Expedited Adoption due to Aging Out

What does that mean?  It means that an orphan has a very limited amount of time to have a family.  So, his/her family must complete the entire adoption process at super speed.  Once a child ages out, they are no longer eligible for adoption. 

I have such strong feelings about aging out orphans.  It makes me feel more than sad.  I apologize if I offend anyone as that is not my intention, but all too often I see many people joining together to advocate so hard for orphans who are at risk of aging out.  Then, once a family decides to pursue adopting one of these orphans, this group support seems to stop.  It needs to NOT stop!! 

These families need our help!  You see, this family will now have to complete all the paper work required for the entire adoption process at lightning speed.  This leaves very little time for doing anything else.  But, fundraising still needs to be done.  And, it is so hard to organize fundraising efforts while working on paperwork.  Oh, it's so difficult!  Even if you complete the paperwork for each step on time, you can't move on to the next step without the necessary fees required for that step.  Most grant organizations aren't able to review applications and make their decisions in a short enough amount of time for families who are expediting due to aging out. 

I know I have already said it but I'm going to say it again....these families NEED OUR HELP!  We must help raise the funds needed to bring these orphans to a family before they age out.  We must share their fundraisers and pray for their success every night.  Donate if you are able, you can donate items for an auction; you can donate money- any amount helps; or you can donate the few minutes it may take for you to share their post on your Facebook page.  You may be surprised who might see your post and decide to help!

Please help! Pray for these children who WANT to have a family and are at risk of never being able to have one.  Pray for the families who so courageously step up and take on the international adoption process in a compacted time frame.  Pray for the children who aren't reached in time.  Pray for the families who aren't able to get to their children in time.

I'd like to introduce you to someone special

Abandoned when he was maybe 2 years old, Isaiah was found and taken to live his life in an orphanage.  A few months later, he was moved to a foster home.  Now 13 years old, he doesn't know how it feels to have a Mom or a Dad or brothers.  In less than two months, he will turn 14 years old.  Notice I did not say he will celebrate his 14th birthday because there will be no celebration.  Instead, he will be moved to a mental institution or told to go live on the streets.  Neither option is anywhere near acceptable for this young man.  He has a type of dwarfism and in his country it is considered a bad omen.  So, if he does try to live on the streets, he will be treated very poorly by all who see him.

There is a family here in America that is trying very hard to raise the funds needed to cover his adoption expenses and racing through the stacks and stacks of paperwork necessary to adopt Isaiah.  The have less than 7 weeks left to complete the entire process.

With everyone's help, they will make it in time!  Isaiah will be adopted and come home to a loving family with two older brothers and one younger brother, who happens to have the same type of dwarfism.  He will be someone's son, someone's brother, and someone's grandson.  He will have his own bedroom with his own comfy bed, fluffy pillow, and soft blanket.  With his love for cars, his Mom and Dad will make sure there is a nice pile of toy cars waiting for him to come home to play with them.  He will also get to go to school and learn all sorts of things, something he doesn't get to do now.  His life will be filled with hugs, hugs with genuine 100% love for him.  And, oh, I can only imagine how much time he will spend in the backyard running around playing with his brothers and their pet dogs.  He loves being outside and will love it even more with a family!

Please, please, please help!! Share Isaiah's story with everyone you know, ask them to pray that everything happens in time.  Ask everyone you know to donate $5 here  www.gofundme.com/qgudkqdr  

 If we can get everyone to donate just $5, it will add up so fast, and Isaiah will get to come home to his family this year!  He will know LOVE, love of a family, and the love from our Heavenly Father.

Lucky number 13 !!!-

Let’s talk about 13.  If you’re superstitious, you believe the number 13 is an unlucky number.  When you ride in an elevator of a very tall building, you may notice there is no button for the 13^th floor, all because of superstition.  If the 13^th of the month happens to be on a Friday, people consider it a day filled with unlucky events, “Friday the 13^th.”  The age 13 is the first year a person is considered a teenager, and that’s when the challenging part of life begins.  There is so much pressure for 13 year olds: to be liked by the peers, to dress the right way, to have many friends, to be invited to all the parties, to “fit in.”  In China, being an orphan who is 13 years old, is negative for a completely different reason.  You see, when an orphan turns 13 years old, there is only one year left for him/her to have a family.  Once an orphan turns 14, he/she is no longer eligible for adoption.  Even if a family arrives in country and meets them on their 14^th birthday, it doesn’t matter.  It is too late.  That child will never know the love of a family.

