The Story of Chasing Leah

I can’t say that we weren’t thinking about adopting again. After all, our dossier was good to reuse for a year after our daughter Sarah’s adoption. We were coming up on that year when we saw her face. Just an advocating site that I “happened” to find. She touched our hearts immediately--both Jon and I.

When I called the next day about her file, we were told that she had been locked by an agency. The very next day, her file disappeared from that agency and went into a black hole. We couldn’t find her anywhere. It was possible that another agency had locked her file for three months. It was also possible that she had found another family. As hurt as we were, the nature of China Waiting Child adoption is to move on. We kept her in our hearts and minds as we continued the search for the daughter we knew God had for us.

When her file finally showed up again, we had mixed feelings. At first, we were relieved that another agency had her file and not another family. Maybe she still was our daughter…But an agency lock means her file is tied up for 3 months. Unless that agency decides to transfer her file, it is essentially lost to anyone not using that agency. Agencies have been known to regularly transfer files, so our hope was not shattered at this point.Time to contact the agency.

The phone call went well. We got her complete file and fell even more in love. We felt sure this was our daughter. Then things turned south. The agency would not transfer her file even though they had no waiting families that were paper ready enough to adopt her.This was very upsetting to us since she needed to be adopted before her 14th birthday which was coming up too quickly for most families to get the paperwork done. WE WERE READY!! It seemed that the agency was so intent on getting the “profit” from this that our girl seemed insignificant to them. Unbelievable!

Our next step was to get our agency and the CCCWA (the agency in China that governs adoptions) involved. It was possible to get the CCCWA to pull the file from that agency and give it to ours. Once again, the system seemed to fail us and this beautiful girl. How hard is it to put a willing family and a willing child together? Apparently, very difficult.
Again, we felt her file was lost to us. God had a daughter for us, but who? At the point of giving up on this search, an email arrived. Our agency had been contacted by the CCCWA. Did we still want this girl!?!?!? YES!!!

CCCWA pulled her file from the agency and gave it to our agency. This beautiful,amazing girl was finally going to be our daughter.