We’ve all made some monumental shifts over the past two weeks. Shifts from school to home-school. Shifts from office to work from home. Shifts from fellow-shipping with loved ones to being separated by a screen. The list goes on and on. And those dramatic shifts will continue, indefinitely, until we get to the other side of this thing. We at Madison Adoption Associates are experiencing these drastic shifts just like all of you. We are working from home. We are trying to juggle our work responsibilities with our personal responsibilities. We are relying on electronic connectivity now more than ever. But perhaps more challenging than the physical shifts, are the emotional ones. The shifting of our thoughts, and the questions swirling in our minds. Will my loved one working on the ‘front line’ remain physically healthy? What about emotionally healthy? Will my child’s newfound anxiety subside when this is all over? Will my brother’s business survive? These questions, and many others like them, plague us all. But a couple more that our staff is faced with are: What does all of this mean for the children who wait?What does this mean for the future of adoptions?
Part of me wants to put those two questions out of my mind. Part of me wants to just focus on the now, and worry about getting through this crisis, and get back to the children when it’s over. Because right now, it’s all just too much to comprehend.
But the other part of me….the part that dedicated itself long ago to children who wait, won’t ever let that happen. You see, at MAA, the children are always forefront in our hearts and on our minds, no matter what else is going on. And in times like this, especially in times like this, times when it would be so much easier on our mental health to be able to let just one worry go, is when the children who wait are even more so embedded in our every single thought. People worry because people love. Don’t the children deserve to be part of someone’s worries?
So wherever we find ourselves right at this moment….be it ‘paused,’ worried, locked down, front lines, etc…. Please don’t forget about the children who wait. The children who would give anything to be part of someone’s everything… The children that deserve the love of a family….
Thank you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Meet Jordan. Jordan recently turned 4 years old, and is described as quite intelligent! He loves to go to the pool and play with toy cars. Jordan is waiting for a family!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Interested in adoption? Complete our Prospective Adoptive Parent form today, and an adoption specialist will be in touch with you to discuss potential adoption options. Not in a position to adopt right now? Please consider donating to Madison Adoption Associates’ Grant Fund. 100% of donations will go into this grant fund aimed at finding more families for children! !
It’s a strange time to be alive, and a very strange time to be adopting internationally. At a time when everyone is drawing in, staying home, closing borders, you are longing to bring someone far away near.
I see you, family who is staring at a room prepared for a loved child when you don’t know when they will fill it. I see you, family who traveled across the ocean for the first adoption trip and now has the second trip postponed indefinitely. I see you, family who waited years to be matched to your child only to have travel cancelled at the last minute. I see you, family in-country who has held your child and may now have to make the heartbreaking decision to leave because there’s no end in sight. I see you because I am you.
Credit Jeanna Rice Photography
We are in the midst of adopting our son from China, and have had our own process slow to a crawl, heading towards a standstill at the rate things are going. I’m feeling all the feelings you are. Frustrated and angry at the things out of my control. Guilty that I am upset about this when there are people losing loved ones to this disease. Embarrassed about the tiny baby clothes purchased that now probably won’t fit. Worried when our son had to go through urgent surgery a few weeks ago without parents there to be by his side. And mostly, just terribly sad about it all.
Lately, a new feeling has started to creep in: hopelessness. Seeing the outbreak finally dying down in China, a light at the end of the tunnel, only to have it explode around the world sending our timeline spinning out even further. A tiny voice whispering that we will never get to him, that we should just give up now.
But here’s the thing: that voice is a lie. I firmly believe we will get to our son. This outbreak will end. Families will be together. No, I can’t guarantee when it will happen. Adoption has never been the realm of guarantees. The only promise I can make is this: we will never get to our kids if we give up now.
They are still there, waiting for us. For those in Colombia, they are waiting for the families they know are coming, for the first time or returning to be reunited. For those in China, they’ve already survived the worst of this crisis there, and made it through. Surely we can do the same for them. So I beg you, don’t give up. Keep fighting. Hold onto hope.
