Welcome to our story...

God has richly blessed us with a big, fun family...
We have 10 children... 3 homegrown & 7 born in our hearts!

Blake... our oldest is 25 and has a heart for the Lord. He enjoys; church, family, mission trips, making music, playing guitar & drums at church, and writing.

Brianna Faith... is 21 and has a compassionate & tender heart. She's a wonderful big sister. She began talking to us about adoption when she was 11 yrs old. She is "Faith in motion"

Brent... is 17 - he's an awesome guy! He's in highschool. He has a special heart for family and God. He loves sports! Brent loves to laugh & is full of life!

Bethany Lidia... now 15, joined our family in August 2006 at 9 yrs old. She's from the beautiful country of Guatemala. She started school for the very first time (at 9 yrs old) and is now in 9th grade. Lidia's passion is sports & dancing!

Benjamin Ross... 15 yrs old. We first saw his picture in April 2007 & came home in May '08. Ben is deaf, but his special need is that he needed a family. Ben loves making home-runs & hanging out with family & friends. Ben is from Tianjin, China.

Briella Xiyao... our beautiful 15 yr old daughter from Fujian Province, China. She joined our family in July 2009. She's always wearing a big smile! She has a passion for the deaf & very proficient in sign language. She loves basketball!!

Bellamei Ying... our Inner Mongolian princess. Bellamei is 14 yrs old and held my hand for the first time on July 18, 2011. She has melted into our big family seamlessly and it is truly an honor to be her mommy.

Brinley Grace FuChuan... is 9 years old and joined our family in July 2007. She's from Jiangxi Province, China. She has the most gentle, sweet spirit... she's an angel!

Bayla Shea Chao-Yu... our youngest. She's 9 yrs old, 5 months younger than Brinley. Bayla's from Hunan, China & came home at 11.5 months. She's bright, funny (and spicy!) We can't get enough of her hugs & kisses.

and our caboose... Braxton Emanuel Jordan - 8 yrs old? (see post below) He's from Guangdong Province and is now officially our son!

This 1 min video shows how we've GROWN!

Ben is our son...


Please let me introduce Ben. We first saw his photo on a waiting child list back in April '07. After returning home from China with Brinley, we checked again.... still no family came forward. We realized a few months later that he was to be our son. We began paperwork to adopt him in September '07. Ben is 10 years old, just 1 year & 3 months younger than Brent. He was found abandoned at the age of 2 1/2 and taken to the orphanage, where he's lived ever since... waiting for a forever family. We are learning sign language because Ben is deaf. We are lucky to have excellent resources here for him and an acclaimed school program in our school district. We are having fun learning ASL, and it is a very beautiful language. We have also met some wonderful people within the deaf community. There is a church just across the street from our church that has a deaf ministry. We attend classes there, as well as a deaf bible study. We are thankful to know everyone there at Parkwood Baptist Church, and appreciate our new friends there. Brent will travel with me ~ he is so excited! My friend Susan will also travel with us. Mike will stay back and hold down the fort here at home. Two weeks ago, Ben received the care package that I had sent him a month earlier ~ can you fathom opening up a package...sent from around the world... and in it you would find photos of your forever family? What a divine moment in time... arranged exclusively by our Creator... Awesome
This is Ben at school... he's in the 3rd grade at his school in China. We are very thankful for "Robert", an American man who has been working as a volunteer at Ben's orphanage for the past 8 years, and has worked hard to facilitate progress and improvements for the orphanage. He was instrumental in convincing the orphanage to allow Ben to attend a very good school for the deaf. He boards at the school Mon-Friday, and returns to the orphanage on the weekends. Without Robert's good works, Ben wouldn't be getting an education.


This is the picture given to us by the adoption agency. He is probably 9 yrs old in the picture. Check out Ben's video on the upper right side of the blog... love his smile at the end :)

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