Our prayers have been answered! After another month of waiting for China to release the list of Special Needs Children who were available for adoption, we have found her!! I woke up Tuesday Morning, March 26 at 5:00am to check my email (as I was hoping it would happen) and there it was-our agency had emailed us at 11:05 pm for a referral they had received from our social worker on the ground in China at 10:51pm. Her name is Shangguan Minghui-but soon we pray that she will become Kailyn Mari Wilkerson! Her birthday is March 4, 2012 so if we do get to travel around August or September, she will be 18 or 19 months when we get her. She is placed in the Social Welfare Institute (SWI) of Shanggao County where she was abandoned at 2 days old. As I have explained in a previous post, children are abandoned so that they can legally be orphans. If there is knowledge of the parents, then the child cannot legally be considered an orphan or available for adoption.
We are thrilled beyond words about this precious little girl. We pray and ask for your prayers that the rest of this process would go smoothly so that she can become ours. Right now we are waiting for our pre-approval from China, and then I believe that they will fully review our dossier before we can be officially approved to be her parents. Prayers Please!!!!!
On top of that we have been able to find a good amount of information about her orphanage through others we googled that have also adopted from this orphanage, and in fact, I found one family who has recently picked up their child from Shanggoa in February!! Hopefully, we can get in contact with this family. I am adding their blog to our list of adoption blogs on the right of this page. One interesting and positive thing that we've learned about this orphanage is that it is small, from what we can tell from the pictures it isn't in the most urban area, which means not as smoggy! Also, and I've never read this about any other orphanage, it is an SWI which means that it houses not only children but also elderly people who have been abandoned :( but what I am gathering is that the babies their are actually paired up with an elderly person who serves as their primary caregiver. Now I have also gathered that this orphanage calls that the child's foster home, and it seems that this is a truly good situation, when you consider that in many orphanages the ratio of caregivers can be and in many cases is actually 1 to 50 children. In the report that we got from China it does mention that Shangguan Ming Hui will smile in response to the "granny." So that has my curiosity to find out if what I am putting together is the case. I will post the link below to the touching story I read of this mom getting to actually meet the 78 year old woman who had been looking after their little girl. It is a little funny too-their little girl was also given the first name of Shangguan, and I believe this has to do with the name of the orphanage and county being Shanggao. The other thing that I find to be a little amusing is that the personality description of their little girl is the exact same personality description that we got as well-she is quiet, likes music, and can laugh loudly, so we'll see:) The description of our little girl also says that she can crawl-which is GREAT for an institutionalized child a year old. Her diet is milk powder and noodles, fruits, veges, and eggs and that makes me feel better about her nutrition. Her weight is only in the 10% by American standards, but the doctor at the international clinic said that is very normal and it is good to see that she is actually on the charts.
Being able to find pictures, videos and an outstanding adoption blog about this orphanage only makes this adoption that much more exciting. I cannot wait to go there and meet the people who took her in to care for her. From everything I have read, I feel pretty good about it and it seems to be a caring place.
This first link is probably my favorite in that it shows pictures of both Shanggao County in general and also of the orphanage.
Pictures of Shanggao County and the Orphanage
More of the Orphanage
I had to post this link because this is the blog I found of the other family who has adopted from Shanggao. It makes me chuckle and also happy at the same time to see such similarities. A baby girl bundled up like a marshmallow puff-not at all in "girl colors", outside with the same weedy background, with the same personality description as ours:)
The Chronicles of Nestlewood Lane
What an outstanding way to end such a sickly spring break. And I mean sickly-the whole family, the whole week! Severe colds, vomiting, a child passing out on the tile bathroom floor and 911 calls (no worries, this ended well and we learned what we have been trying to figure out for a while now, but I don't have time to write about that one now). It is a wonder Andrew and I were able to think enough to accept this precious child. But then, we had been boldly praying for the last month, that the next referral would be it-that whatever child was sent to us, that fit in our age range and the special needs that we felt peace about-she would be the one. It is a wonder that the week she was sent our way, our minds were too groggy and clouded from sickness to think. When I look back on our life experiences, it seems like whenever we are involved in some type of major "mission" for lack of better terms, we alway have to get dramatically sick or our kids do right beforehand. For example, the night before I left for my mission trip to Guatemala, Joseph wakes up at midnight with violent projectile vomiting. I had to be back up at 5:00am and had just gotten to sleep at 10:30. Needless to say I was a zombie at the airport the next day. But that was it. After I left, no more sickness. Then when Andrew was gone for missions for 2 weeks in Indonesia, I got just enough of a stomach bug that I had to literally crawl up the stairs to put the kids to bed. Coincidence or spiritual warfare? Don't know. I do know that obedience to Christ is always worth it. And this little girl is worth anything we may have to go through to get to her!
Here is my song today:)
Not for a Moment by Meredith Andrews
Amy
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete