Thea's Finding Ad

Yesterday we got a very special package in the mail – Thea's (Du Xiao Yang's) finding ad! 

The Chinese government requires that for every abandoned child that is found, a bulletin be placed in the newspaper in an attempt to locate the child's birth family.  A China based research group was able to find Thea's finding ad for us, and through them we were even able to obtain an original copy of the newspaper that the ad appeared.

Thea's finding ad was published in the 'New Legal Report' newspaper of Duchang County (Jiangxi Province, China), on August 31st, 2010... so this picture of her must have been taken within the first few months of her life.  What a blessing to have another picture of our baby!

The translation is:

On May 23, 2010, an abandoned baby was found at the gate of the Duchang County orphanage. 
Name is Du Xiao Yang. Female.
She was born on May 13, 2010. 
Characteristic of body: She has a round face, black hair, big body, and a cleft palate and lip.

As grateful as we are for this piece of Thea's history (and we are SO extremely thankful to have so many photos from her first year of life), our hearts can't help but sag at the sight of all of these other children whose birth families were unable to keep them for whatever reason, and abandoned them to be found and cared for by the government...and hopefully, eventually given to loving forever families.

This is just one newspaper... on one day... from one county... from one province... in one country.  We are so blessed and grateful to be the family to the sweet baby in “the top ad of column 3”, but what has happened to the other 24 children on this page?  It is mind blowing to me to think that there are 143 million orphans in the world right now (I had no idea that this number was so high until recently)...hard to even fathom really.  It's absolutely crazy to think about, and I already know that it is going to be heartbreaking to leave Shepherd's Field Children's Village with only Thea...

Gayle :)