In the 18 months the Hunan Foster Care Program has been in existence, we have had over 107 children in the program, with 50 children in foster homes currently. To date, 43 children who have been a part of the Hunan Foster Care Program have been adopted internationally! Much to our excitement, Families Thru International Adoption was contacted by a few families who have been blessed with children from this program. The following are three stories that three families so graciously shared about their children.
Haley's Story
Our beautiful daughter Haley joined our family on May 8, 2002. We had waited for her for over 2 years.
My husband and I always envisioned having two kids in our family. We have a 4-year-old son named Miles. When he was 1½ years old, we lost his brother at 22 weeks of pregnancy.
Upon hearing from my doctors that another pregnancy was potentially dangerous, my husband and I looked to each other and to God with questions. A baby girl from China was our answer.
The paperwork and wait were tedious and long. All of that truly melted away when they placed Haley in our arms. She was absolutely perfect, and we felt like she had been with us all along. We didn't learn until "Gotcha Day" that our daughter had been in foster care for about 7 of her 10 months. We believe that this had a tremendously positive impact on her. When we got her, she was healthy, happy, and comfortable with both my husband and me. She bonded quickly to both of us, and adjusted easily to our family and home. We also learned that she had had a foster sister in addition to her foster parents. We feel this has helped her form the tight bond she has with her brother today.
Haley continues to do well at home. She is walking, loves to eat, has 10 teeth, and is talking! Most importantly to us, she exudes an inner "glow" from her spirit. She smiles all the time, loves to play tricks, and is always kissing her family. We believe that this inner spirit was protected and nurtured by her foster family. We are so thankful that she was in foster care for many reasons, but for this one especially.
We would like to thank Families Thru International Adoption, Inc. and their supporters for the wonderful gift they gave our daughter. We feel so blessed that she was a part of your foster care program. We also treasure the photographs and information from Haley's first few months that we received from your organization. Being able to see how our daughter grew from month to month is just priceless. And I know she will love being able to look at her baby pictures someday.
And Clayton Makes Three!
Having returned from our third trip to Changsha, Hunan Province this past August, we are now enjoying the full effect of being a family of five! We feel very fortunate to have had the opportunities to travel to Changsha for all three adoptions. Our first child, Maura, was adopted from the First Social Welfare Institute in October 1998 at the age of 9½ months. Although she was very alert and could hold her head up, she could not sit or crawl at that time. She had been in the orphanage since found at the estimated age of 4 days old.
Because we wanted our children to share a common bond, we made a request to return to Changsha once again for our second daughter. We also specifically requested a child from First Social Welfare, if possible. The CCAA was gracious enough to honor our requests and on June 2000 we received our second daughter, Leah, who had barely turned 8 months. She was estimated to have been 2 weeks old when found and had been at the orphanage since that time. When we received her, she was extremely thin and very anxious. She was barely able to hold up her own head and was very delicate and fragile in appearance.
During our second adoption, we were made aware that there were infant boys available for adoption in China. As a result, was immediately initiated our third adoption upon returning to the US with Leah. By this time, we were hopeful but not expectant that the CCAA would honor our requests for an infant male from Changsha First Social Welfare Institute. We endured the ever-increasing wait and finally got our referral for the last precious child-a boy from First Social Welfare! We traveled to Changsha and received him in late July 2002 at the age of 9 months. He was estimated to be about a week old when found and taken to the orphanage. When we received him, Clayton was very alert, could sit up independently, feed himself finger foods and was quite social! He also had four teeth. He appeared to be very healthy and happy.
We knew that Clayton was much more advanced than the girls had been but assumed this might have been due to the ever-improving conditions within the orphanage as well as the fact that he was a male. When we visited the orphanage a couple days after receiving him, we were handed written documentation and photos that explained Clayton had been in a foster care home for approximately 6 months of his life. That explained many things! What a difference it made for his overall growth and development! Although the specific information concerning the foster family is kept confidential, we were given medical reports as well as photos of Clayton taken at his monthly doctor visits at the orphanage.
When we returned home with Clayton, we took him the following week for his first pediatric visit. We were told he was right on schedule with no developmental delays noted. He continues to progress rapidly and is "cruising" in preparation for those independent steps. We will celebrate his first birthday next week!
Although our daughters experienced some initial developmental delays of varying degrees, both are now happy, healthy little girls and we feel equally blessed to have all three children. We were so fortunate to have been given the opportunity to receive all 3 children from the same orphanage. The improvements noted over the past 4 years have been impressive. Now with the inception of the foster care program, we can give this personal account of the wonderful benefits it offers to orphaned children in Changsha. We hope and pray that this program will continue to grow into the future!
The Story of Hope and the Gift We Received
It was on a Sunday in March of 1998 that Hope was birthed in my heart. Our 2 biological children, Allison and Benjamin, were very excited about having a new sister. They were 11 and 7 at the time and I don't think they were prepared for the long wait. The paper chase began. It took almost a year to complete the paperwork and as the months went by the waiting time kept increasing. Finally, we received a call from our agency the first week of February informing us that they got our paperwork to China on January 26th. The paperwork was completed and the second wait then began. We knew her name would be Hope because so many scriptures that guided us had the word Hope in it. Our prayer for her every night was that she would be healthy, safe, happy and loved. In the mean time, Hope was growing in her biological mother.
