18. The Daughter of My Mother

Since a child, my mother dreamed of having a daughter of her own. I did not fulfill that dream, being the oldest of five children, when I came out as a boy. She will tell you that she was joyful, however. Three children later, my mother found herself greatly outnumbered by having four sons to no daughters. She's recently told me about her battle after my youngest brother, because she was going to stop having children becasue of age and with that, any chance of having a daughter of her own. But she had always had the feeling that a daughter would be a part of our home, and she wouldn't let that feeling die.

My parents are regular temple-goers. They always have been and claim to always be. Inside the temple, after much prayer, fasting, and personal research, my mother received personal revelation that would later be confirmed to my father. That feeling of having a daughter did not die. She was prompted to adopt. I still remember when my parents corraled us four boys onto the couch to tell us that we would be getting a sister. They had already taken steps of faith and were underway to adopting my sister from unfortunate political circumstances within China.

Six weeks before my parents left for China, we received pictures and a story from a rural orphanage near the border of Mongolia. As soon as my mother looked upon her, she felt a familiar spirit calling to her and was touched deeply. My parents went to China over Christmas of 2006 to pick up my sister and bring her into our family and the everlasting gospel.

We don't know my sister's exact birthdate. We don't know her parents or where she was born. We have a alleged birth certificate in Chinese as sole documentation of her birth on December 31, 2005. So that is her birthday. Four days later on the 4th of January is when she was found. Early that frigid morning, a jogger ran by a cold, lonely bus station as she did each morning. Apparently she did not listen to music because as she ran she heard crying near some bushes. She stopped running and followed the wails until she came to a small, cardboard box with the top flaps cracked open. Inside lied my sister, wrapped in a small, scratchy blanket with her face exposed to the bitter cold winter. The woman took her in and presented her at the local orphanage where many other little girls lived, abandoned at birth by parents who feared the law.

At this time, China was under the strict one-child policy. Many wanted the boys to carry on the family name and honor. Girls, then, were commonly abandoned or given to orphanages so that the parents would not be caught violating what was "overpopulating". This sad policy has undoubtedly caused unimaginable sorrow among Chinese people as family and ancestors are pinnacles in Eastern culture. I've thought about how hard that must have been, but also at how without the law, my sister would not be with us now.

She is the youngest in our family, the only girl, and has brown eyes and hair in a family of blonde and blue eyes. She is different from us, but we cannot imagine our family without her. To me, she doesn't look Chinese any longer. She is just Jaida. My sister. A daughter of God. The daughter of my mother.