Gladney's China & Taiwan Adoption Program Newsletter

CHINA AND TAIWAN PROGRAM NEWSLETTER

November is National Adoption Month!

How are you celebrating?

Gladney is celebrating by...

Running the NYC marathon!... For the 3rd year in a row, Gladney was a charity participant in the event - which took place on November 5th. Contact Natalie Bowen if you would like to find out more on applying to run to benefit Gladney next year!

This was Joe's first marathon. He and 7 other runners raised $30,000!

Wendy Stanley and Beth Anne Pellegrino gathered with Gladney runners to kick off an exciting marathon weekend!

Marathoners who ran for Team Gladney:

Craig Atchison

Kyle Atchison

Joseph Brown

Randi Burnett

Dan Connally

Gil Daley, II

Scott Kline

Marius Zgirde

We're celebrating by rocking out!...

Adoption Rocks Concert, Featuring Pat Green

"Good times at Adoption Rocks. It was so fun being at an amazing concert and knowing we were all celebrating National Adoption Month! It was such a fun night." ~ Gladney TX staff, Jennifer Lanter

We're celebrating with ADOPTIONS!...

Gladney hosted over 650 people on National Adoption Day where our TX campus turned into a courthouse to finalize many adoptions.

We're celebrating with education!...

Celebrate AND learn with us at this year's Adoptive Parents Committee Conference!

The APC 37th Annual Conference is coming up this weekend, on Sunday, November 19th in Brooklyn, NY. The APC conference is a great place to learn more about Domestic and International adoption options and hear from great speakers! Don't forget to stop by Gladney's table and meet staff from the NY office!

Welcome Home!

Congratulations to these families who are now home with their children!

Newly 5 year old Ada from Taiwan is home with her family!

20 month old Tommy from Taiwan joins mom, dad, and big brother Timothy!

Congratulations!

China

Last week, six China and Taiwan program families attended Gladney's Pathways


	Lindsay

Training held in our Fort Worth, TX campus. Asia Program Caseworker, Lindsay Hatcher joined them at the training and for a special dinner afterward where families were able to connect with each other and share their adoption experiences.

Pathways training is required for families adopting through Gladney's International programs and the content is based on Dr. Karyn Purvis' Trust Based Relational Intervention model of understanding children coming from "hard places". This specialized training helps families prepare to parent children that are coming from foster care and institutionalized settings. Families at the November training had a great time learning and meeting new friends!

"Brett and I truly loved the (Pathways) program, and we are so glad we took part in it. Since Pathways we have had many thought-provoking and productive conversations about everything we learned. We enjoyed listening to all the different speakers, learning all about TBRI, and meeting all the other parents and hearing their amazing stories. We've watched a bunch of Dr. Purvis's videos on YouTube -- she's incredible! And thank you for the great reading list as well!"

"The last two days were just awesome!! Learned so much and met some great people that will probably be lifelong friends."

CHINA Program Updates: November is a busy month for our China families!

Since our last newsletter, 6 families in the program have received Letter Seeking Confirmations (LSC) and 4 families have received Travel Approvals (TA)!! Gongzhan Wu recently hosted a travel meeting for 5 families to prepare them for travelling to China to meet their kiddos!

Currently, 3 families are in China finishing the adoption of their children - including twins from Zhejiang province and two other children from Jiangxi and Hunan provinces!

Taiwan

Program Update: We currently have 7 families matched to children, and 5 families with pending matches to waiting children! 1 family will be traveling to complete their adoption this month.

Our Superkids team has just finished a trip to Taiwan visiting nearly 70 children! The team spent two days at each of our partner agencies - Cathwel Service and Chung Yi Social Welfare Foundation. We were able to see children who are matched to our Gladney families, as well as many new waiting children, and children we've met before. It's always neat to see how the children we've met before have grown and developed since our last visit - and gives us great updates to share through our advocacy.

We were especially excited to meet so many new children this trip. Many of these children are just now becoming eligible for international adoption and their files aren't fully prepared yet. But, this allows us to get a jump-start on advocating for them - we hope that by the time their files are fully prepared, we'll have a family ready and waiting for them!

We hope you've followed along on the Superkids blog and Facebook! Look for a more detailed update from our trip in next month's newsletter!

To learn more about any of the waiting children, or simply about the process of adopting from Taiwan, please reach out to Taiwan Program Caseworker, Mary Chapman, at [email protected]. And don't forget about our private Taiwan Advocacy Group on Facebook!

ADOPT ME!

Click an image below to read more about these waiting children from Taiwan!

Miranda is turning 9 next month!

Brave Maggie, age 9

Click an image below to read more about these waiting children from China!

Baby Harris, 20 months

Adorable Howie, 3 years old

In honor of National Adoption Month,

Gladney is waiving our Application Fee!

Click here to get started!

Superkids

As we look forward to spending time with family this Thanksgiving, Superkids is featuring a story by a Gladney mom that has touched our hearts deeply. Spoiler alert: this story has a happy ending that you just have to read!

By Velleta Scott

Gratitude.

Gratitude is what I feel towards Gladney and Superkids when I look at my 14


	Theo in China

year old son, Theo. It has been just a year now since we adopted him. He was 13 ½ years old and had been on the shared list for years, available for adoption, but lost in the crowd. He had virtually no chance of finding a family.

We weren't looking for him either; we had applied to Gladney to adopt an older girl. As we waded through the paperwork, we followed the latest Superkids trip to China out of curiosity but without any expectation of finding our child on their blog. However, one child stood out; one child whose intelligence and curiosity seemed to beg us to look further. He was in a wheelchair and his file was 8 years old. We live in the country with a two story house and the nearest paved surface is a half mile away. This surely wasn't meant to be.

And yet - I couldn't forget him.

He was 13 and I knew what his future held as someone in a wheelchair in China. His only real hope for a future was to be adopted, and he had less than a year left.

We called Gladney and spoke to a member of the Superkids team. They told us that he was very intelligent and that he understood what adoption was. He had asked over and over for them to help him find a family. When asked what kind of family, it didn't matter. He just wanted to live somewhere where he could go outside sometimes, because he rarely got to experience the outdoors in his institution.

When we heard that, our hearts turned over. The old medical report didn't matter, the unknowns didn't matter, and the need to redo our house for a wheelchair didn't matter. He was going to live where he could go outside whenever he wanted.


At school in the US

The day we met Theo, he rolled right up to us and asked when we were leaving for America. He left China with us with no tears, ready to meet the rest of his family and see his new life in America. He had been waiting for so many years and had seen so many of his friends leave. Now it was finally his turn...

Read Theo's full story here!