China's Hosting Program

Jia Qing with his host parents in the United States, December 2014

We have had such busy days while here in Guangzhou. It almost doesn’t seem possible that we will be going home tomorrow, but it is! I’m so grateful for the time that we have had here in China, the people that we have met along the way, and of course, for our new son, Jia Qing.

I wanted to share something today that has been on my mind and that I keep seeing again and again here with many of the families we are traveling with, and that is about the hosting program. I do not believe that we would be here today if it were not for Jia being hosted in the United States last winter and having that experience.

When we first learned about Jia Qing, one of the things that we read about him was that he was hosted in the United States during the winter of 2014-2015. We were actually a bit shocked that, at 7 years old, he flew to the U.S. to meet a family and stay with them for a month. We thought he seemed so young. We assumed that it would be too difficult for everyone involved, both him and the family. We presumed that it would be confusing for him. We were wrong.

My only experience with hosting was when I was in high school and we hosted exchange students from Denmark and from Germany. Later, my sister Marna went to Denmark as part of student exchange as well and lived there for a year. These situations were all involving teenage students who had families, not orphans who seemed to be between the ages of 7 and 13. So, we didn’t really understand much about how hosting orphans from China or any other country worked.

At one point when we were considering Jia’s file for adoption, I remembered that, a few years ago, I had read that a group from Love Without Boundaries had gone into an orphanage in China and had taken the kids out for the day to go swimming and go out to eat at a restaurant. When they went back at the end of the day, they received pencils and new pairs of shoes and the kids were so delighted and happy over those simple things. The things we think nothing about, like eating at McDonald’s or driving in a car to stop at the store, those things that are even mundane to us, were exciting and adventurous to these kids because they had not had these experiences. Even though they had to return to the orphanage at the end of the day, they still received that valuable time of visiting somewhere else and taking home a small token of something just for them.

And that is the way hosting is, yet on a much larger scale. Think about a child who is an orphan and who is 7 or 8 or even 11 or 12 years old and who has not had a family. Many people want to adopt very young children, which is wonderful that there are homes for babies and toddlers so that they do not grow up in orphanages. But when a child in the system gets to be older, his chances of being adopted grow slimmer. It’s a very sad reality, but it is true. In China, children are no longer eligible to be adopted once they turn 14. At the very least, hosting allows an older child a chance to experience a family.

I say “at the very least” as if it were a small thing and it is not. It is huge. A chance to live as part of a family, with brothers and sisters, sitting together for meals to eat, going places and riding in the car, doing all of the things that we live with every day that these children never experience, is huge. They get to be a part of something so much bigger than they have ever known. They get to experience something that means so much that we often take for granted. They get family, and even if it is temporary, it is still a time for them to have friendship, bonding, and love from others.

Once hosted, the kids return to their orphanages, but it often doesn’t end there. Many of them go on to be adopted, whether by the families who hosted them or through the family’s advocacy. In Jia’s case, his family tirelessly advocated for him to find a family, telling of how sweet and kind he is. If it were not for them, we would not be here with him. That is the truth. We owe so much to that family that we could never repay.


Jia has a naturally sweet and kind personality, but I have also seen him be very polite, gracious, and well mannered because of what he learned when he was hosted. I also think that he is adjusting very well to having siblings and parents in large part because of his time when he lived in the U.S. 

We have met many people on this trip who met their child through a hosting program. We cannot underestimate the effects of this process. Hosting an orphan is life changing. It builds families. It connects people. It makes a huge difference.