Coronavirus Slams The Brakes On Adoption For Eagle Mountain Family.

The Frisbie family in Eagle Mountain has been working on adopting a little girl from China to add to their family. Brittany and Isaac have wanted to add a girl to complement their five sons. The Frisbie’s have been doing fundraisers and have been working to bring their new daughter home for a long time now. They were preparing to go to China to pick up little LuLu and add her to their family, then the Coronavirus hit and their plans were derailed.

Who are the Frisbies

We are the Frisbie Family. Isaac and I have been married for almost 18 years. We have a busy house filled with 5 boys ages 16 down to 6. Eli, Oliver, Emerson, Kallan, and Grayson. It is always busy, and crazy but we love it. About 4 years ago we felt that someone was missing in our family. It took another year to realize that we were missing a little person, specifically a little girl. Both Issac and I knew it would not be biological, and we started to look into adoption. Our 3 middle boys have been in Chinese immersion for their entire elementary years and both Isaac and I teach children in China through an online ESL company called VIPKid. We loved learning about and getting to know the Chinese people and culture and fell in love. We knew that if we were to adopt we would adopt from China.

Brittany explains the adoption process up to now.

“In March 2019 we were finally ready to seriously look into the adoption process, and after researching it we decided to call CCAI, who is a leading nonprofit agency in Chinese adoptions. They are AMAZING and answered all of our questions. We realized we qualified to start the process and put in an application in the middle of March. We were told it could take 2-3 years to be matched and adopt a girl from China, so we were ready to play the waiting game. We got through the application and as quickly as we could be saved up enough for the home study and first agency fee. By July our home study was complete, and our dossier ( our life in paper form) was taking form. We started to look at waiting for child profiles of children in China. On October 1st, 2019 I was avoiding doing laundry and decided to look at the profiles on CCAI’s website and there was a beautiful 2-year-old girl. She had not been on the list 2 days prior when we looked but she was there that day. I immediately called Isaac and said look at this girl. In the space of 4 hours we had her file, had 2 doctors and several other medical personnel look over it, and we decided that she was the one for us. We were 7 ½ months into the process and we had found her! It was exciting and scary because up to that point we had only paid about $8000 of the $40,000 the total adoption and trip would cost. We only had 4-6 months to come up with the rest. We had no idea how we were going to do that, but we knew it was right and that we would find a way.”

LuLu

This is a picture of LuLu. “A little about Lulu. She is 2 ½. She has brain dysplasia which we know has caused some weakness in her body and a severe speech delay. We are looking forward to getting her home so that we can get her seen by medical professionals here and develop a therapy plan to help her with this disability. She is so incredibly precious and from all the videos we have received she is so happy and her caretakers are doing a wonderful job helping her with her limitations. ” Brittany shares this on their adoption fundraising Facebook page.

“Sometimes adoption hurts. The unknown of when we will get that magical Travel approval to go and pick up a little person we have never met in this life, but who has already won our heart over. The ache to hold that beautiful child in our arms is sometimes overwhelming it brings us to tears. Thankfully rewatching her videos helps ease the ache. Looking at her cute pictures refocuses us and helps us move forward with working crazy long hours to do what we can to save enough to bring her home. We are so excited to have Lulu come to our home and our life. We are thankful to all of you for helping us in that journey. For your generosity, kind words, and shares of our posts. We had to raise over $40,000 in less than a year and thanks to many of you we have seen miracles happen. We are so close to being done with fundraising. … Thank you for being on this journey with us. And enjoy this brief little clip! Watch what Lulu does at the end, it makes us giggle every time!” Brittany Stice Frisbie February 15 at 11:54 AM

Conoavirus strikes!

After we found Lulu we were full speed ahead! We finished our Dossier which was sent to China beginning of December and again faster than we had been told we had our approval and our LOA ( basically China’s letter saying that she was ours and we can make plans to get her) right before Christmas. This put us on a timeline to leave for China late February/early March. We started to make plans, got babysitters lined up for the 2 youngest, and oldest. We are taking our 12-year-old twins with us to China to help Lulu transition and bond with them. We were making plans with our jobs, finishing our basement so we have a room for Lulu and pushing the fundraisers frequently on Social media and with family and friends. The week before the Chinese New year ( middle of January), we started to hear about the Coronavirus. I decided to call our agency to get the details. They said as of that moment nothing was changing we were still on track to go. A few days later the travel advisory went from none to 4, meaning no one was headed to China. Plus all the orphanages were in lockdown, no one in or out to protect those sweet children, most of which are medically fragile. Our process came to a screeching halt! Our agency has given us a list of 9 things that have to happen before we can travel, at this time none of the 9 are in place, so we are just waiting. Our hearts are aching, our arms are aching. We were so close, and now for the foreseeable future all we can do is pray and wait for China to heal, and those doors to be opened again. It is agonizing sometimes! We did receive an update that Lulu is healthy and we have asked for more information, some new pictures, or videos to help ease the ache, but are still waiting for those to come. We are trying to be optimistic and hope for the best since that is all we can do. Until that time we are continuing to raise funds, and get things ready at home!

The family has been doing a lot of fundraising to bring LuLu home. They did a shoe drive, bake sales, as well as a puzzle piece sale. Brittney explains some of those efforts.

We began fundraising like crazy. We have held 4 bake sales, gathered over 2800lbs of shoes, and are currently selling pieces to a puzzle that was drawn by our talented niece. Each fundraiser helped us get the next required fee paid. We have had some very generous donors and several corporate charitable contributions that have really helped us and we are so thankful!

They did the shoe drive with Angel Bins. Brittney says, ” we earned a little over $1550 through the shoe drive!!!!!” The Angel Bin website states, “The shoes collected from our Angel Bins shoe drives are processed at our Los Angeles warehouse and distributed globally to developing nations. Items in good condition are exported to African & South American countries meeting the demand for quality shoes at a low cost.”

The puzzle is a little over 1000 pieces. The donations from the first 500 pieces are helping us with our travel to China and in China expenses like Lulu’s passport, physicals, visas, and our hotel and food. The donations from the second 500 pieces will be donated to Lulus orphanage in Guangdong province in China. The orphanage asks each adoptive family to donate about $5000 to help the medically fragile children get life-saving care as well as pay for supplies. Which after the coronavirus will need replenishing. We currently have 250 pieces left. Each piece costs $10, and the donor gets their name written on the back, when the puzzle is finished we will place it in a floating frame so that we can always remember the generosity of those that helped us get our beautiful Lulu! Whatever we receive from the remaining puzzle pieces goes to the orphanage. Any donations above the puzzle will allow Isaac and I to take more time off when we get home. Isaac has some vacation days saved up from his day job at Ultradent as a microbiologist, but since Isaac and I are both independent contractors with VIPKID we don’t get vacation time. We need to save up at least a month’s worth of income to pay our bills and mortgage. We are working as many extra classes as we can for VIPkid to help with that savings. We will be in China for about 18-19 days and hope to take at least a week off after getting back to focus on being a family and building that attachment bond with our Lulu. Any additional donations that are in excess to our family needs will be donated to another adoptive family in need.

They are still selling puzzle pieces if you would like to contribute. Like most of the nation and the world, the Frisbie family is watching the news and listening to see what does happen with the Coronavirus.

Fundraising Links:

Puzzle Pieces can be claimed via: https://www.facebook.com/donate/603345683785587/ Venmo: @ britters30 Paypal: britters30@yahoo.com Adopttogether.org: https://adopttogether.org/families/?fundraiser=fundsforlulu ( tax deductible and is able to receive charitable contributions from companies toward our adoption as well)