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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