In 2008, Dave and I decided it would be fun
to have an exchange student to live with us
from China.
After searching
we found the perfect one.
Jade.
She has brought so much Joy, love, knowledge with her
and has taught us a lot.
She was adopted into my heart and became my
daughter.
No legal papers, but every other way she is my daughter.
She has stayed her since 2008 only going back to China
to visit her family.
She is now a senior in College an hour away.
Thinking about Grad school.
She simply amazing.
This past spring and summer, Jade and Erin really connected. Before that, they were not completely comfortable around each other for different reasons. It took them 2 1/2 years to really bond. It also helped to have Jade home for part of the summer and not have either child worrying about school work or anything.
In Spring of 2011, I looked into having another
exchange student. I wanted to have an
deaf student as I thought
Erin would really like having someone else deaf in the house.
Erin's school said no.
In Late September I was reading the listserve from Erin's hearing school. There was a notice about an 16 yr old girl exchange student from Germany that was looking for a permanent host family.
After some praying and discussion, I decided to look into it.
The person I talked to told me about Julia,
She sounded like she would fit perfect into our family.
Then we found out she had another family that was planning on taking her.
So I walked away.
About a week later, got a phone call stating that family fell thru and if we are still interested in Julia we can move forward.
We of course were interested and as we learned more about her, the more and more she was the perfect fit for our family.
On Oct. 14, Julia was brought to our home.
Everyone was excited and I think Julia was
caught off guard on the excitement of her new host family.
She was shy at first.
She was very patience with all the girls wanting to be around her.
She tried many new things.
And she was very strong and confident of herself.
8 days later,
she gave us news that she was
had to go back to Germany.
There were things that needed her attention back home and it couldn't be postpone.
It was hard on all of us.
13 days after we welcome her to our family, we said goodbye to her.
That short time with her
was a blessing.
I thank God for allowing me to be a host mom to Julia for 13 days.
To show her our family and for her to trust us.
We hope she will be able to come back to America and visit us. Julia left an impression on my heart that will always be there.
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