As Fate Would Have It....

Last week Holt International, the agency that we used, sponsored a picnic for all of the adoptive families of Holt.  It was a great turn out, and as expected there were lots of children with their parents.  However, since there are only about 400 children adopted from India into the US, we didn't expect too many kids from India.  While we were sitting on the blanket relaxing after playing on the slides, we noticed a family coming over to us.  Wow, could it be another adoptive child from India?  Sure thing, we met a very nice family who had an 11 year old daughter whom they brought home about 8 years ago.  I thought it was very special that they continue to come after so many years, and we hope to do the same.  Their duagher is a very sweet girl and was very interested in meeting Bela, but Bela was more interested in playing on the slides.  For the next hour or so we shared adoption stories with the family over some delicious Korean BBQ supplied by a local church.  It turns out that their daughter was also adopted from BSSK, but back in 2002.  Just after lunch we noticed another family coming to the picnic and they too had a lovely little girl from India.  We quickly called them over and began to get acquainted, but something was so familar with their daughter we just couldn't place it, but we soon found out why.  It turns out that the family had brought home their 4 year old daughter three weeks after we did from the the same orphanage in Pune (BSSK).  Out of 1.1 Billion people in India and 25 Million orphans, of which only 400 are adopted to the US, we happen to meet someone from the exact same place we brought Bela home from.  Wow, we were floored to say the least.  We then met even another family who had adopted a little boy from India, wow we didn't expect to meet 1 let alone 3 adoptive families from India - it was very exciting.  But the excitment didn't end there.  After sharing our stories, I told the families that I'd post the videos that we took of BSSK (one of the families hadn't been to India) so that they could see where their daughter came from.  As I was going through the videos, I noticed that the little 4 year old was in our videos, a couple of times sitting right next to Bela playing.  WOW, fate sure was on our side.  We are very fortunate to have found one of Bela's playmates and we can only imagine how helpful it will be for both girls to have each other as friends as they get older and have questions about their adoption and begin coming to terms with what it means to be adopted - we couldn't be more happy for our little girl!