A Child Waits Foundation
Adoption Grants & Adoption Loans
International and Domestic Adoption
Family Stories
International Adoption 2013
In 2013 we awarded grants to help 93 children to be adopted from 14 different countries. Some of their wonderful pictures and adoption experiences are recounted below in the family's own words.
Matthew - China
We would like to thank you for your very generous grant to help towards the costs of our adoption of our son Matthew from China. Our Gotcha Day was July 29, 2013 and we have been home for a little over a month now. Matthew is such a happy little guy and he is a huge blessing to our family!
As you know, the costs of international adoption can be overwhelming, and we are so grateful for the grant that we received from "A Child Waits Foundation". Your grant came at the perfect time, right before our travel, and relieved the stress from the many things that needed to be paid at that time during the adoption process.
We are incredibly thankful that God blessed us with Matthew--he fits perfectly into our family and we are just so thankful that he is HOME. Thank you so much for generously helping families like ours with the financial part of bringing our children home. We sincerely appreciate your grant!
Adi - China
I want to thank A Child Waits Foundation from the depth of my heart for your kindness and generosity. The costs of adoption can be overwhelming but thanks to your adoption grant, I was able to bring home my 7 year old son from Adi from China. He is joining my daughter “Mei Mei” (age 4) and other son “Ge ge” (age 8) who were both adopted via domestic infant adoption. Your support has made a huge difference to our family and words cannot express my appreciation.
I was set out to provide a home to a special needs child when I embarked on my third adoption journey. I chose China’s Special Focus program due to its stability and good reputation. While I was open to a variety of children characteristics and special needs, my heart went out to boys who seemed to have trouble finding families.
I reviewed the files of many children but was drawn to a 7 year old boy who was abandoned at the age of 16 month due to his hemophilia status. His birth note was a heart breaking plea from his parents, saying “we are from the village area and are very poor, hope the kind-hearted person save him”. I kept reading these words over and over. I thought to myself that it takes only one committed person who will answer this plea and will go the extra mile for this boy. That person could be me.
Hemophilia was not on the list of special needs I was open to initially. The information I read about it sounded scary: Uncontrollable bleeds, arthritis leading to disability, possible vision loss, intracranial bleeds, HIV and Hepatitis from blood transfusions and a shortened life span. However, the impression from the medical information I was provided was that this boy’s hemophilia was mild and that he needed a blood transfusion only once a year. I found this reassuring and decided to go forward with his adoption.
On “Gotcha Day”, I noticed that Adi was very bruised and pale. I started to suspect that his hemophilia was more severe than stated and insisted to get his entire medical records. The records showed that he was hospitalized once every two months. The ensuing email exchange with international adoption doctor Dr. Jenista and my local Hemophilia Treatment Center solidified the suspicion that my son could have severe hemophilia A.
I had not been open to the possibility of severe hemophilia before traveling to China. Leaving Adi behind was not an option, so I had to adapt to a new situation. I learnt that the dire symptoms I had read about referred to untreated hemophilia and that in America, treatments were available that would allow my son to lead an essentially normal life and have a normal life span. I further learnt that hemophilia was managed by parents in a home-care setting and that visits to a hospital were infrequent.
My son’s severe hemophilia was confirmed back home, at our first meeting at the Hemophilia Treatment Center. Other than me administering clotting factor intravenously once a week (which takes 5 minutes!), we lead a normal life. Adi is soaking up every bit his new life and wants nothing more than just become a typical American kid. There is not a day that goes by without him telling me “I love you” and “you are a good momma”. He is tremendously proud to go to “American school” - and to do homework!
I find hemophilia all in all a very manageable condition, somewhat similar to diabetes. I regret now that I was not open to it initially. I am deeply saddened by the horrific consequences facing children with hemophilia once they age out of the orphanages and receive no longer medical treatment. I have noticed that many adoptive parents are “scared” of hemophilia. I would greatly encourage any prospective adoptive parent to consider this special need and go that extra mile for a precious child, to make the life-saving difference.
Ella - China
Thank you so much for blessing us with a grant!It's amazing how Ella is adapting to her new family. We love this little bundle of joy dearly. Ella is a bright bubbly little girl with tons of energy. We cannot imagine life without her! Thank you once again!!
Sophia & Jameson Haiti
We are so blessed to be a complete family! Thanks to you and your very generous support, you helped make this possible for us! We try to be humble folks and chose not to fundraise for our adoptions. Instead, we felt led to apply for your grant and the Stephen Curtis Chapman grant of which we were declined. You and your foundation were led to give to our family, providing just enough money to cover all our travel expenses to bring our children home from Haiti!
