his file. I must have emailed every agency in creation with a "Have you seen this boy?" milk carton kind of request.
On New Year's Eve, we were devastated to be told that his file was no where to be found, no matter how hard people looked, and that it was obviously with a foreign agency, meaning, no matter what, he would not be available to us. We took a few days to days to digest this information and decided we'd better move on and start looking again. We found a six year old girl with CP that we decided we wanted more information about. It wasn't lightening, but it was a warm feeling that she would fit well in our home. The agency who had her file not only wouldn't consider transferring her file, they wouldn't even let us see it! I will tell you, personally, I think that's dirty pool. A non-mobile child over the age of four isn't going to have a lot of chances. It's cruel to take them away. This agency had already had her file for six months. They've now had it for over eight and are just now saying the would "consider" the possibility of transferring, but they probably wouldn't still. I'm not mad about this for me, because God's hand is in our story, but I do think it's cruel to this child, who will only get so many chances.
At any rate, January was rolling around and we still hadn't found another child. Considering how much time it took us to find Danny, we should have been patient, but I really wanted to find the second child Heavenly Father had assured me was out there. I didn't want to wait anymore and I didn't want to look anymore. The patience that God had given us to wait until we found Daniel had waned for me, and my earthly heart just wanted to get this thing going.
We decided that we would consider young children. We hadn't ever put them on our list of desirables, because everybody wants young children and we felt that God would not call us to bring one home, considering how many older children would never be chosen. Also, we just aren't baby people. We like older kids, we enjoy our older children, and neither of us were particularly keen on the baby stage, or particularly keen on going through it again. But we'd already seen almost every waiting child above the age of five in the whole system because of our search to find Danny. There were other children with orphanage partnerships, but partnerships don't trade files, and that wouldn't work for us. There was really nowhere left to look. We could either wait for more older children to be listed, or we could look at little kids.
Hesitantly, we decided that we would consider children under five. My agency has a sort of sister agency deal with Wasatch, another China agency. Wasatch had several young children. Including three boys that seemed like possible candidates. I contacted Wasatch and they were happy to forward me all three boys' files so I could take a look. One of the boys stood out to us as a possibility, primarily because he had a special need, one that Mike has a profound love and affection for children with that particular special need. We kept the file and sent back the rest and spent the day thinking about it.
At this point, I am embarrassed with myself. With my lack of patience and with my lack of faith that the right child would come along. I told my dear friend, Kelly, who is adopting a boy from China and got her preapproval on her son the same day we got ours on Daniel (I was considering adopting her son! That's how we met! I knew he wasn't right for us, but turns out he was right for them!), that I was just so tired of looking. Months and months and hundreds and hundreds of files on nothing but faith had worn me down. I was defeated we couldn't find Wayne, tired of looking at files, and desperate to feel like we were done with that stage of the process and ready to move on to the next step. We strongly considered just giving up on a second child entirely, even though we both distinctly felt there was another child who belonged in our family. We just didn't have the energy or stamina for anymore heartbreak and searching.
Because we felt directed by God to add another child, we eventually decided to go with the young boy, primarily because of his diagnosis. We felt a great deal of discomfort about his young age and discussed it back and forth. Neither of us felt that explosion of truth we'd felt with Daniel, but he was cute and he was available to us and not lost on another continent. I distinctly remember standing in front of our bedroom door, looking down over the stair railing, talking about this sweet adorable boy and both of us kind of sighing and going, okay, let's do it. It wasn't exactly a celebration like it had been with Danny. I have a very firm memory of feeling very uncomfortable. I told myself it was because he was only two years old. But I think both my husband and I knew that we had just given up. This divinely cute little boy most certainly deserved more than us. We most certainly would have loved him with all of our hearts. We would have cherished him as he grew. We would never have treated him as less. But we were acting outside of orders from God. We were looking for a replacement for Wayne, the child we felt we were meant to adopt, and we lost our faith and we lost our focus. I'm ashamed of myself for that.
Luckily, however, God never loses faith in us and he never loses focus. There was more to this story!
We contacted Wasatch back and told them we'd like to move forward with this boy (who now has a family coming for him that probably can't wait to get him into their arms, and I am SOO happy for him!) and asked what to do on our end. She told us to contact our agency, remember they are partner agencies, and they would work it out quickly and get him transferred for us. It's sometimes very difficult, if not impossible, to get a file transferred from another agency. As aforementioned, it's entirely the right of the agency to just simply refuse your request for a transfer and they very often do. But in this case, we knew that if no one at Wasatch was looking at this boy as a child they would transfer to our agency, one of their partners.
We contacted our agency and asked for the transfer to happen. There was no response. After a couple of days, Wasatch emailed and asked if we had heard back from our agency, which we had not. She said they had contacted our agency multiple times but hadn't received an answer or a call back. At this point, it was somewhere around the end of the first week of January. We heard tale through the grapevine that our caseworker was very sick, maybe with the flu, maybe with something else. No one was really sure, but it was clear she wasn't in the office. The press to get things done wasn't really on us. As aforementioned, our energy for the search was gone. We figured she'd be back eventually, and we could just take care of it then.
A couple days turned into weeks and we heard she was back in the office, but we still didn't hear back from her. I emailed her a couple of times but she was clearly as unmotivated to get back to us as we were to press the issue. We were in a holding pattern. As it turns out, literally that's what we were doing. But we don't have eternal perspective and we can't see the things that God is cooking up with our limited view.
Sometime in early December I'd given up on checking Rainbow Kids, a site with waiting child listings. Because the kids that showed up there were just all children we had already seen, just being reposted with a different agency. Occasionally, every two or three weeks I would go check new additions, but I was burned out on the emails. But I got about seven Rainbow Kids emails on January, 19th. I get sometimes as few as two and sometimes as many as a dozen a day. Still, since I am abysmal at cancelling memberships. By that point I deleted them. On January 19th, I got, I think, seven emails from Rainbow Kids. I deleted six of them. One of them, I just "randomly" decided I would click the link. Of course, it wasn't random at all, because when the link opened it was Wayne!
