Gladney Blog

In 2015 we made two trips to China and one trip to Taiwan. We met met so many wonderful children! Of these children many are now home and many more have families doing the paperwork to bring them home. Their little faces tell the story better than we could in any other way, they are why we do what we do!

I have one of the most precious children to introduce today. A couple of years ago Chelsea and I saw this sweet little boy in one of the rooms in the orphanage we were visiting. He seemed to want to be part of the action, but he wasn't on our list of children to see. Of course, Chelsea being Chelsea that made no difference whatsoever to her and she sought him out to make friends. I don't know which of them enjoyed it more, but I do know that both of them cried when they had to say goodbye.

As many of us are gathered with family and loved ones this Christmas Eve we want to pause for a moment to remember a very special little boy and his very special family.

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Adoption Stories

The door opened. Peeking from behind his foster mother's legs was a shy, timid little three-year old boy. Coaxing him from her legs, his foster mother nudged him forward, saying in broken English, "Momma and Poppa." We got down on our knees, our hearts melting, as we took his hand; and we knew we were finally a family!

April Fool’s Day—yeah--not so funny—this was the day I found out I was pregnant.  Same story you hear all the time—I met a guy, thought he loved me, made some poor choices and realized I was pregnant (of course two weeks after he had already dumped me and moved on to his new girlfriend).  I was scared.  I was 20 at the time, going to college, working as a server, and living with my parents—my parents!  What were they going to say—were they going to kick me out on the spot?  In tears I told them and in tears they hugged me and told me that we would get through this. 

It is with mixed emotions that I am finally saying goodbye to being the Colombia intern. I am so excited to learn about what else is out there, but I have become so comfortable and in love with Colombian adoption. It's going to be hard to leave. Luckily, Beth and Angie are both on the service trip to Colombia this week, so I don't have any tasks piling up, which makes it physically easier to leave, but emotionally I really am going to miss working with the whole intercountry team. When I started this internship, I had NO idea what to expect. I didn't know much about adoption to begin with, and I knew even little about Colombia especially Colombian adoption. Now, I feel educated on so much regarding the whole process, and I feel like my Spanish has gotten a teeeeeennnyy, tiiinnnyyy, eeeensy, weeenssyy bit better. Thank you so much to everyone I've worked with; from Beth giving me my weekly list of to-dos and answering my numerous questions to Suzanne and Camille helping me figure out the oh-so-frustrating copy machine, I am so grateful for all of you, and I hope you know how much I appreciate you and admire the work y'all do for this wonderful place. I have learned so much from this experience and this organization as a whole, and I promise to carry everything I have learned here with me in my future. Gladney truly has captured my heart.