A tiny baby girl, with coal black hair and dark eyes, was abandoned in the night in Youxi City, China, at the gate of the city's welfare institute, where she would surely be found - as she was - early the next morning by an institute worker.

The infant was taken to the police station, but later returned to the welfare institute. She was placed with a foster mother with whom she stayed for 8½ months, until she was adopted by Jeff and Amy Maninfior of Mattoon.

Today, a month and a half later, Lily Maninfior is happily learning about her new home with her parents and doting big brothers, Blake, 19, and Nick, 16.

What happened to Lily happens often in China, Amy Maninfior said, because of the one-child-per-family policy and the cultural preference for boys to run the family farms.

"They leave them, often during the nighttime when no one will see them. And they are careful to leave them somewhere they know they will be found.

"Sometimes, if they are farmers, they can get permission to have more than one child, but without permission, I've read they can be fined more than they make in a year.

"It hurts so much to imagine a mother thinking she has to abandon her baby," Amy Maninfior said. "I think every mother who adopts grieves at some point for that mother who thought she had to leave her baby like that."

The decision to adopt was not something the Maninfiors had discussed, she said.

"I think Jeff had been thinking about it, but we hadn't really talked about it."

Then, the couple and their son attended a concert by contemporary Christian recording artist and adoption advocate Steven Curtis Chapman in Champaign. Chapman and his wife are parents of three adopted Chinese daughters.

There was information about inter-country adoptions available at the concert, and Amy Maninfior said her son turned to her and said, "Hey Mom, why don't you get some information on adoption?"

"I said, 'Oh, I don't think your dad would be interested,' but, as it turned out, Jeff was already getting the information.

"That's when we started talking about it."

The couple went through an adoption agency in Champaign. In

addition to paperwork that must be completed, there are also home studies that must be conducted on all adoptive families.

"It takes anywhere from four to six months to get all your documents ready," Amy Maninfior said. "They have to be notarized and authenticated. We had to go to Chicago to get them authenticated before they could be sent to China on Oct. 17, 2005. Then our document had to wait for everyone ahead of us to get matched."

Amy Maninfior said it took 18 to 19 months before the couple, along with son Nick, made the two-week trip to China, where they finally met Lily and brought her home. She was 8½ months old.

The Maninfiors belong to a group of other adoptive parents of Asian children.

Kim Ormsby, group organizer, and her husband, Lyle, of Effingham, adopted their daughter, Rachel, 4, from an orphanage in Anhui Province in China when she was 3.

There are currently about eight families involved in the group, including Kristy and Ryan Buescher of Neoga, parents of three children: Matt, 9; Cassie, 5; and Cameron, 3, originally from Korea.

"When we started the adoption process, the agency had the requirements for every country where you could adopt," Kristy Buescher said. "Basically, they involved how much money you made, how many children you already had in the home, how long you had been married, your age, and health.

"At that time," she said, "you had to be at least 30 to adopt from China."

Buescher, a junior high school math teacher, said she and her husband, a high school math teacher, were told if they didn't hear anything, that was a good thing.

"All we got was news," she said.

"They are very cautious in Korea to send home healthy babies. Cameron was 8 months old when he came home to us.

"We got the referral in June 2004, and he came home in December 2004.

"He was very small for his age in terms of his height. And, they thought he had eye problems. He also saw a cardiologist for suspected heart problems. They also suspected hypochondroplasia, a form of dwarfism, but after he was cleared of that, within a couple of weeks, he was home with us. His health is fine."

During that time, Buescher said she and her husband were faced with the decision of whether or not to accept the placement if, indeed, Cameron did have such challenging medical issues.

"Should we bring this little Asian boy to this small community was our big question," she said. "Neoga is not that culturally diverse, and the thought of making him stand out that much more was a big concern, but we came to the decision that we wanted him here no matter what.

"We had his picture plastered all over the place and we had bonded with his picture."

A representative of the adoption agency had told the couple that sometimes smaller communities are better than larger communities at embracing differences because they see it as their responsibility to help raise a child who becomes one of their own.

"Cameron's doing great," his mother said, "and he has a very proud big brother and big sister."

For the Ormsbys, adopting a 1-year-old Chinese girl was an 18-month process.

"We had been married for over 10 years, and we didn't really think we wanted to have children," she said. "Then, I saw a picture of a little Chinese girl in a magazine and I just felt like God spoke to my heart.

"I remember being very emotional and very touched by the whole thing. I just felt like this was what we were supposed to do.

"I told my husband about it a couple of days later and he said, 'Well, I figured if we would ever have children we would adopt, but China? Are you sure?'

"But we prayed about it for a couple of weeks, and it turned out to be a pretty easy decision for us. We didn't have to choose a country. We just knew that it was what we wanted."

The Ormsbys were with a group of about 15 other adoptive parents at a motel. The children were brought by the orphanage to the motel in a bus.

Flying to China was an experience Amy Maninfior is not in any hurry to repeat, although she says the reward was "well worth it."

There were three adoptive families in their group, she said.

"Each girl was brought to the hotel where we were staying and we met them in a conference room. We were all so nervous.

"Lily's foster mom was very emotional; she was crying, because she had had Lily the whole time.

"It made me feel bad for her, but good at the same time, because I knew Lily had been taken care of and she had been loved."

China is a beautiful country, Maninfior said. Some day, she and her husband hope to take their daughter to see the country where she was born.

Bonnie Clark can be reached at bclark@jg-tc.com or 348-5727.

Support group brings together families

Kim Ormsby of Effingham organizes activities for a group of area adoptive families in which she and her husband, Lyle, and daughter Rachel participate.

The group, Forever Families of Asian Children, began meeting in July 2005. About eight families with both Korean and Chinese children attend.

The group provides opportunities not only for the parents to share insights, but for the children to play, get acquainted, and often learn a little more about their heritage.

"We normally meet about once a month," Kim Ormsby said. "We've had speakers including foreign exchange students, and we have food days, with Korean or Chinese foods, and sometimes just picnics. We celebrated Chinese New Year, and there are special events in Champaign that we're hoping to attend."

Forever Families was started as a support group for the families, with assistance from LifeLink International Adoption Agency in Champaign.

Persons interested in talking to Ormsby about the group may contact her at 342-6959.