I just couldn't believe it. After all of that, there he was. Just sitting there on Rainbow Kids, listing his agency as an American agency, WACAP. I was freaking the crap out. I called Mike at work and told him. Then, just to be sure, I posted the link on the Waiting Child page on FB and asked, "Hey, is this Wayne?" WACAP had given him another name. I was sure it was him, but another part of me said, 'hey, don't get too excited. We've already lost hope in this happening, remember?' But the immediate answer was a lot of excited advocates saying, 'yes!'
I posted again on the Waiting Child page and asked for a WACAP advocate to contact me. If I had to, I would call them before another hour passed, but I like feeling out a situation first and I have a phone phobia. Within a couple of minutes, a woman I didn't know had private messaged me on Facebook and asked me what I needed. I didn't know it at the time, but she's the woman who runs things over at WACAP. She told me later that she almost never gets on Facebook, but that morning she just felt like she wanted to. So she logged in just in time to see me say it was something of an emergency and I wanted to talk to someone from WACAP. I asked her if they ever considered transferring files, and specifically if she would transfer Wayne's file.
She told me that they'd gotten the file maybe the day before, and frankly she wasn't sure where it had come from since she was certain they had not requested it. I think it's not too big a mystery to guess who set it up so that an agency with a history of amiable trading of files ended up with his file! She said she would check and see if any families already with their agency had requested his file and if none had, she was more than happy to release his file to us! I don't remember exactly how long it was (too long!) before she got back to us and said, 'no, no one has requested it.' I sent an email to my agency saying something like, 'wait don't do anything. Don't move, don't breathe. I found the boy I've been asking you to look for over and over for months. I will get back to you.'
I told WACAP I would get back to her in the morning. We still had Wasatch ready to transfer this other boy's file. A mistake we were never able to make because our agency wouldn't get back to either myself or Wasatch. But really, it was a mistake we couldn't make because Heavenly Father wouldn't let us! He had kindness for us, even when we had lost our spirit and made a move acting without faith. I talked to my husband about Wayne and about the other boy. Both of us felt very guilty about the other boy, even though, so far, absolutely nothing had happened and no one knew of our plans except Wasatch. We were keenly aware that it was our, mostly my, lack of faith that had created this situation in the first place.
We were torn. Wayne's file said he was very sick. A doctor we showed his file to felt he would not make it through the whole of 2014 before dying, without the intervention of American medicine. We came into this process with almost no money. Just our meager savings which had already gone to the 1500 to redo our American homestudy for use in China, and the 2500 for agency fees for Danny. We were, by that point, totally broke. From them on, every dime we would need was coming from somewhere unknown. Medical expedites are expensive and they have to happen fast. We didn't have the money for expensive and hadn't anticipated the need for fast. We thought we'd have the normal 12 to 18 months to take one extra jobs and make enough to pay for the majority of the adoption without help. This wasn't going to be an option anymore if we adopted Wayne. We would have to beg for help, something neither one of us is good at. There was also fear. What if we couldn't raise enough to get him home? What if we failed in doing this thing fast enough to see him home soon enough to regain his health?
There was also the matter of the other boy. We hadn't committed to him yet, but we had specifically requested actions be put into motion. And there are repercussions for asking that actions be put into motion. Even if they were only in our own hearts. Wasatch wouldn't be hurt if we didn't follow through. The child's chances wouldn't be hurt. No one even knew, except a very few people. Our agency certainly wouldn't care. But I cared very much, because either way, there was one child who would not have a family by the end of the night.
I will tell you now that I suffered for my foolishness and impulsiveness. I didn't sleep all night. I tossed and turned, praying and trying to decide what to do. I wished with all my heart that I had listened to that discomfort at the top of the stairs and not decided to ask at all. And I wished again and again that we had received some notice of what God had in our future, even an inkling, so we could have better prepared a way to pay for adoption in dollars and not faith. I had no clue what I was doing, but by morning, I had a strong feeling that our first impression from Heavenly Father had been the right one and we should move forward with Wayne. I talked to Mike and he said his impressions had been the same. We had a resolution.
I contacted Wasatch first when it got late enough. I agonized about telling them that we didn't want the file transferred after all. In reality, they were totally cool with it. They said, basically, sure, it happens. No harm, no foul. Even though I still felt awful, it was heartening to know that Wasatch felt the boy's chances of being adopted by another family had been in no way effected by our actions.
Then I contacted WACAP next and said we wanted to move forward and asked what to do. She told me to have our caseworker call her and they would take care of it together. I called our caseworker. That was something that I had literally never done, in the almost two months since we had started working with them. Calling people is not my forte. I don't like phones and talking on them makes me very nervous. But this was too important for an email that she might not respond to. So I called and gave her the information. I tried to be very firm (also not my forte) that it needed to be taken care of immediately, before anything else happened. She asked if I was sure. And that was a resounding yes, without any hesitation. I had played out all of my hesitation in the sleepless night before.
The two agencies worked it out that WACAP would release Wayne's file to the Shared List where my agency would pick it up. Talk about a nail biting 36 hours where I was deathly afraid his file would go missing again. There was every chance another agency could pick it up if our agency wasn't on the ball. He could just disappear again! But it didn't happen. Thankfully, there was no trouble at all. I wrote our Letter of Intent to adopt while we waiting for Wayne's file to make the transfer and the second I heard my agency had the file, I forwarded the LOI packet. It took an agonizing six days to get preapproval from China, but it eventually did come, at the very end of January.
We still don't know how we are going to pay for every step of this adoption, but our faith has not truly wavered since that night spent praying, that He would help us find a way. So far we have perpetually been just slightly ahead of what is due. Never able to get really far ahead of the next agency fee or translation fee, but always just enough. Adopting Wayne was not only something we have been commanded to do, it was a clear and moving picture of God's hand directing our lives and the lives of the fatherless. He moved mountains to help us find this child, His child, and add him to our family. If ever we had wondered what his will was for us and for this child, Wayne's story certainly cleared those doubts away.
