China
Guatemala
Russia
Vietnam
Brazil
India
Our story begins with a wish to complete a family, even if late in life. My
husband already had 2 grown sons and we had a son (adopted in the U.S.) who was soon to be 13. I had friends who had adopted from China and I
had fallen in love with their daughter. The joy I saw in their faces was
wonderful when she entered a room. I happened to take my son over
Christmas break 2000 to the Children's Museum with a friend and was
watching children play in the tree house. There was a family with 2 young
girls from China. After we left I couldn't stop thinking about them.
Something wouldn't let me sleep at night or think during the day!
A couple weeks later I heard about an open meeting on international adoption being held in Cincinnati at a local church. I got up early that Saturday in January of 2001 and attended the meeting. I found out more about the adoption process. I was convinced once I left the meeting, but now I had to convince my husband. He was less than thrilled with the prospect of adding to our family at this point in life. He was 50, I was 45 and he figured he might even retire early in life. I'm not one to stop when I've made up my mind about something and I had made up my mind! I went ahead and started the process and he signed on the dotted line. He still wasn't on board and thought that this might just go away. We attended all the meetings and compiled the whole dossier. It was a long 13 month wait for a referral back in 2001-2002 so it didn't seem like it was real to John. Then on a Thursday morning late in July 2002, we got the call I had been waiting for. There was a little girl named Yangchun Ke in an orphanage in Yangchun City in China waiting for us if we wanted her. If we wanted her? Of course we did! We got the picture and John looked at her and said ok. Now we had to give her a name - our name. John decides to get involved now. He wants a different name than I had picked out and he starts to worry that we are missing paperwork for this important trip!
We left Cincinnati on a warm Thursday in September 2002 and arrived finally in China on Friday evening. The next two days were busy sightseeing days in Beijing and then Monday we traveled to Guangzhou. After checking into the White Swan Hotel at 1:00 we were told to meet at 3:00 in the hotel lobby. On the way to the Center to pick up the babies we saw the nannies carrying them into the building. We waited in the large conference room with many other families and we were called 4th out of our group. I held her first, then John. Boy, you talk about love at first sight! I couldn't believe it - she was so beautiful! All the waiting was worth it!
John lost his heart that day and Soo Lin Ke has it. We have been so blessed with this child. What's amazing is that because of the joy we have had with her it was easy to talk John into going back just one more time! We're a few years older and this will be the last child in our family but we both felt Soo Lin Ke needed a sister. We should travel sometime this summer to get a sister for Soo Lin Ke and feel it has been made possible by such great people who work so hard for children everywhere. They work to place children in homes to become family members - FTIA. I can't say enough about the people we have dealt with at this agency. No matter how frustrated or joyous I have been through these two adoptions they were always understanding and made me feel like they had been there before!
Any question we had was dealt with professionally and we were never made to feel like we were asking a "dumb" question. The agency worker we had in China for the 1st adoption made us feel like we were family while we were there. The process was easy and felt so smooth - because she and the agency did their homework before we ever got there.
Thank you FTIA and bless you in your continued work on the behalf of children everywhere!
Glenna