Sometime at the end of April she entered this world somewhere in the province of Hunan. After that, maybe a month or less, she was found at the Changsha Train Station. She was dressed in blue, had a bottle with her and only weighed 6.6 lbs. She was brought to the Changsha Social Welfare Institute. There they gave her the name "Yi" which means gift. One month after her arrival, she was placed in a foster care program sponsored by FTIA. While she was living in the only place she knew to be home, we were half a world away eagerly waiting for the little girl who was chosen by God as a "gift" to bless our lives.
The months came and went as we slowly inched our way to March 6, 2002. The call that would change our lives finally came. They told us her name was Yao Yi and that she was almost a year old and came from Hunan Province. We received her pictures and report and eagerly read the pages to find out all we could about her. She loves music, is an extrovert and very active.
She seemed to be of a healthy weight also. At this point we thought she had been in the orphanage all along. The paperwork said nothing about foster care because she was still under the jurisdiction of the Changsha Social Welfare Institute. A few weeks later we were on our way to Changsha, China. As our plane descended, my eyes welled up with tears and the feeling in my heart was overwhelming. Our daughter was no longer far away, but within 20 miles. This is where she spent her whole short little life. I just melted when Hope was placed in my arms. The day we had waited for was finally here. Our little girl was now with her forever family. She seemed fine at first and came to us easily. They then told us that "Yi Yi" (that is what they called her) had knocked her tooth out the night before, trying to climb out of her crib.
Sure enough her little front tooth on the bottom was completely missing and her mouth was very sore. She started to cry and did so for several hours. After finally falling asleep in her daddy's arms, we put her in her crib. We just stared at her in awe of the incredible miracle we were experiencing. When she awoke, she was quiet but very sad. She was grieving and we felt her pain to the point of our own tears. We dressed her for the first time and boarded our bus with our travel group. We were off to finalize the adoption. In the midst of all the activity, we didn't get a chance to look at the card and pictures that were handed to us when they gave Hope to us.
We finally looked at it that night and to our wonderful surprise, Hope had been in foster care for 9 months in a program sponsored by FTIA, an adoption agency in Indiana. It was an answer to our prayer that she would be happy and loved. As Hope opened up to us, it was obvious that she was loved, because she started showing us affection within days.
Two days later we went to visit the orphanage. Hope had come back there two months before we came to get her. The orphanage told us that Hope's foster family was a retired couple with grown children and that they all loved her. Taking off from Changsha was bittersweet. We were leaving the only home Hope had ever known, but ahead of her was a new beginning. It seemed as though she sensed that and in Guangzhou, we started to see the "extrovert" side of her coming out. She seemed to attract attention from everyone. She was just so happy. And so were we. Hope's toothless little smile has become her own special trademark. When we left China and our first port of entry into the United States was in Chicago. It was there on May 17, 2002, that Hope Alaina Yi Agresti became a citizen of the United States of America. She flew the last leg of our journey home in a red America 2002 tee shirt with a bear waving an American flag. We arrived in Greensboro, NC, to a roaring crowd of about 50 people. We had missed Allison and Benjamin so much and were anxious for them to meet their new sister. It was really special that Hope's Grandma Doris was also there to greet her.
A few weeks after we got home, I emailed FTIA to thank them for sponsoring Hope's foster care. We really feel it had made a big difference in Hope's life. She is a loving and affectionate child that loves life and is trying to live it to its fullest. We received a package from FTIA with 12 pictures of Hope in foster care, one for each month. There were also monthly progress reports that had all of her measurements month by month, when she smiled and rolled over etc. I cried when I looked at pictures of her when she was 2 and 3 months old. We never thought we would have pictures and information about Hope earlier than 6 months old. We were concerned about all of the unknowns in her first year of life and can now fill out the places in her baby book that would have otherwise been blank.
This foster care program has made a big difference in the early life of this precious child. The love she received will always be a part of who she is. Having all of the information and pictures will make such a big difference to her when she is older. All of the pictures of Hope taken while she was in the foster care show her smiling and very happy. It was evident she was loved by this family. Being placed back in the orphanage must have been hard for her. There was a 12th picture that was taken right after she went back and she seemed so sad. She had the same sad face the day we got her. She was brokenhearted for her foster family that she had to leave. We will forever be grateful to them and those who made this program available to our daughter. We pray that this program and others like it will continue to grow and touch the lives of these lost little daughters of China.
*FTIA has made efforts to work with the orphanage too and the procedure will be changed so that the children only return to the orphanage for the shortest amount of time possible prior to their adoption.
Please remember that the Hunan Foster Care Program is separate from your Adoption Process
We Need You!!!
We hope that these stories have touched your heart the way that they have touched ours. We hope that the stories have strengthened your faith in the Hunan Foster Care Program and have excited you about the special opportunities this program brings to the children! We are truly grateful for those families who have been so generous to the Hunan Foster Care Program. Without help from the families who have supported this program, we wouldn't have gotten this far.
We still have a long way to go!!! We are in urgent need for more sponsors to participate for this program to continue and hopefully to expand! If you have not considered participating in this program, please do so now! This program provides the love and care all the children deserve and gives them a good start of life! The holidays are coming up and it is a time that seems to spark a greater passion for giving. As everyone comes together with family and friends to celebrate what we are thankful for, please remember that this would be a wonderful opportunity for our adoptive parents to "give back." We want to challenge families to consider contributing to the program the amount that you would spend on one gift for each family member.
Thank you so much. We truly appreciate you.