Do we know exactly what we are doing? Oh, heck no. We still live in fear we won't be quick enough and Wayne won't survive. Especially considering the absolutely ridiculous mistakes and errors that have happened at every step of the process. Things we have no control over. Honestly, the whole process of adoption is stuff you have no control over, but we've had ridiculous things like fingerprints being wrong and being kicked back, not once, not even twice, but three times! We can't make these things change or go by faster. All we can do is pray and know that we are following God's will and that He's got this thing. And that He loves one tiny, pale, sick boy in a poor Chinese orphanage just as much as he loves all of us. One in millions of needy children. He knows WeiQiang. And He knows all of those other orphans. Knows their names. Knows their hearts. Knows what they need.
And that He knows is all we need to know.
Amber
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
UPDATE!
A family is coming for Wesley! Such a blessing! I sure hope they blog so that all those who love and cherish Wesley can watch him come home!
Monday, March 24, 2014
Danny's Story
It's been remarked to me over and over that the story of how we found both our boys is fairly remarkable and I keep meaning to share, but both of them are long stories so I have been putting it off in favor of advocacy, but today I decided to get started. They are too long to post in the same blog, so I will do two. This first one is geared towards our oldest son to be, and the first child that we picked for this actual adoption.
We started out this journey inadvertently. It was never our intention to adopt internationally. It was always our intention to adopt, but only in America, and only from foster care. In early fall of last year, we'd been waiting on a foster care placement for a little over a year, I think. It was hard because we were only interested in children who were already legally free for adoption. We do have a son, who is 13, who has special needs that make it extremely difficult for our family to have changes. We spoke extensively with him and he was eager for more siblings, but a revolving door would never work for him. So it was essential to find children who could definitely be a part of our family. We were not worried about our chances of having a placement quickly, since we were looking for a sibling group of older children, above the age of five, just what most people DO NOT want. The thing we did not bank on is New Mexico's policy for dealing with foster children. They desperately need more foster parents and don't have the time or resources to deal with children who are legally free, as those separations take time and that means those children already have a foster home. Moving them would take time. Their focus is entirely on new foster homes. Occasionally, they would approach us with children and we would ask to move forward with full disclosure. In every occasion, CYFD would never offer up full disclosure. They would not return our emails as a general rule, and then, after a couple of months, they would call and ask if anyone had gotten back to us. We would say no, and they would say, oh, someone will get back to you. Rinse and repeat for months and months.
Occasionally, we do respite for foster care, and we do enjoy that, but a legal risk sibling group was definitely not for us, so we were content to wait. We have three lovely bio children and we love kids, but growing our family wasn't our primary purpose in looking to adopt. Our purpose was to help give children a family, especially children we thought would be hard to place, older sibling groups. If not for one "random" event, we'd probably still be there, just patiently waiting.
In, what I believe was, September or possibly October, of 2013 I was scanning Facebook. I have been a strong adoption advocate my entire life, literally. When I graduated from high school, I sang in the senior recital. The song I sang is a song about adoption told through the perspective of the birth mother, "From God's Arms, to My Arms, to Yours" and I cried all the way through it. In retrospect, everyone in my school probably thought I was pregnant lol. But really I've always been just that emotional about adoption. So I like to scan FB looking for information about adoption that other people could potentially use as a resource. A friend of mine, and for the life of me, I can't remember who that friend was, or which family the FSP belonged to, posted about a friend of theirs who was adopting and posted a link to that family's Family Support Profile on a site called Reece's Rainbow.
I had never heard of Reece's Rainbow and had never considered international adoption really at all. I had known exactly two people who adopted internationally, and neither one happened while I was around. One was a girl from China, non special needs, who had been adopted probably seven years before I met the family, whom I met in 1993. The other was a family who had adopted two boys from Russia who obviously had FAS and were extremely hyperactive. They'd adopted the boys probably five years before I met them, back in 1998. Those were my only exposures to international adoption, and both families were extremely wealthy. If I thought of international adoption at all, I thought of it as something that only the very rich did.
I scanned Reece's Rainbow, and had never heard of most of what they were talking about. I tucked away the information and left. But, I kept going back. I kept looking at and thinking about those children. I started to do little bits of research on the situation in other countries. I started reading a blog here or there that illustrated the truth about the international orphan crisis. Once I began to learn more, I started to think maybe it wasn't something I should ignore and assume was a problem for the wealthy to deal with. I inquired after a sweet girl in Ukraine, who is now coming home. The response I got was unbelievably complicated in my mind, and I said to myself, whoa, that's way too much!
But I still kept hanging around, reading about families in process. Reading about children who needed a home. Reading about what these children go through. I joined the Reece's Rainbow Facebook group and started giving money to families adopting and then started advocating for children who were waiting. I still felt it wasn't for me though. I read about the same kids over and over, but it was purely academic. Then one day, I read, for perhaps the third time, the profile of a girl in Ukraine (not the girl listed above, a different child). I won't tell her name because I am telling her country. She has significant special needs. She is non-mobile, she's non-verbal. She has a brain difference, and there was no way for us to know what she would ever be able to accomplish. But suddenly, it was like a lightening bolt. I knew, without a doubt, that this was our future and this was what God wanted us to do. I had absolutely no doubt that I was being commanded. I had no fears and no hesitation. This happened very quickly, without any warning. I had already read this girls profile, as well as all the other RR children, many times. I don't know what was so different about that time, but it was as firm as a testimony. We were to rescue this child.