Sophie turned four in August and Jameson will be three in February! They are attending a daycare where they have nursery school in the morning! They love it! Sophie takes gymnastics and loves to play out in the snow! Jameson loves to play with his toy cars and read books! He studies each and every page, like I have never seen! They have transitioned extremely well in all aspects of life! They eat well, are talking well, sleeping well in their own beds, and are so loved by our church family and community!
Kayla - China
Please know how extremely grateful I am to have received the grant from your foundation, it has made a world of difference for me in dealing with all of the expenses I have had.
I met Kayla for the first time on June 17, 2013, in the afternoon. After waiting in a room for a period of time, watching other children come out and be introduced to their parents, suddenly from a doorway just a few feet away from me out came Kayla, holding the hands of 2 orphanage staff members to help her walk. Since Kayla had turned 3 years old a few weeks prior, it was shocking to see how delayed she was in her walking abilities (but I didn’t really process that fact until later on). Kayla let me hold her right away and from that point on never refused my affection or attention; she didn’t cry at all when the staff left her with me. However, she was very withdrawn, basically “shut down” in her emotions.
The changes that have occurred in Kayla over the past 1.5 years feel almost miraculous in some ways. She has gone from a child who did not smile or laugh, who could barely walk, to an active, running, playing, laughing, sweet, obedient loving child. She is the light of my life and of her grandparents as well.
Kayla started preschool 4 afternoons a week in 8/2014, which is a program provided by our school district for children who have qualifying special needs. Kayla is bussed from daycare to preschool, except on the days her grandparents keep her. She loves “school” and is already writing her name and “Momma” on every piece of paper she colors on. She loves playing with her dolls and anything involving crafts: markers, colored pencils, stickers, glue…you name it, she wants to be creating something every chance she gets.
Adjusting to being a single mother has been hard for me, but it is so worth it to be able to be a part of Kayla’s life. I wish I had better words to express my gratefulness to A Child Waits Foundation. Having the grant money made things less stressful for me. Thank you so much for your generosity.
Finnly - Honduras
We want to Thank you so very much for the grant you so generously awarded our family to help us bring our daughter Finnly home. As of today we have been home for 3 months and have settled in as a family of 5. It's hard to imagine our lives without her. She has such a joy and positivity about her that is truly amazing. We could not have done it without your help. thank you for all you do- we are truly grateful
Erica - China
"Life takes you to unexpected places, Love brings you home."
After my first daughter came home from Guatemala in 2005 (with the help of A Child Waits Foundation), I hoped to someday adopt again. ln 2008, I started adoption #2. Since I didn't feel clear direction from the Lord about how to proceed, I just opened as many doors as I could. I became a licensed foster home, submitted my dossier to El Salvador, and worked with a private agency that handles the adoption of children who have been in the foster care system but are legally free for adoption. However, none of these doors ended up leading me to Erica, so, in 2012, I moved my paperwork from El Salvador to China.
In October 2O12, my agency sent me a referral for a darling little girt in Beijing. I took one look at her and recognized my daughter. Still, I did all the things you are supposed to do . . . l prayed, I had my pediatrician and an adoption specialist review her file, I talked with my family and I prayed some more. And then I said yes on October 3, 2O12. My agency said it would be about a 6 month time frame from referral to Gotcha day, but after 4 1/2 years of waiting and delays, I wasn't going to count on that. I hoped to have her home by her 6th birthday in June... but once I found her, everything moved very quickly and we actually traveled in January and came home February 2nd 2013; 4 months after first seeing her little face.
It's a funny thing, bringing home a kid who has lived for 5 years without you. She has a personality and habits and experiences that shaped her character, and I missed all of that . . . She is my daughter and I love her and she is also a stranger whom I am still getting to know. There are days when I am astonished at the ease at which she is adjusting to America, learning English, settling into our family, and learning to love us. And there are days when I am exhausted by the battles that we fight as she is learning to trust that I love her and will care for her and will not ever leave her.
I want to thank A Child Waits Foundation for their generosity in awarding me both a grant and a loan to help with those last adoption expenses, plane tickets and travel. The "speed" at which the Board reached a decision and the helpfulness and kindness of Raymona and Cynthia (and others at the Foundation) were such a blessing to me. A Child Waits Foundation is a part of both my daughters' adoption stories and will always have a place in my heart. Blessings to you!
Vlad - Ukraine
First of all I want to thank you very much. I don't know what we would have done without the grant. We were just tapped out and so close to traveling. It was truly a miracle.
We met Vlad in August of 2012 when he came to stay with us on a hosting program through Frontier Horizons. We had taken over for his original host family who had a family emergency. Until then we had no idea that a Ukraine hosting program even existed, let alone orphans in Ukraine. After having Vlad in our home we learned about the fates of most orphans in Ukraine and we just knew we had to do the right thing by this orphan. He fit into our family like he was born to it and we knew it happened for a reason.