–Lindsey Gilbert, MAA Family Engagement Coordinator and Waiting Mama
My county ‘shut down’
on Thursday. Now, Monday, my entire
state is ‘shut down.’ I am still going
through all of the emotions and questions, “Do we have enough food?” “Will my parents be OK?” “How will I work at home AND teach my kids at
the same time?” And a million other
questions. Ultimately, “What will
tomorrow bring?” And I couldn’t
help but realize the significance of this question. A question that waiting children might not
consciously ask themselves, but one nonetheless that they live out day in and
day out. What.Will.Tomorrow.Bring? I’ve been living in this current uncertainty
for four days now. Only four days. (And yes, I fully acknowledge that people
around the world have been living this new reality for much longer). But the children who wait live it every
single day, and they always have.
So when I find myself panicking about toilet paper (14 rolls left and counting),
or wondering if the kids were on screens too long today, or worrying that my
husband will bring home germs from his essential job, I think of the waiting
children. The waiting children who always
wonder what tomorrow will bring.
While we are all
trying to figure out this ‘new normal,’ while we’re trying to figure out how
long this will last, please, I beg of you, please, do not forget about the
children who wait. Because we WILL get
through this crisis. But will they get
through theirs? They won’t without
families stepping forward to say Yes. Especially
in a time when that Yes might be harder than ever for a family to say. But we need you to say it. The children need you to say it.
So over the course of these next few days, weeks, months we will be sharing photos of waiting children with you. Children who have been wondering for years – What Will Tomorrow Bring? Please consider being the answer to their question. A family. Tomorrow will bring a family.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Meet Zander. Zander is 6-years-old and loves the outdoors, listening to music, and smiling. Zander’s orphanage said that his cognitive abilities and development are on target for his age and they desperately want him to find a forever family!
Interested in learning more about Zander, or about any of the other children who wait? Please complete our Prospective Adoptive Parent form, or email Lindsey at lindseyg@madisonadoption.org. And please visit our website to find information about all of our programs.
Hosting an older child from a foreign country, who has been living in an institution, can seem intimidating and full of unknowns. Read Part 1 of Niki H’s story here, about they came to decide to host a child in order to advocate and find their adoptive family, then come back for Part 2 below, and learn how in searching for the adoptive family for a child, they found the missing piece of their own family- twice!
I admit, committing to adopt AiJun was probably the scariest thing I have ever done, but by faith, I agreed. On the way to the St Louis airport at the end of the hosting stay, we saw one of the most beautiful, full, vibrant rainbows we had ever seen. I felt in my heart that it was God’s promise to me that everything would work out. I was no longer anxious about adopting AiJun, and I felt a peace about our decision.
Niki and family in China finalizing AiJun’s adoption
The next year was full of the necessary paperwork and preparing to go get AiJun. AiJun had been bullied in Kindergarten, and had been permitted to drop out of school for three years after the bullying took place. After the hosting visit, he went back to China and told his caretakers that he wanted to go to school again. We were thrilled to hear that he had a good experience at school during the year we were going through the adoption process. What’s more, our church immediately began raising money for our adoption. We received $6000 from our church, $2500 from a matching grant through Lifesong, $4500 in donations from friends and family, and $5000 from a ShowHope grant. We also received an adoption tax credit. After all my worrying about the money given to adopt AiJun instead of helping our son Peter with college, I felt that we had given Satan a black eye!
We have now had AiJun two full years. He is the same kid now that he was three years ago when we hosted: fun, caring, loving, and always ready for an adventure. He has blessed our family in more ways than I can count, and I feel beyond blessed to be his mom. Adopting an older child turned out to be the perfect fit for our family, as he is only six months older than our last child, Aimee. They are even in the same class at school. It is almost like having twins! As a matter of fact, I find it ironic that both their names begin with “Ai” and both their names are five letters long. The four cousins that came over are now all grown up, but we still see them often. Our first calling was to help out our niece and nephews, but our second calling was to adopt AiJun, and we are so glad that we answered God’s calling.
