This is a unique and beautiful legend in the world—a warm family composed of thirteen people with no blood relation. They live together lovingly in a small Midwestern town in the United States. The parents are local Americans, while the eleven children come from all corners of China.
Yes, it is Weik couple from the United States who, over the past 27 years, have adopted a total of 11 abandoned Chinese children, raising them one by one.
In January 2023, My Perfect Love Foundation received a funding request. An American adoptive family was seeking financial assistance for their adopted son's orthodontic surgery. I saw that this family, called the Weiks, was a typical American middle-class household, but the parents were now in their sixties. They had raised 11 abandoned children adopted from China. Due to the cost of the orthodontic surgery for one of the children and insufficient funds, they applied to our foundation for support.
Since their situation perfectly met the requirements of our foundation's "Angel Medical Aid" program, the funds were immediately approved, and the donation was promptly transferred to the Weik family's account. From that moment on, I formed a bond with the Weik family.
A year later, at the 13th China-US Business Summit held in Los Angeles in 2024, the Weik family was invited to the main stage. They were the most special guests invited to this year's summit.
(At the 13th Annual U.S.-China Business Summit, the author of this article introduced the Weik family to the guests of honor)
All the guests at the opening ceremony of this year's U.S.-China Business Summit witnessed this legendary family - all the abandoned babies from China that Mr. and Mrs. Weik have adopted and nurtured over the past 27 years.
This article will reveal the story of this adoptive family. Let me start at the beginning of this beautiful and touching saga...
I. An extraordinary adoption journey
From Dinks to Parents of Two Baby Girls
In 1988, a handsome white American couple got married. This was a devout Christian couple. They married with a boundless vision for the future of their family.
But they were one of those young couples who didn't want to have children. For one thing, the husband, David, was still in medical school and the wife had a full-time job, and for another, they didn't want to have a child right away that would interfere with the freedom of both young people's lives.
But after nine years of marriage, their lives were changed forever when they read a story in New York City that there were many orphans waiting to be adopted from children's homes in China - and they had an idea - to go to China to adopt orphans and give the children a chance to grow up. -to go to China to adopt orphans and give the children a home.
In the summer of 1997, they received a profile of a baby girl from a Chinese orphanage, and they took one look and fell in love with the little face in the photo - at that time, a profile of a child up for adoption contained only a small photo ID on which the child's face could be seen. They then began the process.
In September 1998, they finally embarked on a journey to China to adopt the baby girl. The girl, who the Weiks later named Abi, immediately became the center of their lives.
In 2000, we were looking for a sister for Abi, and with the Chinese orphanage in the back of their minds, they once again looked to China. This time they adopted a second abandoned baby girl - named Olivia - from Gaoyou, Jiangsu Province.
The child quickly fit into the family, becoming the Weiks' favored daughter and Abby's sister.
With two daughters, they felt they had enough adopted children. But to their surprise God had other plans...
Adopting a child struggling with death
About six months after they brought Olivia home from China, they heard what happened to another baby girl from the same orphanage as Olivia -- an American family was going to adopt her, and they traveled to China to spend a week with her, but eventually the American couple gave up and didn't bring her back to the United States. --That's because during a medical examination of that baby girl, the doctor said she had a serious heart problem. Its life had reached its final stage.
It broke Mr. and Mrs. Weik's hearts to learn that this child had once again been abandoned and had once again lost the chance to get a home. They discovered that the orphanage seemed to have no plans to continue her medical treatment either, as the baby girl's information had been removed from the CCCWA (China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption). --This signaled that the orphanage had also given up on her and was no longer looking for a family to adopt her.
Mr. and Mrs. Weik were so distraught that they began urgent communication with the orphanage. After several months of continuous efforts, their sincerity and earnestness impressed God, and the orphanage finally re-circulated the adoption materials of this very sick baby girl back to the United States to match her with an adoptive family.
Initially, Mr. and Mrs. Weik wanted to find her a new adoptive family in the U.S., as having two daughters would be just right for their own family situation. But God forbid, their several efforts were fruitless.
--The sickly child couldn't wait any longer, and they eventually realized that this unfortunate child was destined to be their daughter.
In 2002, two years after bringing Olivia home, the adoption process was finalized and Maggie set out on a journey to the orphanage in China. By then the girl, named Sophia, had already survived a congenital heart condition until she was two and a half years old.
Maggie couldn't stop crying several times during that trip across the ocean. Because she saw Sophia's face often turned purple, and she would have difficulty breathing after walking a few steps. How had she survived the past two years?
