Pelley Family Blog

Some lessons on Chinese adoption.  The CCAA (Chinese Adoption Agency) handles adoptions to two ways.  First, they give U.S. agencies a list of several kids to place.  They give the agency about three months to place these children, then take the list back and circulate the unclaimed ones to another agency.  These are the “agency specific” children.  Then they have what is called the “Shared Agency” children.  These are online files that are given to many agencies - and are available on a “first come, first served” basis. 

We specifically chose FTIA because they participated in the Shared Agency file.  They allowed us a peek at this list, and we saw several children we thought would be a good match for us. There were about 70 kids on this list.   Once we decided to go with FTIA, I, personally, quit looking at this list, as we could only “claim” a child after our home study was done.  This made the wait for our homestudy nearly unbearable.  This was especially so because the other members of our family did not put such restrictions on themselves and were peeking a lot - and informing me of their finds! 

As we awaited the time we could “choose” a child, I had been praying that God would make it very clear which child we were to make a part of our family.  Many people say they saw a picture on the website, and that was it - love at first sight.  That hadn’t happened to me yet.  And if you know me very well, you know decision making is not my strength! 

Okay - for the “kink”.  In mid-May, CCAA changed their rules.  These new rules were still open for interpretation, but due to our age, it appeared as if we could not choose from the Shared agency list - only the agency-specific list.  This took our choices from 70 kids to five kids.  I was TICKED!  MAD!  FRUSTRATED!  But that still, small voice of the Father seemed to say to me, “You asked Me to make it clear to you.”