Our kids are 20, 18, 15, 12, and 11. Peter, our oldest, is attending our local community college this semester for cyber security certification and he also attended a training for four weeks in February in WI to become a sergeant in the National Guard. Emma, who just graduated high school, works at a local nursery and is making plans to take a gap year to volunteer at an orphanage in Haiti this winter. Ashley will be a sophomore in high school, and AiJun and Aimee will be in sixth grade. Our perspective on adoption has definitely changed drastically. Now we see it as God sees it. Adopting AiJun took something painful, hard, and sad and turned into something beautiful, happy, and healing. That doesn’t mean there won’t be days of heartache and sadness for AiJun, but I have learned that adoptions are stories of redemption. There is not a day that goes by that we don’t marvel at what a blessing AiJun has been to our family, and even though we knew he needed us, we now realize that we needed him more.
Meeting Sara, Melany and Bryan at the airport
But our story doesn’t stop there. This past spring, I felt the urge to do more for orphans. I decided to let the social worker who wrote our home study know that if the hosting program needed a family to host, we would be willing to host again. By late May, we were asked to host a sibling group of three: Sara, age 13, Melany, age 11, and Bryan, age 9, from Colombia. When my husband heard we were hosting again, he said, “You know we’ll end up adopting them.” I told him we were just advocating and being helpful and that we couldn’t possibly adopt three more children! But, just like three years before, within days of hosting the three children, the thought of adopting them began to enter our minds.
However, the logistics of providing a home for
three more people was daunting. Our house only has three bedrooms, so our
sleeping arrangements would be tight to say the least. But, as usual, God was
at work to make sure everything was taken care of. Our pastor, who has always wanted a pond and who is also a skilled
carpenter, offered to finish our basement in exchange for the pond he always
dreamed of having.
Sara is sweet, smart, and very mature for her age as she has had most of the responsibility of her two siblings. Melany is adventurous and fun-loving, and Bryan is a typical boy who loved to fish in our pond. They aren’t perfect, and we won’t be perfect parents, but God’s handiwork is evident, and we rest in Him and His truths. It has been fun to watch AiJun’s face when we ask him if we should adopt, as he is on the other side of the situation now. He just beams and says “Yes! We should adopt them. They don’t have a family!” We are looking forward to spring of 2020 when we will travel to Colombia to get our three new children. We will be parents to eight children, but God will be with us every step of the way, because God is good, and He loves the orphan. Thank you for reading our story.
Many families are interested in hosting but are scared of the unknowns- what will the child be like? Will the language barrier be too challenging? How on earth will we say goodbye at the end? Read one family’s experience with hosting and how it changed all their lives for the better…
As a teenager dreaming of my future family, I wanted children and I wanted a big family. I also remember thinking how neat it would be to adopt a child someday. But for many of us, myself included, life doesn’t play out exactly as planned. As the years began to pass (eight years to be exact), God blessed us with three children, Peter, Emma, and Ashley, and a thriving business.
In the spring of 2006, we received the devastating news that our sister-in-law had died unexpectedly at age 37, leaving four children ages 11, 9, 7, and 2, whom she had been homeschooling. At the time, our children were 6, 5, and 2 and I had chosen to homeschool as well. Even though our hearts were broken, God had a plan.
I knew when we had found our house that it wasn’t a coincidence that God provided us a home within walking distance of where they lived. So I followed God’s lead and reached out to them by inviting them over to homeschool with us twice a week that fall of 2007. On September 13, 2007 our fourth and final child, Aimee, was born. I was happy to help out my niece and nephews, but as the years passed and my children grew, the prospect of adopting seemed less and less of a possibility. It had always been a dream to adopt a younger child, not a child half grown, and my children were no longer babies or even toddlers. Adopting an older child entailed a set of circumstances that I just wasn’t comfortable with.
