Now Watch This

By Andy Harkins

FROM THE ARCHIVES PART 7: WINTER 2007

I am the proud father of four wonderful daughters.  The stork brought the first three and a 747 brought the last one.  My youngest daughter Emma was as much of a gift of God to us as the other three and I know this because of how we came to adopt her.

One morning my wife Cay and I saw a news report about the plight of baby girls in China.  The nation of China, for the most part, has a one child policy.  Since boys are preferred because they are expected to take care of the mom and dad in old age, baby girls are largely unwanted and often aborted, abandoned or given up for adoption.  When we told our three daughters about this, it seemed like the whole family was burdened and felt like we should do something about this, even if we adopted just one girl.

My wife and I began to attend seminars about adopting children overseas and were somewhat discouraged by the red-tape and expense involved, but we continued to think about adoption over a four year period.  Every time we’d begin to lose heart or feel like the trail to adoption was growing cold, we’d encounter a family with an Asian child and become inspired again.

In 1998 my wife found a website for a group called “Precious in His Sight.”  They would show pictures of kids from foreign lands who were in desperate need of adoptive homes.  It tore my heart out to see the desperate need and, therefore, I told my wife and kids not to show me these pictures anymore.

One day, December 27, 1999 to be exact, my daughter Lindsay, who was thirteen at the time, asked me to go look at the computer.  I said, “It’s not that site is it?”  She kind of side-stepped the question, so I reluctantly went into the room and agreed to let my wife show me the pictures of the children they wanted me to see.  There were five pictures of children from five different nations: China, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Russia and Guatemala.  When I saw the baby from Vietnam I made what I thought was a flip comment: “That one looks like an Asian version of a Harkins baby.”  As I was leaving the room I noticed my wife had tears in her eyes.  When I asked her what was going on, she said that earlier, when she and the girls were looking at these pictures, every one of them said exactly the same thing.  After the fact, Cay told me that every time she was tempted to bring up the subject of adoption to me she felt as if God was asking her to be still and patient.  When she and the girls saw that picture and they invited me in, Cay felt as if God said “Now watch this.”  Immediately, I called my three daughters into the room and said we need to pray right here, right now to ask God for guidance.  I also asked everyone to keep this in their prayers for the next three days and then we’d come back to discuss it.  We unanimously felt this was the direction we should take and from that point on it was amazing how quickly things fell into place for us to adopt this baby girl.  The red tape was cut, an amazing amount of money was miraculously provided and on April 28, 2000, Emma Harkins was officially welcomed into our home, as much of a Harkins’s daughter as all the rest.