My husband came home and discovered me crying, as I had been for maybe half an hour to 45 minutes, since the moment I read her profile again. I said, "this girl is our child." I think he was slightly alarmed at first lol, but he agreed that this was something we needed to do. We knew we had no money really, and no clue how we were going to pull it off, but when God called so loudly, it wasn't ours to question, it was ours to go and do. We started calling around and chose an agency to do our Ukrainian homestudy. We had no doubt we would be approved. We gave the homestudy agency a piece of information about a way we did not qualify to adopt from Ukraine. I have a history of generalized anxiety disorder. Ukraine says flat out that anyone with a history of anxiety disorder or depression is ineligible for adoption from their country. The homestudy agency felt this could easily be waived, especially considering that I'd never had any real treatment, just a diagnosis. However, once we paid our first amounts and got energetically started, it was brought to our attention that Ukraine had absolutely no intention of approving us, despite the lack of tangible anxiety issues.
It was devastating. I won't pretend that our hearts weren't broken. I couldn't understand why Heavenly Father had lit such a powerful fire under us, only to have it be an impossibility. People suggested to us that it was to get us geared towards thinking about international adoption, but I just couldn't wrap my mind around that. Why not just give us the message that this was our calling, and not specifically call us to bring this little girl home? After a few weeks in agony, we received conformation together that it was true. That without a child to focus on, I would never have had such clarity, and that international adoption was our calling.
But that left us in a situation where we planned to adopt, but we knew very strongly that Heavenly Father would tell us which children were right. If this was his will for us, he would guide us to find the child or children that he meant for us to rescue. We pulled away from our homestudy and it was put on hold. Without a country to focus on, it was useless to work on the homestudy, which are country specific and can easily been done incorrectly if you don't have a specific country in mind.
We set out to find the right child or children. We knew they were out there. We had literally no guidelines from which to work. We had no age level we wouldn't accept. We had no special needs we refused to consider. We had no genders in our mind. We didn't even have a country in mind! In case you're curious, that's a lot of potential children. We looked at literally thousands of children, in dozens and dozens of countries. I knew that if the child was the right one, we would know, with the power of lightening confidence, the way we did with the girl from Ukraine. I can't even explain to you how many profiles I went through. None of them were the ones. Occasionally, I would find one and put it aside, but a second reflection still didn't bring the feelings I had felt with the girl we had hoped would be our daughter.
Eventually, I began to despair that we'd ever find the right children, but we refused to move forward with a child that God wasn't directing us to bring home. We had felt it before, we knew it would happen again, when the time was right.
In late November, or early December 2013, I saw Robert Molloy, a wonderful advocate for Chinese children, especially older boys, who works for two huge advocacy and orphan groups, Defend Me and Bring Me Hope, post about a group of aging out boys. Tragically, nearly all of those boys have now aged out, but I have never made a secret of the fact it's older children who really touch my heart. I sent a message to Robert asking how I could help. We spoke for a long time. He asked if I was adopting and I said, indeed, I was not. But that we hoped to. We would when we found the right child. He engaged me in a conversation about our family and asked what our children were like, what we were like. What we enjoyed doing, where we liked going. What we considered important. I really just thought it was a conversation.
However, at the end, he said, here's a child for you. Then he posted a link.
I thought he simply meant, here, I'd like you to look at this child. I almost overlooked the link. We'd talked about dozens of children I could advocate for, but none that regarded me in particular. It took me a few minutes to remember he'd posted it and scroll back up to read it. Really, though, he was right spot on. He had a child for us. The singular suggestion he offered after listening to what I said about us was exactly the right one. I read this boy's profile, whose advocacy name was Daniel, and it was instant recognition in my soul. He was the one. Finally, after all of that time, and all of those countries, and all of those many, many children, there was finally the reinforcement from God that here was the right child. I was so excited I could hardly wait until Mike got home. I called him upstairs, had him read the profile and he knew instantly too. This time he was the one with tears. Like the girl in Ukraine, there was no doubt or hesitation.
Daniel, or Danny as he came to be known, because there was another Daniel or two on Reece's Rainbow when we set up our FSP, is about 11 years old (within a few weeks) and has been on shared list for a long time. He's been sitting and waiting, looking for the day when someone would finally notice him and make him a son, a brother, and a grandson. It's so hard to be noticed on the shared list. He's far beyond the age where people are even going to scroll down the shared list just looking. And his file is a hot mess. It's years old. Last updated when he was FOUR! He is eleven years old! I'm guessing that's about when they gave up on his ever being adopted. His file was full of frightening brain issues. But I didn't have to panic, because I had already spoken to Robert at length about him. Basically, without advocacy, this boy would have had no chance at all!
We were so excited that we moved forward without even telling Robert! He was totally shocked to discover we had submitted our LOI for Daniel after I asked him to say hello to Daniel while visiting his orphanage over Christmas! While he was there, Daniel asked him if he had found a family for him yet. Robert wasn't able to tell him about us, but it was a sad commentary on how aware these older children are that their time is running out and that they have the potential to age out without ever knowing the love and safety of home!
It would have been so easy for Daniel to be lost in the shuffle if not for the advocacy of a lone young man, only just turned 21, trying relentlessly to find a home for these children. That's why I spend so much time trying to find homes for other people's children. I am so thankful that Robert does what he does and so thankful that Heavenly Father gave us the endurance to wait for the right child and the confidence that he would whisper to us the truth.
So, that's the story of our sweet boy, Danny. And after that epic novel ;) I will wait to write about how we found "Wayne" until another day!