However, time has a way of changing things, and it wasn’t too many years before some of my kids were high school age and we decided their current needs would be best met in public school. By this time I had dismissed the prospect of adoption entirely. However, my second child, Emma, had not. By the age of five she had begun to express interest in our family adopting and at a young age had a huge heart for orphans. In the summer of 2015, our church began promoting a hosting program. Emma was 14 at the time. She enthusiastically showed me pictures of the host kids and begged for our family to host an orphan. As we would arrive to church on Sunday mornings that spring and early summer, people would comment and giggle about Emma’s enthusiasm that they had seen on Facebook and ask if we were hosting. I would laugh it off and reply no. At some point during those crazy years of building a business I had given up the dream of adopting a child. But God hadn’t given up.
One morning I received a text message from a close friend named Kea who had adopted a boy named Brody from China two years earlier. She said that she knew we had been somewhat interested in hosting the year before (little did she know that I actually hadn’t had any interest in hosting) and was wondering if we would “co-host” with them this summer? After further discussion, talking it over with John, and praying, we agreed to co-host one child, with her son Brody as our helper and translator. The child would be at her house a week, then our house a week, then vice versa until the host period was over. Emma was beyond excited, and promised she would help out with whatever we needed.
Then I got a phone call from Kea. The hosting coordinator did not like our idea of “sharing” a child. She told us respectfully that these children are orphans, who have never experienced family life before. They were coming all the way from China, and even if they were never in their life to receive the gift of a family, at least they got to experience one for four weeks while in the US. She said that she understood our desire to help each other by babysitting for appointments, etc. but that we each needed to host our own child. Reluctantly, we knew in our hearts that she was right, and agreed to host a child on our own.
On the way to the airport, Kea began to describe what our Chinese child would most likely be like from her experience with her own adopted son. I was surprised to hear that our host child would have only experienced inner city life. Kea informed me that he most likely won’t want to play outside. He probably won’t like our big dogs. He will be afraid of bugs. Since we live in the country and spend a lot of time outside, I braced myself for the longest four weeks of my life.
Upon arriving at the airport in Springfield, we met our host child, AiJun. He was small for his age, nine years old, and very, very tired. He did not smile at us or try to speak. Brody tried speaking to him, but could not understand the few words AiJun said. There were many Chinese translators there, helping families speak to their host children. Several came up and tried to speak to AiJun, but he wouldn’t respond. Then one of them began to play with AiJun, to get him to say something. Soon he giggled and spoke. “He speaks Cantonese,” she told us. My hopes and dreams of Brody translating for us for the next four weeks diminished as Brody only knew Mandarin.
The next morning, AiJun quietly walked down the stairs. He saw our youngest child, Aimee, who was then eight. She began to play cars with him. I was relieved to see him smile at her and enjoy the interaction. I began to make breakfast and I set out a can of sweet milk, a Chinese children’s drink, that we had bought at an Asian grocery store in Springfield the evening before. AiJun’s face lit up when he saw it. After eating a hearty breakfast, he and Aimee played more. I was hesitant to let them play outside, assuming he would be scared of the dogs, but he wasn’t. As a matter of fact, AiJun wasn’t scared of anything we assumed he would be scared of, and we were humbled as we realized how wrong we were to label AiJun as the problem child we assumed he would be. AiJun soon proved to us that he was just like any normal kid, and it wasn’t long before he was having the time of his life going on boat rides, catching fireflies, jumping off the dock into our pond, playing with the dogs, hiking, and simply being a kid and enjoying the summertime.
We were also literally amazed to discover that AiJun was super easy going and had a great sense of humor. The only thing we couldn’t get him to do was speak into our phone to try to communicate, but he made up for that with the hilarious things he would communicate with just body language. After just two weeks of hosting AiJun, John mentioned the prospect of adopting him. And I had to admit the thought had crossed my mind as well. He just seemed to fit so perfectly into our family and he was just such an awesome kid. But I was also reluctant and scared wondering how would I teach him English? Where would he go to school? How would we pay for the adoption? Is the paperwork really as bad as everyone says it is? But I had been wrong already in so many ways, that I wondered: could God possibly be was at work in this situation? Maybe we were the family that was to adopt him all along?
