More about our son

We have been sponsoring Fu Xing through COAT (Chinese Orphans Assistance Team)'s foster care program. We found out about this amazing organization back in 2005 while we were waiting on Graycen's referral. A family in our Feb2005DTC yahoo group was adopting a 10 year old girl from Jiaozuo, Henan, and brought COAT to my attention. I was so amazed at the way the founders, Greg and Linda Shum, showed Jesus' love to orphans, I just had to start donating to their efforts. We started out sponsoring an adorable little girl Wen Wen. She was eventually adopted by a family from the Netherlands, but we still kept up our sponsorship. One month I received an email from Linda apologizing for not matching us with a child, and matching us with Fu Xing, who was then 8 years old. He had the special need of having one kidney, due to having cancer in his other one when he was little. I was excited to have been "randomly" matched with him, as this was a familiar diagnosis for our family. Our son Grant, now 21, had this exact cancer when he was 2 1/2. We felt an instant connection with this adorable boy on the other side of the world.

When we were searching for Galia RunYi's file in 2008, I saw Fu Xing's file on the shared list. I was so torn, because this was a boy that we felt such a connection with. We had committed to finding Galia's file, so I emailed Linda to tell her I had seen his file. She told me that their was a woman in Chi*na that was wanting to adopt Fu Xing. This put my mind at ease and we eventually found Galia's file and brought her home last April.

Well, it eventually was decided that this adoption was not in the best interest of Fu Xing. I was heartbroken for him, but knew that we had our hands (and home) full with just bringing Galia home. We also thought that his file had been removed from the lists, and didn't know what the status of it was. I began praying that Fu Xing would find a family. Linda was also praying. In the email updates we received, as each month went by during the past year, Fu Xing looked more and more sad. Linda's words confirmed what we could see in his eyes. He was beginning to be very depressed that he had not been chosen by a family. He had experienced the love of an American mother in Donna, who had lived in his foster home for 5 months as the foster mother with her three daughters. He decided he really did want a mama, and an American one would be great.

I shared these email updates with Kevin. I told him that I would want to adopt him in an instant, but there was that one HUGE obstacle...Money. Oh, and the fact that we had just added another child to our family. I continued to pray that a family would come forward, so I wouldn't feel guilty anymore for not adding him to our family. We knew his file was no longer on the shared list, and really thought that it was back at CC@@, not even having the chance for someone to choose him.

Then around January, Kevin kept telling me that he was waking up with Fu Xing on his mind. I would reply, "Oh, that's nice." I mean, it really was impossible to me for us to bring him home. We had done some serious fundraising for Galia's adoption and I really didn't have it in me to go through that again, let alone the paperwork nightmare of another adoption. I just brushed it off, but he kept bringing him up to me. Now those of you that know me, know that this is the exact opposite of our first two adoptions. I was always the one pushing my ideas of adopting onto Kevin. It wasn't that I didn't want to be his mama, it just seemed too impossible and overwhelming to think of it on a serious level. I finally gave Kevin an ultimatum: either come up with a way for us to get some money (borrowing from his parents) or quit talking about it! I asked him if he wanted me to contact Linda to see if she even thought it was in his best interest to be adopted by us. He said to see what she said, and if it was "yes" then he would talk to his parents.

I emailed Linda with the hypothetical question posed of us adopting Fu Xing. She responded quickly with a "yes!" She had been praying for a family to come forward for him, as she was becoming very concerned about his well-being because of his sadness over not being chosen. Kevin went and talked to his parents and they were actually excited and agreed to loan us the money we would need. We knew there would be a lot more things God would have to work out, the biggest being locating his file and getting it to an agency we could work with. We had experience with this task, and it had taken 8 months to accomplish that with Galia's file. I didn't want to have to go through that waiting and not knowing again. Thankfully, we were able to find out that his file had never been removed from circulation, that it was with an agency and they just needed to return it to CC@@, it could be given to the agency we were going to work with and we could send our Letter of Intent to adopt him. It took a little while to accomplish that, but only about a month. In the mean time, we were working on our home study and gathering the documents required for our dossier. We sent our Letter of Intent on March 11, and received our Pre-Approval on March 18.

We finally received our I-800A approval (immigration), and all those precious dossier documents were logged in at the CC@@! There is one good thing about adopting this way, which is kind of backwards in that we found the child first and then try to find the file. It is that in seeing it actually work out, we see that God is in it, and that if He wasn't, we would hit roadblock after roadblock. We have not had a single one!

The money we have needed for each step has been there (after the initial money we borrowed from Kevin's parents).  We are amazed to see God's hand each step of the way.

Next post will be about our big move.  We found the perfect house to buy and will be moving in next Thursday.  The next week will be Graycen's travel group reunion that we are hosting this year in Branson.  There should be about 7 of the 12 girls making the reunion this year.

Can you say BUSY??  No wonder I haven't been posting...