Looking Ahead

Please forgive another brief post this morning.

I've been making some key contacts for Qian Qian and enjoying a few emails from those of you who read this blog.  When I write this blog so often, sometimes I wonder who is out there reading it...how it is received.  It has been fun to read a few "feedback" emails from a few folks out there!

It will be a few more days, maybe the beginning of next week, before I will know some more concrete details for Qian Qian's surgery.  I have made contact with a few groups who have negotiated "charity rates" for such surgeries, but they are in cities a great distance from here.  The mother would have to travel and stay in an unknown city for some time while Qian Qian gets his care.  We may go this route, but I'm still eager to see if I can connect with a special contact here in our city.

However, since encountering Qian Qian, the HS has been really stirring our hearts in the area of "prevention" for the orphan situation.

When an adoptive parent, even though I "knew" one of the reasons causing the high numbers of special needs kids in orphanages was the "cost of care"... I didn't process this as fully as I am now.  For a family who is living with the median income here in our city according to a recent government survey of 1200 RMB per month the costs of correcting a minor special need in their newborn baby is astronomical.  Even if the cost was a mere 10,000 RMB...that would be 9 months of income...if they didn't feed or house themselves!  If it is a greater cost given to them....it is like Daddy and I being told that our newborn baby must have a MILLION dollar surgery that MUST BE PAID IN CASH IN ADVANCE...to help our child.  Take a moment to let that sink in!

When I lived in the West, and even sometimes now when I read comment boards on "international adoption" news stories...I often heard comments like..."they just abandon their babies if they are not perfect"..."since they only get one child, that child must be perfect."...and other far more incendiary and judgemental comments.  I too passed these ideas on.

But I see now more clearly...it is an IMPOSSIBLE circumstance.  How could a "median income" family keep their newborn?  A newborn who in many cases was desired, hoped for, loved in the womb,  wanted greatly...just like their peers in the West...the difference is...they do not have the funds to give their baby a necessary surgery.

Qian Qian's mom really took a gamble.  She is a hold-out.  So wanted to change her reality, she was willing to withstand abandonment and beg on the city street...in the hope that somehow she could find help for her son. 

In my observation of children already paper-ready for adoption, there continue to be a steady stream of kids with special needs who are finally "found" (or come into the orphanage's care) at 8 months-2 years of age.  Perhaps their mothers were also hold-outs?  Perhaps they came to the city to beg and found no "help" to repair their child's need?

And what of the countryside family?

If the city dweller's median income is 1200 RMB per month ($180 USD), for some who even have a COLLEGE education, what about the countryside family who farms to eat?  Who has no regular income?  Who may live on 120 RMB per month?  What about their child who is born at home with the midwife who is discovered to have a special need?

It is an impossible circumstance.

Is there not a great need to identify these families in crisis either through the local hospital maternity nurses, or through the countryside midwives, or deliberately seeking them out begging on the streets?

What if we could say to them, "We have a project to help your baby get the surgery he/she needs...so that you may keep your child?!"

Much waiting and prayer is required before acting on such an idea (in fact we don't want to be initiators, but RESPONDERS to His leading)...but it is apparent to me, that this is a gap, a desperate need, that perhaps we could help fill in a tiny way?

Please, those of you who are like-minded, lift this need up.  That if it is His leading, that doors will open as we begin to knock on them...

When I close my eyes I can see Qian Qian's eyes...and in my core I know there are many more like him...

There are tons of "good ideas"...we want no part of those...only "His ideas"...