What a difference a day makes

After this awful week, we had 24 hours of some pretty big news.  Here’s a snippet of what’s happened…

1.  Our dossier was finally sent to China!  We have had so many hurdles and setbacks with this step that we cried when we got this news.  

2.     We have the opportunity to foster and then adopt.  This means two really big things…we could get our daughter much sooner than expected, and we could start caring for her at a much younger age than we had thought.

Here’s the longer story, for those interested.  My good friend and neighbor goes to the orphanage with her daughters once a week to do an art class.  She’d been praying for an opportunity to do more, to help advocate for these little ones that are tugging on her heart strings.  She didn’t know how to do that, so she asked God to have someone approach her…and a couple weeks ago someone did—the director of foster care. 

On Thursday we met with this woman to understand more.  We now know that the orphanage has over 100 children living there and another 50 or so in foster care with local families.  They’re getting more children all the time and they don’t have room for them.  She knows that these children will get such better care if they are in homes, with families, and she wants to get the foreigners involved too.  She’s asking us (I’ve jumped at the opportunity to help my friend figure all this out) to help her do this. 

So, we’ve asked if the possibility exists to foster and then adopt.  (Right now there is no way I could have a child in my home for a short time and then have her be adopted by someone else.)  She says, yes, and explains how she thinks it’s done.  However, checking with our adoption agency and making sure they think it can be done is another key factor. 

That evening we call our agency.  After months of delayed communication, we expect to leave a message and try to talk with him at another time, but he answered the phone!  He said yes, people have been trying this for years.  There used to be a huge risk involved because there was no guarantee that you could be the first to get to the child’s file after it goes to the shared list.  But they’ve since changed the method to make it work and the child never goes to the shared list.  As long as you’re in the system, and the orphanage and the civil affairs office are willing to write letters of support for you, you are automatically matched with this child.  Our agency has seen it done successfully.

So, I’m on cloud nine when I get this news, and my sweet husband is trying to keep my feet on the ground.  Please be praying.  We’re thrilled at this opportunity, yet there are still some things that need to fall into place.

I will meet with the director of adoption at the orphanage on Monday.  He needs to be willing to write these letters.  We also need the woman to be willing to release specific medical information about these children, so that we can make an informed decision.   She’s already told us about one little girl, four months old, with minor special needs that we are very interested in.  This is all happening really fast, pray for our hearts and the decisions along the way.