Why China?

We have heard this question many times in the past seven years. Not so much anymore, guess when you look at our family, the question is already answered. In all honesty, we did not start out with China on our minds.

It was medically impossible for us to become parents physically. Besides, with each of us having not so desirable genes, we didn't think it would be right to pass that on to a child.

We initially looked into doing foster care with the possibility of adopting. However after visiting with someone at at the state foster care system, we quickly changed our minds. Maybe that was the woman's intention. She was very frank with us and told us that we could become a foster family and have infants/babies placed in our home. But she wanted us to know that 9 out of 10 placements are returned to their biological families.....sometimes many times. Maybe it was because we were "older" parents to start, she could tell that we would not be able to do this time after time after time. My thanks go out to this woman for telling us up front about this. It takes very special families to be foster parents. My hats are off to them and my heart goes out to the families and the kids who get caught up in the system. Praises to the judges and social workers who don't drag out the process over years and years and get the children placed in a stable home, whether that be with the birth or adoptive parents.

We then started looking into international adoption. We researched Romania, Russia, Korea and after spending a considerable amount of time on the Internet, China was our choice! We then narrowed our agency selections down to two and spent one afternoon calling references from each agency.

Our first adoption touched my heart, but I don't think that I truly realized just how much it had for several years. I now know that each trip to China I have left a little bit of my heart there each time. Of course, each time I have come home with a heart and arms even fuller!

If someone were to ask me today, "Why China?" it is very easy to say, "Because that is where my daughters' were!"