Matching Madness!

Don't you just love getting good news?!  That moment when someone says "Guess what...?", and you can tell from the smile on their face that they are about to tell you something that will make you smile too.

One of our favorite kinds of good news here in the New Day Foster Home office is when we hear that one of our children has been matched with a forever family.  There are lots of happy faces and the information gets passed around with excitement.  Gan Lu adds the all-important little * next to the child's face on our website, meaning that they have been matched with a family.  Then a fun little game begins on Facebook, the "asterisk game", where our Facebook 'fans' get the chance to search for the new asterisk on the website.

Grace, our Chinese Vice Director, gets the news about children being matched from their orphanage, the place they lived before they came to New Day.  New Day is not an adoption agency, and we have no say in the adoption process for our children.  We do have the privilege of caring for them until they are adopted, and we are always so happy to hear when that day is going to be coming soon (even though we will miss them when they're gone).

Anyway, why all this talk about matching?  We've just had a rather unusual 7 days, where we have had good news after good news - 7* children matched with forever families!

Last Thursday we heard that Ethan and Elijah were matched, and then the same day heard about Asher's new family.  Three in one day, not bad!  



Then, the next day, we heard that Talley had a new name, Talia, and a family of her very own. 

That seemed like plenty of good news, but on Monday we heard that Sarah Lyn (now Madelyn) and Lena (now Mia) have also been matched with families! 

In the wider New Day family,  New Day South also heard last Tuesday that their Sadie was matched with her family.

So, once we hear that a child has been matched with a family, what next?  How long until they will be adopted?  There really is no definitive answer, the length of time will depend on a number of different factors.  Sometimes it can be very quick, other times it takes months or even years.  For now, the important thing is that Ethan, Elijah, Asher, Talia, Madelyn, Mia and Sadie are a BIG step closer to having families of their very own.  One day soon there will be seven less orphans in the world.  Good news indeed!

You can read more about adoption on our website, and there are lots of helpful links.

*NEWSFLASH! Since this blog post was first written, one more child has been matched.  We just heard that Seth has a family of his own coming for him!

In case you are thinking that it would be awesome to see pictures of all seven of our newly-matched children together, we totally want to do that.  It's been difficult to get everyone together in time for the picture to go in this post, but look out for it soon...