Amber
We started out this journey inadvertently. It was never our intention to adopt internationally. It was always our intention to adopt, but only in America, and only from foster care. In early fall of last year, we'd been waiting on a foster care placement for a little over a year, I think. It was hard because we were only interested in children who were already legally free for adoption. We do have a son, who is 13, who has special needs that make it extremely difficult for our family to have changes. We spoke extensively with him and he was eager for more siblings, but a revolving door would never work for him. So it was essential to find children who could definitely be a part of our family. We were not worried about our chances of having a placement quickly, since we were looking for a sibling group of older children, above the age of five, just what most people DO NOT want. The thing we did not bank on is New Mexico's policy for dealing with foster children. They desperately need more foster parents and don't have the time or resources to deal with children who are legally free, as those separations take time and that means those children already have a foster home. Moving them would take time. Their focus is entirely on new foster homes. Occasionally, they would approach us with children and we would ask to move forward with full disclosure. In every occasion, CYFD would never offer up full disclosure. They would not return our emails as a general rule, and then, after a couple of months, they would call and ask if anyone had gotten back to us. We would say no, and they would say, oh, someone will get back to you. Rinse and repeat for months and months.
Occasionally, we do respite for foster care, and we do enjoy that, but a legal risk sibling group was definitely not for us, so we were content to wait. We have three lovely bio children and we love kids, but growing our family wasn't our primary purpose in looking to adopt. Our purpose was to help give children a family, especially children we thought would be hard to place, older sibling groups. If not for one "random" event, we'd probably still be there, just patiently waiting.
In, what I believe was, September or possibly October, of 2013 I was scanning Facebook. I have been a strong adoption advocate my entire life, literally. When I graduated from high school, I sang in the senior recital. The song I sang is a song about adoption told through the perspective of the birth mother, "From God's Arms, to My Arms, to Yours" and I cried all the way through it. In retrospect, everyone in my school probably thought I was pregnant lol. But really I've always been just that emotional about adoption. So I like to scan FB looking for information about adoption that other people could potentially use as a resource. A friend of mine, and for the life of me, I can't remember who that friend was, or which family the FSP belonged to, posted about a friend of theirs who was adopting and posted a link to that family's Family Support Profile on a site called Reece's Rainbow.
I had never heard of Reece's Rainbow and had never considered international adoption really at all. I had known exactly two people who adopted internationally, and neither one happened while I was around. One was a girl from China, non special needs, who had been adopted probably seven years before I met the family, whom I met in 1993. The other was a family who had adopted two boys from Russia who obviously had FAS and were extremely hyperactive. They'd adopted the boys probably five years before I met them, back in 1998. Those were my only exposures to international adoption, and both families were extremely wealthy. If I thought of international adoption at all, I thought of it as something that only the very rich did.
I scanned Reece's Rainbow, and had never heard of most of what they were talking about. I tucked away the information and left. But, I kept going back. I kept looking at and thinking about those children. I started to do little bits of research on the situation in other countries. I started reading a blog here or there that illustrated the truth about the international orphan crisis. Once I began to learn more, I started to think maybe it wasn't something I should ignore and assume was a problem for the wealthy to deal with. I inquired after a sweet girl in Ukraine, who is now coming home. The response I got was unbelievably complicated in my mind, and I said to myself, whoa, that's way too much!
But I still kept hanging around, reading about families in process. Reading about children who needed a home. Reading about what these children go through. I joined the Reece's Rainbow Facebook group and started giving money to families adopting and then started advocating for children who were waiting. I still felt it wasn't for me though. I read about the same kids over and over, but it was purely academic. Then one day, I read, for perhaps the third time, the profile of a girl in Ukraine (not the girl listed above, a different child). I won't tell her name because I am telling her country. She has significant special needs. She is non-mobile, she's non-verbal. She has a brain difference, and there was no way for us to know what she would ever be able to accomplish. But suddenly, it was like a lightening bolt. I knew, without a doubt, that this was our future and this was what God wanted us to do. I had absolutely no doubt that I was being commanded. I had no fears and no hesitation. This happened very quickly, without any warning. I had already read this girls profile, as well as all the other RR children, many times. I don't know what was so different about that time, but it was as firm as a testimony. We were to rescue this child.
My husband came home and discovered me crying, as I had been for maybe half an hour to 45 minutes, since the moment I read her profile again. I said, "this girl is our child." I think he was slightly alarmed at first lol, but he agreed that this was something we needed to do. We knew we had no money really, and no clue how we were going to pull it off, but when God called so loudly, it wasn't ours to question, it was ours to go and do. We started calling around and chose an agency to do our Ukrainian homestudy. We had no doubt we would be approved. We gave the homestudy agency a piece of information about a way we did not qualify to adopt from Ukraine. I have a history of generalized anxiety disorder. Ukraine says flat out that anyone with a history of anxiety disorder or depression is ineligible for adoption from their country. The homestudy agency felt this could easily be waived, especially considering that I'd never had any real treatment, just a diagnosis. However, once we paid our first amounts and got energetically started, it was brought to our attention that Ukraine had absolutely no intention of approving us, despite the lack of tangible anxiety issues.
It was devastating. I won't pretend that our hearts weren't broken. I couldn't understand why Heavenly Father had lit such a powerful fire under us, only to have it be an impossibility. People suggested to us that it was to get us geared towards thinking about international adoption, but I just couldn't wrap my mind around that. Why not just give us the message that this was our calling, and not specifically call us to bring this little girl home? After a few weeks in agony, we received conformation together that it was true. That without a child to focus on, I would never have had such clarity, and that international adoption was our calling.
But that left us in a situation where we planned to adopt, but we knew very strongly that Heavenly Father would tell us which children were right. If this was his will for us, he would guide us to find the child or children that he meant for us to rescue. We pulled away from our homestudy and it was put on hold. Without a country to focus on, it was useless to work on the homestudy, which are country specific and can easily been done incorrectly if you don't have a specific country in mind.
We set out to find the right child or children. We knew they were out there. We had literally no guidelines from which to work. We had no age level we wouldn't accept. We had no special needs we refused to consider. We had no genders in our mind. We didn't even have a country in mind! In case you're curious, that's a lot of potential children. We looked at literally thousands of children, in dozens and dozens of countries. I knew that if the child was the right one, we would know, with the power of lightening confidence, the way we did with the girl from Ukraine. I can't even explain to you how many profiles I went through. None of them were the ones. Occasionally, I would find one and put it aside, but a second reflection still didn't bring the feelings I had felt with the girl we had hoped would be our daughter.
