From Jiangxi to the Farm
How a little girl from southern China came home to a corn and bean farm in Minnesota

Ni hao! That means hello.

We're Brent and Lori Aaberg. Brent's family has farmed the same ground outside Mankato for four generations, and Lori teaches second grade in town. We were married eleven years and had just about given up on being parents when a friend from church told us about the babies waiting in China. Two years of paperwork later, on Monday, November 10, 1997, a nanny in a hotel room in Nanchang put an eleven-month-old girl in Lori's arms, and we became a family.

Her name is Anna Jing. Jing was the name the orphanage gave her, and we kept it because it's part of her story. She's two and three-quarters now, bossy, funny, afraid of the barn cats and in love with the combine. She calls her grandpa "Bapa" and she thinks every tractor is named Deere.

We made this page for our family and friends, and for anyone out there thinking about adopting from China. Lots of people helped us when we were starting out. This is our way of passing it on.

Our paperwork timeline

What we'd tell a family just starting

• Pick your agency carefully. Talk to families who used them. Ask a lot of questions and make sure they're licensed in your state.
• Get a big binder and make copies of everything. Twice.
• The wait is the hardest part. Rules and timelines change and nobody can promise you a date. Find other waiting families. It helps.
• Learn about China before you go and keep learning after. It's her heritage and she deserves to be proud of it.
• Babies who've lived in orphanages may be behind at first. Anna couldn't sit up by herself at eleven months. By Easter she was walking. Talk to your pediatrician, and ask about a doctor who knows international adoption.
• You will get questions at the grocery store. Some are sweet, some are rude. Decide ahead of time how much of her story is yours to tell. We keep most of it for her.

The red thread

There's an old Chinese belief that an invisible red thread connects people who are meant to find each other. It can stretch and tangle, but it never breaks. We didn't know about it until another adoptive mom told us in the hotel in Guangzhou, and now it's on a cross-stitch over Anna's crib that Lori's mother made. We also think about the woman in China who gave birth to her. We don't know her story, and we may never know. We hope she somehow knows her daughter is safe and loved.

Waiting for a little sister! Our paperwork for a second daughter went to China in April 1999. We're hoping for a referral early next year. Anna has already picked out which bed her sister gets, and says the baby can have "the purple blanket but NOT the pink one." We'll post the news here the minute we hear.

Good places to start

• Families with Children from China (FCC). Local groups all over the country. Ours has a picnic every summer and a Chinese New Year party every winter, and Anna gets to be around lots of kids who look like her.
• Your state's list of licensed adoption agencies. Your county social services office can point you to it.
• Other families. Ask around at church and work. You'll be surprised who knows somebody.
• A book for little ones: A Mother for Choco by Keiko Kasza. We read it every night for a year.
• Us! We're happy to answer anything we can: [email protected]

Write to the Aabergs


friends have visited since our first Family Day anniversary
Last updated Monday, September 6, 1999 (Labor Day)
© 1999 The Aaberg Family