We jumped into the adoption process without even realizing the enormity of it; both on the paperwork end and financially. When we realized just how much this was going to cost we started an online fundraiser and started putting it out there. We were not the type of people to ask for anything, especially money, and it was very hard for us. We raised about $5,000 and even though we didn't know how much we needed, we knew that wasn't enough. We were just trying to get through the mountains of paperwork. We had our SDA appointment in Kiev on January 16, and I (mom), went to Ukraine by myself because we couldn't afford for both of us to go due to the cost of the plane tickets and my husband works a commission only job so any time away would be money lost that we dearly needed for the adoption. He was already working from 6:30am to 10:30pm and every Saturday to make extra money.
After the SDA appointment I went to Mariupol to the orphanage and it was then that I really realized why our boy needed us. I can't even describe what being in that orphanage was like. I can still smell the sewer smell if I close my eyes and see myself walk through the door. I will never forget the smiles on the faces of those children who lived there. I dream about them at night. I was in Ukraine for about a week and then came home for three weeks while waiting for the court date. It was during that time that A Child Waits Foundation called and told me that we had been awarded a $4,000 grant. There are no words to express how I felt when told that. It was truly a miracle. I was trying to figure out how we were going to pull this off. I had asked everyone I knew. We had used up all of our savings and l just didn't know what else to do. My court date was one week away in Ukraine when I got that amazing call. The weight just lifted off of me and I could breathe.
On Saturday February 9th l flew back to Ukraine. I was in Mariupol for 12 days because after court there is a mandatory 10 day waiting period. Every day I visited the orphanage and took a bag of food for Vlad and his friends. They were all skin and bones. I went to the local grocery store every morning and bought fruit, chocolate milk boxes, nuts and chocolate. Those are some of the costs that you don't even know about until you get there. I'm so happy that I had extra money to be able to do that. I didn't eat out at all in Mariupol. When I went to the grocery store every day I bought a piece of roast chicken and some yogurt to eat in my room. It was more important to get some food for those children. On Friday February 22nd I picked up Vlad from the orphanage and we ran around Donetsk all day getting his new birth certificate, social security number, etc. That night we took the train to Kiev and checked into an apartment to wait on his new passport. It was nice to have him away from the orphanage - finally. We did all of the embassy stuff and finally on Friday March 1st we got the passport and final US embassy visa. We flew home on Saturday!
It was amazing to finally be home with Vlad. Looking at him it was worth everything we had to do to make this happen Thank you so much. We will never be able to thank you enough for what you did for us and for Vlad.
Joy - China
My family would again like to thank you so very much for the financial support to help us bring our beautiful little girl home from China. We are so blessed to have this amazing, beautiful, perfect little girl. The adjustment has been seamless and she has fit so well into our family. She is in great health, funny, fun and feisty, everything is good!
The repaired cleft lip and palate is not too challenging. She does not talk but she definitely lets us know what she wants. She will be fortunate to be in a half day special needs preschool and soon will be getting speech services. She is nothing short of pure joy. My son who is 10 has so much fun with her. We could not have hoped for, dreamed or imagine a more perfect little girl! Thank you for your support.
I visited the orphanage in China and saw so many babies just laying there in the cribs, lifeless, it was so sad. It was then that I realized how very dire the situation is. If people are not adopting these children - nobody is coming for them. So many babies were there. I say this to express the importance of the work of your foundation because adoption is a very long and very expensive process. We almost gave up, and money was our biggest stressor. I am so glad we held on! Thank you again.
YiYi - China 2013
Words cannot express our thanks for your generous donation for our adoption of YiYi. We hope you know how grateful we are for the generosity and kindness that you bestowed upon us to make our adoption possible.
It has been an incredible year with Yiyi in our family! We cannot imagine life without her. Thank you for partnering with us and being such an important part of our adoption journey. Yiyi has done so well over the past 11 months - it has been incredible. Her sweet bonding and attachment is more than we ever hoped for. She loves her home and family. Yiyi is also doing great in school and she has some sweet friends. Fourth grade has been the perfect place for Yiyi to get a solid educational foundation. She just finished her first book report and her competition season with Briarwood Robotics (for which Brian was the co-coach).
She loves P.E. class, eating school lunch on chicken nugget and mashed potato day, and swinging at recess. She is also enjoying taking ballet and playing as one of the principal drummers with the Kansas city Drum Rollers, a Chinese performance group. Yiyi's interests and hobbies include a love for all things girlie and beautiful, specifically princess things, frilly dresses, long earrings, anything to do with the movie Frozen, and wedding magazines. Yiyi has discovered a latent love for karaoke singing, hair braiding, and baking. We're having a blast!