Although Maggie hoped that Sofia would have the chance to be cured through surgery, when she saw her thin body, purple skin and labored breathing, she felt that they were adopting a dying child and that there was nothing she and her husband could do about it.
Luckily, there was a nationally recognized children's hospital an hour away from the Weiks' home with some of the best cardiac surgeons in the country. So they immediately arranged for Sophia to go there.
Even the cardiologists there said they had never seen a heart defect as severe as Sophie's. The Vickers' heart surgeon said they had never seen a heart defect as severe as Sophie's. Happily, however, the child survived - her surgery was a success!
She was finally brought back from the brink of death!
The doctor told Maggie that you saved her life by adopting her. But Mr. and Mrs. Weik believe that Sophia's destiny has always been in God's hands.
The first two children adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Weik were healthy, abandoned by their parents only because of their gender.
But starting with Sophia, the third child, their adoption of Chinese abandoned babies opened a whole new chapter - the next nine abandoned babies were all orphans with special needed.
With each adoption from China back to the U.S., half of Mr. and Mrs. Weik's heart remained in China. They couldn't forget the state of the children in the orphanage, the look on their faces as they waited to be adopted and longed for a home. So information about Chinese adoptions is like a permanent source of information in their lives, tugging at their nerves at all times.
Things that have happened can hardly be controlled
In 2004, Maggie saw a picture of an adorable Chinese baby in an online adoptive family group. She was from Maonan, Guangdong and had congenital clubfoot. But Mr. and Mrs. Weik fell in love with her anyway and decided to bring her home.
The big sisters loved her and the little girl named Zoe brought a lot of joy to the family.
Zoe is now a senior in high school. This fall she will be majoring in accounting in college.
One night before Christmas 2007, Maggie checked her e-mail and found another three-year-old girl in Hunan Province, China, who had epilepsy and who needed a home.Maggie then shook her sleeping husband awake and asked him, “This child needs a home ...... What do you think?”
David said, “Yes!”
So in the summer of 2008, Mr. and Mrs. Weik flew back to Hengyang, Hunan Province, and brought back their daughter, whom they named Leah, from there.
Upon returning to the United States, Mr. and Mrs. Weik noticed that Leigh was active but non-verbal. After several tests, doctors diagnosed her with a congenital speech disorder. Maggie put her through a lot of rehab, including going to two different preschools every day and then public school, and the Weiks decided that the child was very bright, and that it was just her inability to use language that was interfering with her ability to get an education.
Mr. and Mrs. Weik raised her until she entered the local high school.
Lose one's love forever
Leah had a seizure late one night in the spring of 2021. When her parents found out in the morning, she had already left this world. The accident broke the hearts of the Weik's.Maggie's mom blogged, “She was so sweet, kind, loving and caring, she was artistic and loved puzzles ......”
“Although raising a child with a speech impediment and who has seizures was very hard for us a lot of the time. But we loved her so much and we never regretted her adoption.”
On the third anniversary of Leigh's death this year, Maggie, as a mom, wrote these words-
“Three years ago today, when our dearest daughter left us at the age of 16, our lives changed forever. Our daughter went into the arms of our Savior Jesus. The loss of a parent is an eternal event. No matter how hard we try we can't make that feeling go away.
Daughter, you became part of a group of people who share your heartbreak. Someone you never want to belong to. It's an ultimate state that will never go away, and this feeling you have will stay with us until we leave this world. Reality is so painful. I think I've buried it deep in my soul. The wound is too deep to bear, and it often surfaces and shocks me when I don't expect it.
You are beautiful and lovely in every way. You are the best behaved child in our family. You eat everything and are ok with whatever happens. I have never heard you complain about anyone or anything. As I type these words, I am shedding tears because I miss you. On this side of eternity. Our family will never be whole again.
Only Jesus brings us comfort. He is also the only way for us to escape this pain. We miss you! Happy Heaven, Sweetheart!”
Touchingly, in 2023, two years after Leah's death, Webster High School, which Leah attended that year, honored Leah with her high school diploma in an all-school graduation ceremony! Leah's smiling face appeared on a giant electronic display on the varsity soccer field filled with students as the vice principal presented Leah's diploma into the hands of Mr. and Mrs. Weik, who had come to receive it on her behalf.
Speed up adoptions
In 2009, Mr. and Mrs. Weik adopted an 8-year-old girl from Bao'an District, Guangdong Province, called Bao Xiling, who has a cleft lip and palate and is a hepatitis B carrier. She had a cleft lip and palate and was a carrier of hepatitis B. At the time, a group of children who had been put up for adoption were matched with adoptive families, and she was the only one still waiting.