There is a special place in my heart for orphans who are in that final year.  Growing up, I LOVED the number 13!  I refuse to be intimidated by superstition.  I try hard to advocate for Chinese orphans who are 13 years old.  All children deserve to know what FAMILY means.  They deserve to know GOD and have a relationship with Him.  We adopted our son last year less than one week before his 14^th birthday.  Watching him learn how to love, and how to care for others is indescribable.  Watching him learn about God is invaluable.  Learning who he is and watching him grow in to the young man he is meant to be is incredible.  Yes, adopting an older child is challenging.  Yes, it has been just as challenging for him to be adopted as an older child.  His life changed so much!  I only need a few words to describe how I feel about our son and everything he has endured in just 14 years of life.  He is brave, precious, loved, and SO WORTH IT!

There is an orphan in China right now who is 13 years old.  I am begging everyone who reads this to help make 13 a lucky number for Isaiah.  Let this, his 13^th year of life, be the best year of his life!  Help this be the year he comes home to his family, to learn how it feels to have a family who loves you, a mommy to hug you and a daddy to tuck you in bed at night.  Bring Isaiah home so his family can teach him about God and all the love He has for him.  We need everyone’s help!!  Say a prayer for Isaiah, donate if you are able to, and then share this with all your friends.  Prayer is powerful, and we need it to help this family get to Isaiah before it is too late!  Please help!!

Sweet Isaiah

Donations may be made here:

https://www.gofundme.com/qgudkqdr

Or follow along on the journey here:

https://www.facebook.com/orphan2son/

Family for a year, and Fifteen years old now!

We have been home from China with our newest son for a whole year now.  The time has flown by!
Last year, we raced through the entire adoption process in just 7 weeks, arriving in China just six days before he would have no longer been eligible for adoption.  Those 7 weeks felt like forever.  And that time in our lives was SO WORTH IT!  I mean just look at this transformation --

In pictures, you can only see the physical changes.
But so much change, so much growth,
has happened this past year.

Our sweet son came to us a quiet, shy boy who
never smiled and spoke very little.  Now, well, now he is quite the opposite.  A couple of surgeries have improved his ability to walk.  Hearing aids and new eyeglasses have opened up the world to him.  He loves having a family!
He smiles all the time.  He laughs often.  He has an incredible, BIG personality that keeps us smiling.  He rushes to help his two "littlest" siblings every chance he gets.  And he loves to tease his "little" sister.

What an extraordinary, brave, kind, affectionate young man he is!  

I never could have imagined how amazing it would be to have this young man become a part of our family.  And, now, I could never imagine our family without him.  So many people, from all over the United States, helped us reach him in time.  I will never be able to express the gratitude I feel for all comforting words of encouragement, the listening ears, the donations, and especially the prayers we felt from everyone. Thank you!

Right now, there is a young man in China with only four months left until he ages out.  My sweet boy had only two months, and we got to him in time. So, I know this boy's family will reach him in time.  I have decided to help them all I can.  Several women "coached" me through the expedited adoption process and I learned so much.  Now, I have an opportunity to "pay it forward."  But, they are in the same situation we were.  There are specific steps in the adoption process.  Each step has its own set of fees that must be paid before you can move on to the next step.  They need help coming up with the funds needed to be able to move through all the steps at lightning speed!  

Fifteen months ago, I was begging and pleading for everyone to donate, share our story, and pray for our family.  Now, I am begging and pleading you all to do the same for this beautiful family!

Let's help this family get him home so

they can share pictures of him next year!

You can follow along on Facebook at
 https://www.facebook.com/orphan2son/

If you are able to donate, please do so at this link:

https://www.gofundme.com/qgudkqdr 

If you aren't able to donate, please share his story so others know

how they might be able to help.  And, please pray! Pray his family reaches him before it's too late.  Pray for his sweet innocent heart.  Pray for his brothers-to-be, and his parents as they navigate this challenging journey.

Thank you!

 

12 days !!

In just 12 days, we will likely be boarding a plane headed to China.  This whole process has been so rushed, and gratefully so.  It truly is best described as a whirlwind.  There has been no time to stop and think, only to stay focused on which stack of paperwork has to be filled out now.  Every time you finish a stack, there is a new one to begin.  Now, we are at a point where there is no more paperwork, no paperwork for me anyway :)  Now, all the paper processing is being done in China, while we sit at home staring at pictures of our beautiful young man, anxiously awaiting the day when we will stare in to his eyes in front of us, not just in photos.
This week, we expect to get definite dates, which will allow us to book our plane tickets and hotel rooms.  That's when we will know for sure exactly how much everything costs.  So, far the prices of plane tickets are sitting much higher than we had planned, and as the date gets closer, those prices just continue to rise.  But, I won't freak out just yet.  I am going to wait until I have confirmed definite prices.....and then I will likely have a freak-out moment!

I end this post with a beautiful smile, one that I can't wait to witness in person.......

Almost There !!!!

As far as the paperwork goes, we are almost there!  I think the Lord has given our paperwork wings and made it fly through this process.  Thank you Lord !!!

Now, we need to gather up the funds needed just as quickly.   We held a Thirty One fundraiser, a Younique makeup party, a Premier Design jewelry party and now a Pampered Chef party.  Next weekend we will be having a painting party to celebrate Chinese New Year and hopefully bring in more funds.  And, we designed a t-shirt and are trying to sell those with practically zero interest so far. 

All that is left now is to just outright beg!

So here goes..............

Please!

http://reecesrainbow.org/87088/sponsornorthrop

 

 

 

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE  help if you can, share so that maybe others who can help will, or say a little prayer for our sweet young man who we are trying so desperately to reach in time!  If you are able to donate, you may click on this link to make a tax deductible donation:  http://reecesrainbow.org/?s=George+Northrop

When God blesses you with new people in your life.....

He does that you know, brings strangers in to your life who suddenly become very precious to you.  Nearly two years ago, when we were in the process of adopting our two Chinese sweethearts, somehow I "met" a sweet woman on Facebook.  We chatted lots.  She lived in Brooklyn and I live in Georgia, nearly opposite ends of the world.  She was moving to the area of southern Alabama where I grew up.  But we had something bigger in common.  She was adopting her son from the same orphanage where our daughter lived.  And here is why she is now so precious to us.  She gave us such a wonderful gift that there are no words to describe how it made us feel.  When she went to get her son, she met our daughter.  She met her and took gifts from us, showed her our picture, and the best part of all......she video recorded our daughter saying hello to me, her Mama, and to Scott, her Baba.  I feel as though we will never be able to thank her enough!
Now, she has gone and done something great again.  After challenging her friends to donate toward our adoption fund, and her matching their donations, she raised $800 to help bring Li home.  Thank you God for bringing her into our life.


A little less than a year ago, I flew with my two new cuties and their big sister to Dallas, Texas to see some orthopedic specialists there.  The plane was full both ways, and God did it again.  The woman who sat next to me on the way there is from China and she helped to distract and keep my little guy occupied for the long flight.  We chatted about adoption and China and became instant friends.  After exchanging emails, she exited the plane in Houston.  We were going to stay in touch via email.  We stayed in Dallas for a whole week, two days longer than expected.  I know why we had to stay longer....because when we stopped in Houston on the way home, guess who boarded the plane?  And, it was a full plane again and the seat next to me was the last seat available!  I called her name and she looked at me and smiled.  We talked on the flight all the way home, so happy to see each other again.  She lives only forty five minutes away from us.  She came to the hospital, postponing her business trip so she could, when our little guy had his first surgery.  We have plans to get together again and again.  How precious to have a new friend, but also for her to be from my children's homeland!  Thank you God for this new friend!


Now we are adopting our young man, and He is doing it again!  There are a couple of ladies who started a Facebook group to help people who are rushing to bring their children home like we are.  Some people have to hurry to their children for medical reasons, while others are like us, racing against the clock before their child ages out.  We have very very little time left to get to Li before he ages out.  These two ladies have responded to my questions at 11:00 at night!  They both gave me their cell phone numbers during our first conversation so they are available any time I may need them, amazing!  They don't even know us, and yet are so very willing to help in every way they can.  Thank you God for helping me find these ladies!


I hope that God will bring me into someone's life that I may help them when they need it!  And, I am so grateful for the ones He has brought in to my life!