Eventually, I began to despair that we'd ever find the right children, but we refused to move forward with a child that God wasn't directing us to bring home. We had felt it before, we knew it would happen again, when the time was right.
In late November, or early December 2013, I saw Robert Molloy, a wonderful advocate for Chinese children, especially older boys, who works for two huge advocacy and orphan groups, Defend Me and Bring Me Hope, post about a group of aging out boys. Tragically, nearly all of those boys have now aged out, but I have never made a secret of the fact it's older children who really touch my heart. I sent a message to Robert asking how I could help. We spoke for a long time. He asked if I was adopting and I said, indeed, I was not. But that we hoped to. We would when we found the right child. He engaged me in a conversation about our family and asked what our children were like, what we were like. What we enjoyed doing, where we liked going. What we considered important. I really just thought it was a conversation.
However, at the end, he said, here's a child for you. Then he posted a link.
I thought he simply meant, here, I'd like you to look at this child. I almost overlooked the link. We'd talked about dozens of children I could advocate for, but none that regarded me in particular. It took me a few minutes to remember he'd posted it and scroll back up to read it. Really, though, he was right spot on. He had a child for us. The singular suggestion he offered after listening to what I said about us was exactly the right one. I read this boy's profile, whose advocacy name was Daniel, and it was instant recognition in my soul. He was the one. Finally, after all of that time, and all of those countries, and all of those many, many children, there was finally the reinforcement from God that here was the right child. I was so excited I could hardly wait until Mike got home. I called him upstairs, had him read the profile and he knew instantly too. This time he was the one with tears. Like the girl in Ukraine, there was no doubt or hesitation.
Daniel, or Danny as he came to be known, because there was another Daniel or two on Reece's Rainbow when we set up our FSP, is about 11 years old (within a few weeks) and has been on shared list for a long time. He's been sitting and waiting, looking for the day when someone would finally notice him and make him a son, a brother, and a grandson. It's so hard to be noticed on the shared list. He's far beyond the age where people are even going to scroll down the shared list just looking. And his file is a hot mess. It's years old. Last updated when he was FOUR! He is eleven years old! I'm guessing that's about when they gave up on his ever being adopted. His file was full of frightening brain issues. But I didn't have to panic, because I had already spoken to Robert at length about him. Basically, without advocacy, this boy would have had no chance at all!
We were so excited that we moved forward without even telling Robert! He was totally shocked to discover we had submitted our LOI for Daniel after I asked him to say hello to Daniel while visiting his orphanage over Christmas! While he was there, Daniel asked him if he had found a family for him yet. Robert wasn't able to tell him about us, but it was a sad commentary on how aware these older children are that their time is running out and that they have the potential to age out without ever knowing the love and safety of home!
It would have been so easy for Daniel to be lost in the shuffle if not for the advocacy of a lone young man, only just turned 21, trying relentlessly to find a home for these children. That's why I spend so much time trying to find homes for other people's children. I am so thankful that Robert does what he does and so thankful that Heavenly Father gave us the endurance to wait for the right child and the confidence that he would whisper to us the truth.
So, that's the story of our sweet boy, Danny. And after that epic novel ;) I will wait to write about how we found "Wayne" until another day!
Amber
Friday, March 21, 2014
Wesley is Waiting
Tonight I'd like to tell you about a boy. Sometimes, there's a particular child who touches my heart, or who tugs at my soul in such a way that I would love to be able to bring them home myself. It kills me to know these particular children are desperate for a family, in a way that is much deeper than the general feeling of sorrow I have for a child without a family.
One of those children is Wesley.
Wesley will age out in late summer, in August 2014. He's approximately 13 years old. It's hard for China to know how old a child is when they aren't abandoned as a baby. With babies, it's much clearer what you're looking at. Wesley was not a baby when he was abandoned. He was not even a toddler. Heck, he was not even a preschooler. He was found, standing alone in front of the orphanage, left behind by his family, when he was six years old.
Can you imagine? Can you imagine being six, old enough to know, old enough to be congizant of the fact that the person you trust the most has turned from you and left you without anyone? In my mind, the scenario plays over and over. Did they tell him anything? Did they promise to be back to get him to stay? Did they say they loved him, or just tell him to get out and stay there until someone came? Maybe someday he'll tell his adoptive parents what really happened, when he's home and settled in and comfortable, and, finally finally, safe. For us, all we can do is know that his sorrow and trauma must have seemed insurmountable to his little heart. I tear up when I think about it. My heart is broken by this boy and his experiences. Such a hard world for a child so young.
I can't begin to speculate why Wesley's family left him alone in a strange place to the care of people he had never met on August 24, 2006. I can't begin to imagine what they were thinking. I hope that they were as heartbroken as he must have been, and I hope their reasons were good ones. But in the end, that doesn't really matter. Wesley was six. A sweet little kindergartner, and he was left at the gates of orphanage that would become his home. In his file it's noted that an employee of the orphanage found "a boy whom no one cared for" abandoned by the gate.
It's clear that these words were meant to mean something pragmatic. That he was left alone, without any supervision, at the gate to the orphanage. But the poignancy of these words is profound. The boy whom no one cared for. I'm sure that he felt every inch of that. A child left behind by all he'd ever known in the world. Unloved and uncared for. And that's where he still is today. Seven years later and he's still the boy whom no one cares for. A boy without a family. A boy without a home. A boy who will lose any chance of finding the basic human need for love fulfilled by a family in just months.
Look at this boy's face.
Look past the initial surprise of his being an albino, and see a little boy who deserves so much more. His files say he is gentle. Sensible. Polite and easy to get along with. After being left at such a crucial point in his life, he is still polite and gentle and easy to know and love. I don't know that, with all of my blessings, a person would call me gentle and easy to love. Wesley is a strong soul. A special one. I found this information about Wesley's file from a beautiful blog post written a couple of years ago, I would link it if I remembered where I read it. And still, after years, he waits. (Updated to add: the blog post I found his file info from is here http://mad.ly/4bca94 and it's lovely.)
Wesley's special need is visible for all to see. His albinism makes his eyes sensitive and his vision slightly lessened. He needs to cover up to protect himself from the brutal sun. This is an easy, easy need. Wesley is otherwise healthy, cognitively normal, and full of energy. Every child deserves so much more than an orphanage, but Wesley could be such a blessing to a family. I feel like while I am still breathing, I can't let this boy age out. Someone please see him! Let his face and his past touch your soul and know that he is your child.
Wesley has a TEN THOUSAND dollar grant with Reece's Rainbow. That's a big grant. Wesley is on the shared list, which means his file can be worked by any agency. But WACAP, who is a wonderful, wonderful agency that I can't say enough good things about, has offered any parent who uses their agency to adopt Wesley an additional FOUR THOUSAND dollar grant. That's a combined FOURTEEN THOUSAND dollars to bring this boy home. Wesley is aging out. It's not unlikely that, if asked, his orphanage will waive his orphanage fee. Those typically run right around 8,000 give or take. So it's very possible that this child could start an adoption process with TWENTY-TWO THOUSAND dollars already there for him. That is most of an adoption. Nearly all of it.
You can find out more about Wesley by clicking here and here. Please see him, share him with your friends. Help him to find the people who will make him a son, a brother, a grandson and a nephew. The people who will make him something beside the boy whom no one cared for.
Amber
One of those children is Wesley.
Wesley will age out in late summer, in August 2014. He's approximately 13 years old. It's hard for China to know how old a child is when they aren't abandoned as a baby. With babies, it's much clearer what you're looking at. Wesley was not a baby when he was abandoned. He was not even a toddler. Heck, he was not even a preschooler. He was found, standing alone in front of the orphanage, left behind by his family, when he was six years old.
Can you imagine? Can you imagine being six, old enough to know, old enough to be congizant of the fact that the person you trust the most has turned from you and left you without anyone? In my mind, the scenario plays over and over. Did they tell him anything? Did they promise to be back to get him to stay? Did they say they loved him, or just tell him to get out and stay there until someone came? Maybe someday he'll tell his adoptive parents what really happened, when he's home and settled in and comfortable, and, finally finally, safe. For us, all we can do is know that his sorrow and trauma must have seemed insurmountable to his little heart. I tear up when I think about it. My heart is broken by this boy and his experiences. Such a hard world for a child so young.
I can't begin to speculate why Wesley's family left him alone in a strange place to the care of people he had never met on August 24, 2006. I can't begin to imagine what they were thinking. I hope that they were as heartbroken as he must have been, and I hope their reasons were good ones. But in the end, that doesn't really matter. Wesley was six. A sweet little kindergartner, and he was left at the gates of orphanage that would become his home. In his file it's noted that an employee of the orphanage found "a boy whom no one cared for" abandoned by the gate.
It's clear that these words were meant to mean something pragmatic. That he was left alone, without any supervision, at the gate to the orphanage. But the poignancy of these words is profound. The boy whom no one cared for. I'm sure that he felt every inch of that. A child left behind by all he'd ever known in the world. Unloved and uncared for. And that's where he still is today. Seven years later and he's still the boy whom no one cares for. A boy without a family. A boy without a home. A boy who will lose any chance of finding the basic human need for love fulfilled by a family in just months.
Look at this boy's face.
Look past the initial surprise of his being an albino, and see a little boy who deserves so much more. His files say he is gentle. Sensible. Polite and easy to get along with. After being left at such a crucial point in his life, he is still polite and gentle and easy to know and love. I don't know that, with all of my blessings, a person would call me gentle and easy to love. Wesley is a strong soul. A special one. I found this information about Wesley's file from a beautiful blog post written a couple of years ago, I would link it if I remembered where I read it. And still, after years, he waits. (Updated to add: the blog post I found his file info from is here http://mad.ly/4bca94 and it's lovely.)
Wesley's special need is visible for all to see. His albinism makes his eyes sensitive and his vision slightly lessened. He needs to cover up to protect himself from the brutal sun. This is an easy, easy need. Wesley is otherwise healthy, cognitively normal, and full of energy. Every child deserves so much more than an orphanage, but Wesley could be such a blessing to a family. I feel like while I am still breathing, I can't let this boy age out. Someone please see him! Let his face and his past touch your soul and know that he is your child.
Wesley has a TEN THOUSAND dollar grant with Reece's Rainbow. That's a big grant. Wesley is on the shared list, which means his file can be worked by any agency. But WACAP, who is a wonderful, wonderful agency that I can't say enough good things about, has offered any parent who uses their agency to adopt Wesley an additional FOUR THOUSAND dollar grant. That's a combined FOURTEEN THOUSAND dollars to bring this boy home. Wesley is aging out. It's not unlikely that, if asked, his orphanage will waive his orphanage fee. Those typically run right around 8,000 give or take. So it's very possible that this child could start an adoption process with TWENTY-TWO THOUSAND dollars already there for him. That is most of an adoption. Nearly all of it.
You can find out more about Wesley by clicking here and here. Please see him, share him with your friends. Help him to find the people who will make him a son, a brother, a grandson and a nephew. The people who will make him something beside the boy whom no one cared for.
Amber
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Adorable Andrew/Andersen
This boy is so cute.