"She has a congenital learning disability, but she is the kindest, most caring child we have ever met," Maggie wrote in her blog.
"We have taken her through multiple surgeries and oral surgery since returning to the US. Her medical bills were expensive, but we eventually found a way to pay them all."
In 2010, Mr. and Mrs. Weik adopted another 8-year-old girl, Bo Yi, from Maoming, Guangdong Province. She has autism and developmental delays. And because of her autism, she will never be able to live independently.
Since 2012, Mr. and Mrs. Weik's adoption of orphans from China has been further accelerated...
After a trip to China to adopt two 5-year-old girls, one in Shanxi and one in Guangdong, the Weiks ran from orphanage to orphanage in different provinces of China as if they were rescuing lives - Gracie in Xinzhou, Shanxi had spina bifida and was on crutches at the time.
Gracie, from Xinzhou in Shanxi province, has spina bifida and was walking on crutches with a urinary catheter.
When she came to the U.S. Weikoff took her for medical procedures. She is now in her first year of junior high school and is kind and very smart. She is now not only an honor student at school, but also a member of her grade's volleyball team.
The other child, Juliet, is from Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province. Her profile does not mention that she has epilepsy. But now even with medication to control it, she has seizures several times a week. So she is the child in the Weik family who needs the most care.
Juliette often needed to be hospitalized and had learning difficulties because of the damage to her brain caused by seizures. Doctors diagnosed that she had a brain hemorrhage when she was a fetus, and it was the aftermath of that event that caused her epilepsy.
In 2016, Mr. and Mrs. Weik went back to Guangdong Province to adopt two orphans. One was Yao Yi (ph), an 8-year-old adopted from Dongguan. He was later named Daniel. The boy's rare disease made him surprisingly short, along with many other symptoms. But their only son is kind and helpful at home and at school. He is now in the sixth grade of elementary school and is doing well.
Another orphan adopted in Shenzhen is 4-year-old Xu Man. She has a rare disease called Cat's Eye Syndrome. She has poor eyesight and is legally blind. She was also born with anal atresia.
Mr. and Mrs. Weik have taken her to the U.S. for surgery since she was adopted. She loves to play and talk and is a real joy to be around. The teachers at school love her too. It was only her vision problems that put her behind her peers in learning.
From 1998 to 2015, Mr. and Mrs. Weik adopted 11 Chinese orphans in 17 years. That's an average of one more a year. Each time, Maggie suggested it and her husband David approved it. So much so that for quite a long time between the couple, as long as the wife said: "I want to talk to you for some thing", David did not wait for her to speak to know that there is nothing else, and that she is going to tell me to adopt another child.
There are two reasons why Mr. and Mrs. Weik have continued to adopt nine Chinese orphans. One is that since the turn of the new century, China's children's welfare institutions have always given priority to children with disabilities to foreign adoptive parents (because Chinese adoptive parents don't accept children with disabilities), and the other is that Mr. and Mrs. Weik have increasingly sensed that it's the orphans with disabilities who need a home more than anything else. And there is also a rule in our welfare organizations that they are only responsible for the intensive care of children until the age of 18, after which they are left to fend for themselves in society. How hard can it be for children with disabilities? The other child, Juliet, is from Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province. Her profile does not mention that she has epilepsy. But now even with medication to control it, she has seizures several times a week. So she is the child in the Weik family who needs the most care.
II.Spent all my savings, gave endless love
Weik's family was a well-off family. The husband worked as a podiatrist, the wife had a full-time job, and the two of them worked hard and had good savings for several years. It wasn't until they adopted an abandoned baby from China that the family's situation changed forever.
The regular cost of adopting an orphaned child from China is $33,000, and the child can only be adopted into a home if the full cost is paid up front. This includes fees to the Chinese orphanage, various fees to the adoption agency and travel expenses such as airfare and hotels to China.
Yes, you heard right, when they take a special child into their home, they pay about $33,000 for it. If it's an expedited adoption, they pay even more. So when Mr. and Mrs. Weik took 11 abandoned children into their home, they paid over $360,000 for them.
On top of that every child, especially those with disabilities, has to undergo immediate medical tests and even surgery when they are adopted into the United States. This doesn't take into account the cost of treatment for those who also have recurring seizures several times a week. That's why my family came to my foundation to apply for funds for an orthodontic surgery that they couldn't afford.
