The Rest of the Story...

The caucasian woman on the right is named Maureen. She is with her husband and daughter that they adopted from Cenxi in 2002. They are standing with the orphanage director (black and white shirt) and two other staff members.

Here's the catch...some time after their daughter's adoption, Maureen went back to China on a mission with Love without Boundaries. She is a pediatric RN and was part of a team that assisted with repairing children's cleft lip/palates. While on this trip she became aware of a partnership called Hope & Grace. Hope & Grace's main vision is to provide sponsors at an orphanage to fund all children under 4 to be placed in foster homes until they can be adopted.

Maureen made some inquiries into her daughter's orphanage to see if she could begin a Hope & Grace sponsorship there. She said usually things process pretty slowly in China, but this went right through. So, in October of 2005, Cenxi Social Welfare Institute (Esther's orphanage) began to place their first babies in foster homes. They hired a coordinator of the foster families (the woman in the black t-shirt) who visits the families each week and makes monthly progress checks on the babies and takes photos for their files. Maureen also visits with the foster families each year so she can report back to the sponsors.

Here is the awesome part...Maureen was last there when Esther was found (late August of 2006). She knew of the nanny that was caring for her in the orphanage. Because of the tremendous support for this program, Esther was placed with a foster family after 4 days. Maureen said her foster family is one of her favorites!

Is that amazing or what? God is sooooo good! He knows the desires of our hearts and blesses us even more richly than we deserve. Esther has been loved on by a family for the first 8 months of her life...Praise you Lord!