Update: Andrew has been returned to the shared list and is no longer with Great wall. For more information on Andrew, please now email Rebecca Coleman at JCandRebecca@Yahoo.com
Two nights ago I was looking through the children on Reece's Rainbow and I noticed his profile, here http://reecesrainbow.org/71204/andersen He has all of $9 in his account, and I'm the one who put it there, yesterday. What this tells me is that this boy doesn't get noticed. And he's sososososososo cute. And all boy. He is 6 years old, with a repaired congenital heart defect. Now he's healthy. Currently he's with Great Wall of China, but his file is due to be returned soon. I'd sure love to see this sweet boy find a home! Here's what GWCA says about him on his profile, which you can find here http://adoptablewaitingchild.com/portfolio/andrew/
Hi, I’m Andrew! I am 6 years old and I am the life of the party. I had surgery when I was very young because I had CHD, and, since then, I have been feeling better! I am able to play with my friends and I love to dance and sing. I am very smart and love to ask questions. I am a great eater and my favorite food is sweet fruit. My caregivers say that I am typical boy that loves anything with wheels!
I met a very nice adoption advocate this summer and this is what she had to say about me.
“I met this 6 year old boy with CHD. This little guy had so much energy and was ALL BOY running around and playing and showing off for us. I was alone in a stairwell with him and nearly fainted when he jumped from the halfway point on a flight of stairs to beat me to the bottom! I tried to scold him but he gave me one of those smiles that led me to believe he was gonna do it again on the next flight…yep… This little guy is so full of life and just adorable!!! I imagine he keeps his foster mother on her toes! He was very curious about us and followed us all over the orphanage building.”
You can see his information on GWCA's site or RR. Or you can email louise@adoptablewaitingchild.com for more information about this adorable guy!
Just for fun, I want to leave you with a link to a video of Andrew being way too cute. http://vimeo.com/84240016 It's a private video, and the password is Henry1
If you know someone who is interested in a little bit of rough and tumble, puppy dog tails, six year old cuteness, refer them to these resources and let's help this boy find a home!
Amber
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Easter Blessings
I'd like to tell you about the Smith family. I have a lot of affection for this family. http://reecesrainbow.org/69314/sponsorsmith-9 They are adopting "Barry", an absolutely precious boy with some mobility issues, but he makes up for his lack of motion with an enormous personality. I will flat out tell you guys that I adore Barry, and we strongly considered adopting him, but when we finally decided that he was a child we'd like to pursue, we received word back that his file was locked and another family had already decided to proceed with him! That family was the wonderful Smith family, and I'm so glad that Barry will have such a wonderful home!
The Smith's are one of the many tragic families barred from adopting their precious Russian children when the adoption ban came down. Their sweet daughter is still trapped in Russia and they still wait for her. But after more than a year, they realized they still have room in their home and hearts, even with waiting for the day when she can come home.
They are raising money for their adoption by doing a wonderful Easter fundraiser. My in laws like to do this activity every Easter that my children love. They fill a Styrofoam egg container with plastic eggs and when each is opened, it has some object that symbolizes the death and resurrection of Christ. My children never get tired of this simple activity and look forward to it every year when it's time again to discuss our Easter blessings.
The Smith's have made this felt flip book with pages for each aspect of the Easter miracle. The front is beautifully embroidered with the words "He is Risen." I copied and pasted their whole blog post about the fundraiser below, but follow this link http://welovelucyadoption.blogspot.com/2014/03/easter-fundraiser.html for ordering information.
~~~~~~~~~~
My mother-in-law gave our family a felt "Jesse Tree" several years ago.
It included a book with devotions leading up to Christmas and a tin
full of felt pieces. Every day we would read scripture, go through the
devotion, and the kids would place the appropriate felt piece on the
tree. It is now one of our favorite Christmas traditions.
I have been wanting to do something similar for Easter and I finally put it together! It will start on Palm Sunday and go through Easter Sunday. Each day will include reading one or two verses, reading a short devotion, and placing the correct felt piece on the banner. I have added additional verses for older children referencing the Old Testament. This is the perfect Easter devotion for PreK - 6th grade.
Orders will be shipped between March 26th and April 4th. Please make
sure address is correct on PayPal to receive package before Easter.
Please contact me if you are local and I will not include shipping.
Thank you for helping us bring our boy home!
$35 donation, includes shipping.
~~~~~
So please check out their beautiful felt books and their sweet son, "Barry"!
Amber
The Smith's are one of the many tragic families barred from adopting their precious Russian children when the adoption ban came down. Their sweet daughter is still trapped in Russia and they still wait for her. But after more than a year, they realized they still have room in their home and hearts, even with waiting for the day when she can come home.
They are raising money for their adoption by doing a wonderful Easter fundraiser. My in laws like to do this activity every Easter that my children love. They fill a Styrofoam egg container with plastic eggs and when each is opened, it has some object that symbolizes the death and resurrection of Christ. My children never get tired of this simple activity and look forward to it every year when it's time again to discuss our Easter blessings.
The Smith's have made this felt flip book with pages for each aspect of the Easter miracle. The front is beautifully embroidered with the words "He is Risen." I copied and pasted their whole blog post about the fundraiser below, but follow this link http://welovelucyadoption.blogspot.com/2014/03/easter-fundraiser.html for ordering information.
~~~~~~~~~~
Easter Fundraiser
I have been wanting to do something similar for Easter and I finally put it together! It will start on Palm Sunday and go through Easter Sunday. Each day will include reading one or two verses, reading a short devotion, and placing the correct felt piece on the banner. I have added additional verses for older children referencing the Old Testament. This is the perfect Easter devotion for PreK - 6th grade.
After all of the felt pieces are added on Good Friday, the banner will be covered in black.
On Sunday, the last banner will be turned over.
He Is Risen!
A dear friend has offered to embroider "He Is Risen!" and it is beautiful. It can be displayed
for several weeks after Easter as a great reminder of our Risen Lord.
The devotional book with be a flip-book. I include the reference verse
but I did not type the verse in the book. I love helping children open
their Bible to search for verses. For younger children, I believe it
leaves a lasting impact to see Mom, Dad, Grandma open the Bible and read
straight from God's Word.
$35 donation, includes shipping.
~~~~~
So please check out their beautiful felt books and their sweet son, "Barry"!
Amber
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