Last night at 8:30 our time, 5:30 their time our adoption agency called to let us know that our dossier was "perfect" and that it was on its way to China with the other families whose dossiers had also been approved this week. We are very excited!! Ellen said that the documents should arrive at the Holt Beijing office early next week and that they will hand deliver it to the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) where it will be logged into the Chinese system. According to the new rules once we are logged into the system Holt can begin looking on the shared list for our new son or daughter.
The shared list is a special list created by the CCAA where they place children with special needs that all adoption agencies have access to. In the past the CCAA would send designated lists to the various adoption agencies and the agency was charged with finding adoptive families for the children that the CCAA sent to them. If a child was not matched with a family after a period of time his/her file was sent back to the CCAA. Their file would be sent to a few more adoption agencies and after a while if a child's file was not requested by families a child could be deemed unadoptable. This is quite sad because perhaps the family meant to adopt that child didn't find the correct adoption agency or the agency wasn't willing to request a waiver if their family was too large. For whatever reason many children went without families to call their own. This new shared list isn't without fault, but all the agencies are able to look on the list and advocate for the children. Many parents wish that CCAA had allowed the designated lists to continue with the shared list. Many families have started adoptions only after finding their child on the designated list, families that may have not pursued an adoption if they had not found their child on the designated list and had their child looking back at them. We can pray that the shared list helps things move along and find more homes for children, but it is different and like anything else isn't perfect. However imperfect the system it worked perfectly for us when we found Isaac on the shared list in July of 2008. We are so excited that as we approach the two year anniversary of finding Isaac we could be celebrating that we have been matched with our new child.
This is a picture of the outside of Isaac's orphanage in Dongguan City, Guangdong Province, China. Part of me hopes that our new child is here and that he/she will share a common thread with Isaac, however we aren't requesting the agency look for a child from Dongguan because God knows where our child is and we don't want to miss out on His perfect match for our family because we tried to manipulate things. We think that we might be matched with a brother because many, many families are hoping for a daughter. After praying about whether or not to request a particular gender we felt that if we were pregnant we would be thrilled with whichever gender He gave us so now we are like minded in adoption. We would love a daughter. We would love a son. We know that this new child will be deeply loved. However, we know that over 75% of families adopting request to adopt a daughter, so the odds are pretty good that we will adopt another son. Why the preference for a daughter when adopting? I don't know. Many speculate that mothers drive the majority of adoptions and perhaps after having a biological son they want a daughter, or if they can only have one child mothers desire to have that special mother-daughter relationship. Of course, with China we hear about the preference for boys so many people adopting from China show that girls are treasured and valuable by requesting to adopt a daughter.
However children relinquished by their parents in China are almost equally boy and girl when it comes to children with "special needs." Unlike us they don't have insurance or government subsidies (Medicaid, etc...) to help with the cost of treating a child. Regardless of what you think of our present situation regarding the medical arena, we can agree that we are blessed. We were able to get surgery to correct Isaac's cleft palate by an awesome surgeon. We are able to get speech therapy so that he develops clear speech. We could not afford any of this without insurance and I wonder, with similar circumstances available to the birth families of my children, would I be a mother? I don't know if medical care were easily accessible if Isaac's mother could have raised him and loved him or if, as a show of her deep love she chose to leave him and prayed that a family would come along that could give him what she could not. These days I am thinking more about his birth mother and the birth mother of my new child more than I have in a while, and I pray for these women. I pray that God will comfort them with a knowing that their children are deeply loved by a family and that their needs are being met. I pray that they will come to a knowledge of Jesus Christ so that one day we can be reunited in Heaven.
The shared list is a special list created by the CCAA where they place children with special needs that all adoption agencies have access to. In the past the CCAA would send designated lists to the various adoption agencies and the agency was charged with finding adoptive families for the children that the CCAA sent to them. If a child was not matched with a family after a period of time his/her file was sent back to the CCAA. Their file would be sent to a few more adoption agencies and after a while if a child's file was not requested by families a child could be deemed unadoptable. This is quite sad because perhaps the family meant to adopt that child didn't find the correct adoption agency or the agency wasn't willing to request a waiver if their family was too large. For whatever reason many children went without families to call their own. This new shared list isn't without fault, but all the agencies are able to look on the list and advocate for the children. Many parents wish that CCAA had allowed the designated lists to continue with the shared list. Many families have started adoptions only after finding their child on the designated list, families that may have not pursued an adoption if they had not found their child on the designated list and had their child looking back at them. We can pray that the shared list helps things move along and find more homes for children, but it is different and like anything else isn't perfect. However imperfect the system it worked perfectly for us when we found Isaac on the shared list in July of 2008. We are so excited that as we approach the two year anniversary of finding Isaac we could be celebrating that we have been matched with our new child.
1 comment:
Congratulations!!! We are also a Dongguan family and would love to have another little one from Dongguan. I wish your family the best of luck and hopefully sometime soon you'll see your new little ones face!
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