When Kara returned to China she was adamant that she did not want to be adopted by a family in the US or ever return to the US for that matter. We spoke with the adoption agency that we hosted thru and requested that she be counseled on adoption and what that means. Our hope was that she could get some counseling and after returning to China change her mind and decide that living in the US with a loving family would be okay.
We received MANY inquiries on Kara, but after learning that she wasn't open to the idea of adoption, families moved on to looking at other children. In China when an older child is adopted, they are asked if they want to be adopted at the consulate for finalization. If they say no and continue to say no despite counseling, etc, they are not adopted by the family. The family loses their money and leave with a broken heart. As you can imagine that is a VERY hard leap for a family to make.
Kara is still saying that she is not interested in being adopted and returning to the US. It's heartbreaking for us, but we hope and pray that because she doesn't have any medical needs she can make something for herself after she is released from the orphanage in a few years. I honestly don't see her ever having a family of her own and that is hard.
I wish I had an exact number to report, but I would guess that approx 80%-90% of the children that came for hosting have families in process to adopt them. Without the opportunity that hosting presented them, they might not have found a family.
Today China released some new rules. One of which is to close their hosting of children from China. We were lucky enough to have participated in hosting, that will no longer be an option.
Thank you for following along with our journey this past winter. Here are some photos....I may have shared some of these already, but a post is better with pictures :)
