Introducing our daughter from China
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Kaiya Rain Zhen
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forgiveness and abundant blessing- precious
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Meet our newest member of the family!!!!!!! We are THRILLED beyond words to announce that we are in the adoption process to bring home Kaiya!
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Kaiya is 17 months old. Her birthday is May 10th of 2006.
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Kaiya has a cleft lip and palate. Her lip has been surgically repaired but she will most likely need surgery to repair her cleft palate. She is otherwise healthy and is eating plenty as you can see! :0)
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She is described as sweet and happy. Her file says she will laugh without stopping if an adult makes her giggle. She HATES having wet diapers and will scream her little head off. She also loves her sleep! (just like her mommy)
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I KNOW!!! I KNOW!!! We are just as surprised as you. It's the coolest surprise I have ever had. Surprise! God just gave me my little girl! Isn't she precious???? Okay... here's a little of the story. It's WILD. This has literally all happened in the last week. I would have told all of you earlier but we had to wait for certain paperwork to be filed.
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As you all know we have been BACK and FORTH on whether it was time for our next adoption. We had originally thought that this time would be AA domestic adoption or an Africa adoption. We had always thought that our NEXT time around would probably be China. So we are swapping things around it seems.
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I think we will adopt a little boy from Africa or domestic AA adoption next time. We actually have a meeting scheduled with an agency in a couple of weeks that I have to cancel. BUT both of us kept struggling with it and feeling like maybe we were going the wrong direction for our family this time around. We seriously just had this ambivalence about the whole thing. (which is NOT like us!) We really wanted to adopt toddler rather than newborn and are open to correctable special needs. That was not the greatest need with the type of adoption we were pursuing domestically. So we kept praying that God would make it VERY clear to us where what we should do.
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SOOOO a week ago a good friend shared with me that they are adopting an older child with special needs from China. She was showing me the webpage where he had a picture. On that page was a waiting little toddler girl with cleft palate and lip unrepaired.
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Now Russ and I kept saying that we weren't sure we wanted to do an international adoption this time. Mostly this was because our last international adoption experience was SO hard and painful that we have been scared to dive in again. We all know Guatemala adoption isn't for the faint of heart. :0) Plus we know there is a need here too and we've been conflicted about that.
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SO ANYWAY when I saw this little girl it grabbed my heart in such a strong way. I thought "I COULD DO THAT!" It felt so RIGHT and not scary like the path we've been moving toward. Which is so ironic because the path we WERE taking was much "easier" in most people's eyes. Yet my heart was instantly pulled in this direction. It just felt right.
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So I called my hubby and asked him what he thought about adopting a special needs child from China. Now he had been waffling for MONTHS just like me but I prayed that God would give us wisdom and bring us into unity on this. Within 30 seconds of me calling he said GO FOR IT. Let's do this. I HUNG UP STUNNED AND SO EXCITED!!!
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I called the agency immediately and asked about this little girl. They said she had a family already. I hung up the phone completely BAFFLED and confused. I was like HUH???? I really knew God was doing something here but what NOW?
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So I immediately went onto one of my many forums and for some BIZARRE reason typed in "great agencies" into the search engine. Up pops a TON of e-mails all about how WONDERFUL this certain agency called Children's House International is... so I went right to "google" to look at the agency. As soon as I went to the website I saw this part that says "waiting children" and then something that said I could join a forum. I thought, "I gotta join" but it usually takes a day or two to get approved. I applied and was approved within 5 minutes! I immediately went to look at the waiting children and when I saw this sweet little one I COULD NOT BELIEVE IT!
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I thought WHAT????? What is going on?? There must be something I don't KNOW! Why has no one accepted her referral?Then I thought they just must not have changed the status yet and she really already has a family. So I did a search on her name on the the messages. Then I saw that SO MANY of the mommas on the forum had been praying for her.... These precious mommas had been praying for her to find her family and every bit of me knew that she was MINE. They kept talking about how strange it was that she hadn't been matched yet. So many other children with much more severe needs had been matched with their families and still she waited. Not only that- her time was running out. They were going to have to return her file to China very soon if they didn't find a match. Then I don't know what would have happened to her.
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I KNOW that God brought me to her because these Godly women prayed for us. The path that brought me to her boggles my mind. It all happened in ONE afternoon. I have known from the second I saw her picture that she was my daughter. I am not scared, I am not worried about the money or the surgery or anything. I am BLESSED beyond words. She is supposed to be ours.
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I am blessed by the women on that forum in a way I can't articulate. They prayed for my little girl to find me.
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With all of my heart I know that God was holding Kaiya for us. She belongs in our family. She truly does....
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Welcome baby girl. We are coming to get you. You just hang on a little longer.