Running To
From Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Joy of Adoption
By Chalise Annett Bourque

The interests of childhood and youth are the interests of mankind.
~Edmund Storer Janes

On a fall day in Kansas, expecting a daily check-in call from my mom or last-minute instructions for my sons' Halloween parties, I picked up the telephone to hear "crackle... crackle... come get..." and what sounded like, "She's seven." Even with a bad connection and thousands of miles between us, the caller could only be Sister Rita, an American nun who'd lived the past fourteen years in a tiny Brazilian village. She had news we'd waited years to hear, "You have a daughter!"

It took several more calls to learn that our six-year-old daughter, Diana, lived sometimes with her blind grandmother, sometimes with her intellectually challenged mother. But, mostly, this little girl ran about in the jungle taking care of herself.
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