A Waiting Child

Have you ever shopped for a head of lettuce, steaks in the meat section, a new bike for one of your kids or a bunch of bananas? What do you look for? Do you pick up the item, look at, smell it, compare it to others around it? And, then, you probably pick the one that meets your criteria and basically looks the best to you. Isn't this the same thing most of us would do if we had the opportunity to pick out a child that was going to be our little girl or boy? So, why go through a waiting child program to adopt a child with special needs instead of the traditional program? Why sign up for a child that may look differently, may need extra medical care, surgeries, etc.?

Well, about two years ago, China changed their adoption criteria - making them much more strict. So, there was a flood of dossiers that came in before these changes were made causing a large back-up and a very large increase in the waiting time to adopt a child through the main program (the waiting time went from a little over 1 year to as much as 4 years). The wonderful offshoot from this was many people decided for the first time to take a look at the waiting child program. They were driven there because the wait time was much less, but what they ended up finding were beautiful children in need of someone to love them and care for them. They found children who may have been abandoned because their biological parents could not pay for their medical bills or, quite possibly, because of the way they looked. Well, we were two of the parents who went to the waiting child program, at least initially, because of the reduced wait time, but what we found were all of the things mentioned above and so much more...We found a little girl who had just turned a year old. A girl who was abandoned when she was 1 day old. A girl who has an open cleft lip and pallet that is in need of surgery or a number of surgeries to repair. A girl that we already cherish, love and thank God for and a girl we can't wait to hold in our arms. We also found a little girl that has been very well taken care of and we are thankful for those caretakers (from the updates we have received, the caretakers love to dote on her and give her a lot of attention). We have attached a picture of this little girl we have found and we can't wait to introduce her in person to all of you.