Rainbow Has a Family!

I am so excited to share this great news! Rainbow's family locked her file yesterday. She should be home before Fall.

Thank you to everyone for your prayers and encouragement. Thank you to everyone who shared her information in hopes of finding her forever family. And a million thank you's to Stephanie at Great Wall China Adoption. Once again she has worked her magic to create a family.

Are those pigtails cute or what?

I am so excited to report that people are looking at this blog! Thank you to Sarah for being my first follower. I have posted the blog on Facebook, begged every person I know to share it with someone, and started advocating on Yahoo groups related to China adoption. I know that someone will see this sweet girl and feel she is their daughter.

I took a little break from sharing the blog last week because I wanted to give anyone who was interested in looking at her file time to do so without feeling rushed. This week I plan to share it on a few more Yahoo groups. Please feel free to pass it along to anyone or any group that you think might be able to help.

I have to confess that I am new to blogging. I've read lots of blogs related to China adoption but I've never had my own blog. I'm learning as I go! I didn't realize that I needed to read people's comments. Sorry to Natania and Rich who needed a response to their comment and didn't get one.

Anyone who would like more information about Rainbow is welcome to email me. I promise to check it daily. Thank you to everyone that has offered to help!

A little information about Rainbow

Rainbow is five years old and will turn six in August. Her special need is described as deformity of fingers and toes. It appears she has cleft hands and feet. Developmentally she is on track. In terms of gross motor skills she can skip, stand on one foot, jump, and go up and down stairs. Fine motor skills also appear to be developing normally. She can write her name and draw. She can button her clothes and tie her shoe laces.

She has lived with a Half the Sky foster family since summer 2008 and has been part of the HTS program at her Social Welfare Institute since Spring 2006. She is described as shy, quiet, polite, well-liked, and a child who likes to help others.

This beautiful little girl is waiting for her family. If you are interested in learning more about her please contact me or you can contact Stephanie at Great Wall China Adoption at http://www.gwca.org/ or (512) 323-9595 ext. 3053. Rainbow is on the shared list.

Could this beautiful girl be your daughter?

Rainbow is on the Shared List

Fast Forward about a year. . . in February of this year I sent Rainbow's foster family a package for Chinese New Year. I received a very nice email from a staff worker at the Social Welfare Institute thanking me for the package. In the email she told me that paperwork had been submitted for Rainbow to be adopted internationally. I was so surprised since I had been told she was living in a permanent foster situation. Anyway, my husband and I were thrilled. Despite the fact that Rainbow lives with a loving foster family, we worry what her future will be like in China with her special need, cleft hands and feet.

Stephanie, the Waiting Child goddess at Great Wall China Adoption, has been watching for Rainbow to show up on the shared list ever since I received that email from the SWI. Finally, last week Rainbow was there. My husband and I feel strongly that she will be an incredible blessing to a family and are doing everything possible to increase her exposure in hopes of finding the family she is meant to join.

If you think you might be her family please contact me or Stephanie at GWCA. Even if you aren't a Great Wall family she will be more than happy to help you.

In the Beginning

In the Fall of 2008 my husband and I travelled to China to adopt our first child, Sunrise. She was four-years-old at the time. When we visited her orphanage a few days after her adoption the staff told us that she had a best friend, Rainbow, and that the girls were very, very close. The staff showed us Rainbow's Half the Sky Memory Book so that we could see pictures of her. We asked if we could meet Rainbow as we knew our daughter would want to see her and say good-bye. Plus, we hoped to take pictures of the girls together. We were told by the Social Welfare Institute staff, though, that Rainbow was at her foster home. We were puzzled by that since our daughter, Sunrise, had lived at the orphanage her entire life.

While we were still in China we had two disposable cameras developed that we had sent to the SWI staff in care packages to our daughter. They had been kind enough to take pictures of Sunrise with her friends from her HTS preschool class. In almost every picture Sunrise and Rainbow were together. In one they even had their arms around each other hugging. When Sunrise saw the photos in our hotel room in China she would point to the pictures of Rainbow and tell us her name over and over. When we looked closely at the pictures we realized Rainbow had cleft hands and feet.

When we returned home from China I contacted our adoption agency, Great Wall China Adoption, to see what we could do to help Rainbow. They checked the shared list at the time and didn't see her listed. I sent them all the information I had on her including the pictures of her from the disposable cameras. Fortunately, I knew her full name and her general age. Plus, I had pictures of her. They were so kind and agreed to keep an eye out for her. In the meantime, I sent an email to every email address I could find on the Half the Sky website. Since the girls were from a HTS orphanage I thought they might be able to help me.

Half the Sky is the most incredible organization. For those of you who are unfamiliar with them, they are a non-profit organization started ten years ago by adoptive families with children from China. They do all sorts of wonderful things to help orphans in China. Anyway, I got an email back from someone at HTS explaining to me that Rainbow had been placed with a foster family in the HTS Family Village Program. Foster parents in the Family Village Program receive a stipend from HTS and in return they agree to foster up to six children with rather significant special needs until the children reach adulthood. It is a permanent foster program for children that the SWI feels won't be adopted. At that time HTS told me that Rainbow was in a good situation with a loving foster family who she would live with throughout her childhood. However, we still worried about Rainbow's longterm future in China. What would her future hold in China with her special needs and orphan status?

By the time I had figured all of this out, we had been home from China with Sunrise for four or five months. However, not a day had gone by that she hadn't mentioned her friend, Rainbow, back in China. In fact, Rainbow was the only person in China Sunrise ever talked about. We were starting to feel a real connection to this little girl. We were very lucky to become sponsors of Rainbow's foster family through HTS. With sponsorship we knew we were helping Rainbow, albeit in a small way. More importantly, though, we knew we would receive photos and updates about Rainbow and her foster siblings twice a year. When the first pictures arrived Sunrise was thrilled, and we were pleased to see Rainbow smiling and having fun with her foster family. Even though Rainbow had a foster family that loved her, we were still concerned about her future in China. The combination of her orphan status and her special need could make life in China very difficult for her.