In March 2001, we began the process called adoption. It was long and arduous, involving a lot of paperwork and even more waiting. Eight months later in November our completed dossier was sent off to the China Center for Adoption. I wrote about the first part of this in a column entitled "Love Will Overcome Adoption Frustrations," that appeared in the Herald News and the New Jersey Herald in January 2002.

There was nothing for us to do at this point but wait and pray. Often that is the best thing to do when one isn't sure what else to do.

Then, on April 13, unknown to us at the time, somewhere in Guangxi Province in the People's Republic of China a woman who we will never meet gave birth to a little baby girl that she decided she did not want to keep. Two days later this baby ended up on the doorstep of the Wuzhou Social Welfare Institute.

This baby was named Wu Min Jian. On January 23, 2003, 22 months after we began our "paperwork pregnancy" we received our referral including three photos of our daughter. Wu Min Jian is a spitting image of her two brothers James and John - our biological sons. And she is just like her father who also loves music and is fond of  imitating people's mannerisms. This is certainly no coincidence. Surely the Hand of God is evident in His choice for our family. I wrote about the spiritual aspect of adoption in a second column that appeared in The Record on June 20, 2002, "Father Awaits Arrival of Baby from China." Little did I know when I wrote that column that our daughter had already been born and was two-months old.

Internet message boards are a great way for adoptive couples in a group to communicate with one another. My January 27 column, "YAHOO! In More Ways Than One" explains how AWAA Group 108 stayed in touch during the long, 14-month wait for their referrals.

What follows are some entries from my adoption journal written in 2002 during the trip to China...

FEBRUARY 12

Yesterday we learned that Wu was moved to a foster home. Apparently this is done routinely with children who are about to be adopted as it makes for a smoother transition to home life from the orphanage. We sent the person who is personally caring for Wu a package of goodies for our daughter including a blanket, a panda bear, a Lamaze Play & Grow toy (Tucker the Turtle), a couple of family photos and three disposable cameras to take pictures of her in her surroundings. 

MARCH 26

Well here we are. It's the eve of our trip to China. There's a war raging in the Middle East and an orange terror alert here in the homeland. A virus has caused pneumonia-like symptoms and killed some travelers in the Guangzhou-Hong Kong region--right where we will be in another week. But why worry? God knew all this when we began our adoption odyssey two years ago. Tomorrow we fly out of Newark to Chicago where we'll change planes for our flight to Beijing. After several days in China's capital, we'll fly to Nanning in Guangxi province. We will receive our daughter on March 31 in the hotel where we'll be staying. After spending a few days in Nanning to take care of local paperwork, we'll fly to Guangzhou for more paperwork at the US Consulate. We fly home on April 9 through Hong Kong.

APRIL 22

We've been home now for fourteen days with our little daughter, Rebecca Lee. Despite the long journey with the added threat of SARS, everyone is healthy. It was an enjoyable trip but also very stressful. We were constantly on the move from the moment we landed in Beijing. On the first weekend we visited the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace.

From Beijing, which was gray and depressing we flew to Nanning in the southern province of Guangxi where it was humid and in the mid-90s. Here, the landscape took on a completely different character. Everything was green and lush. There were farms and rice paddies and palm trees. The sky was a deep blue. It was as if we had been transported to Puerto Rico or Costa Rica. It was the evening of March 31 when we arrived at the airport in Nanning. We were whisked to our hotel on a bus where we hastily dropped our bags. Then we all got back on the same bus for the short ride to the Adoption Affairs Bureau several blocks away. There we received our daughter along with 16 other families we had traveled with. We stayed in Nanning for several more days waiting for the paperwork to be processed. While there we visited a Buddhist temple, a farm and a rural school. Four days later on Friday all of our daughter's paperwork had been processed. We were given Minjian's Chinese passport. Legally, she was now our daughter. From Nanning we flew to Guangzhou for our interview at the US Consulate the following Monday. Two days later we flew home. It was a 30-hour trip door to door. Needless to say, we all kissed the threshold as we walked into our house here in New Jersey. The complete saga of the adoption of our first daughter appears as a chapter in my second book, "The View from the Grass Roots - a Second Look." SCroll to the top of this page and click on the book's cover to be taken to a page where you will find more information.

Rummo traveled to China again in 2005 with his wife and daughter, Rebecca to adopt their second child, Rachel; a.k.a. Zhan Ai Ping.