Weik relies on his husband, David, to support the family, and his wife, Maggie, is physically and mentally exhausted from taking care of their eleven children full time. When I looked up the application form for my foundation, I could see that David's annual income was more than 100,000 dollars. That's a good middle-class income. But when you realize what it costs to have eleven children, including nine with disabilities, you know that this is a family that can't make ends meet.
Having a medical procedure is an occasional event for any normal family, but for the Weik family it is part of everyday life.
In fact, the Weik family spends more than $40,000 a year on medical care. This includes the cost of health insurance for the entire family and deductibles for various treatments for everyone in the family.
If I tell you that the family has three kids in college right now, you can see what kind of financial strain that is.
Although the kids get scholarships for college, they still have to pay for their own room and board and books during the school year. That's why they took out loans for their children's college education. Even so, the Weiks pay tens of thousands of dollars a year for their children's college education.
In particular, for U.S. adoptive families who are adopting a child from a local agency in the U.S., they are eligible for government funding - the money originally given to the agency is transferred to the adoptive family and sent home in monthly checks until the child reaches the age of 18. But if you're adopting a child from outside the U.S., that benefit can be completely lost.
So every time an American adoptive parent decides to do an international adoption, they are choosing the harder road. (Plus, they don't pay a dime if they adopt a child from a U.S. adoption agency.)
That's why Mr. and Mrs. Weik have used up all their savings and even the money that every middle-class American family saves for their retirement by adopting these 11 Chinese orphans. In addition, Mr. and Mrs. Vick's own parents have passed away, so they have no support from any elders.
Their life was difficult most of the time, but they had no complaints. They believe that God himself chose each of their children to be their parents. So whenever God asked them, "Is there room in the inn?" , they always say, "Yes."
Maggie wrote in her blog - "We still feel God calling us to bring more Chinese orphans into our home. We are willing to make greater sacrifices for these precious children."
"We have sacrificed a lot and will continue to sacrifice a lot, but it's all worth it! I can't even begin to imagine what would have happened if any of the children had been left in the orphanage - I'd much rather think about how much joy and how much blessing they have brought to us."
Recently, after being long past retirement age, Maggie had to go back out to work - she just got her insurance broker's license and can now start earning money to subsidize her family.
When I asked her why she wanted to return to work at this age, she said, "To make it easier for my husband." --Husband David A lifelong strain as a podiatrist, coupled with a heavy family burden, has left him on the verge of physical collapse -- two spinal surgeries and a lumbar disc surgery in recent years, as well as two brain hemorrhages and a facial paralysis He has also suffered two brain hemorrhages and a facial paralysis.
When I asked David about reducing his workload, he replied, "I have no choice but to keep working because I have to earn money to support my family."
"You know what? We have another child going off to college soon."
Yeah, what about their retirement? And more realistically in front of them - when exactly will they retire? How are they going to continue their lives with five more kids about to go off to college and at least one more lifelong inability to care for themselves?
When I introduced Mr. and Mrs. Weik to the attendees of this year's China-U.S. Business Summit, I sighed at the difficulty of their lives, and the father of ten said gently, "No one has easy life, our lives are just different from others. （No one has easy life, we just have a different life."
Looking at David and Maggie's aging faces, their unpaid mortgage, and their six children crammed into one bedroom, I silently thought to myself, "This couple deserves all the good things in this world. There is no reason for them to get earthly hardship while giving out great love on earth.
III. The moment of the daughter's marriage
This past April, in speaking with Mr. and Mrs. Weik I was delighted to learn that two of their daughters would be getting married within a month of each other - the oldest, Abi, on May 25th and Sophia on June 15th.
-- what a delight it was! The poor little beings who were abandoned by their biological parents are now emerging as the objects of Prince Charming's pursuit in the United States.
The Weik family has a daughter in the making. After news of Abi's wedding broke, Luo Xin, the blogger of The Colorful Maiden, who has made many contributions to American adoptive families, chatted with Abi and had this conversation -
Rosin: "You'll still be coming home to help out a lot, won't you, they need you."
Abi replied, "I will, and I need them too."
--What warm words this is! What an understanding daughter this is!
When Rosin asked if she had a wedding gift list that people could donate to, Abi and her fiancé preferred that people donate to charities rather than give gifts for themselves.
Rosin and Village of the Stars, a charity dedicated to helping adoptive families in the U.S., hosted a donation drive for Abi's wedding anyway. The final tally was $9,450.
Abi insisted on returning the money to the Village of the Stars. In the end, Village of Stars made the decision to donate the money to Abi's brother, Daniel, who was waiting for money for oral surgery.
--What a perfect decision! What a warm world this is!
At the wedding we saw the happy faces of the two daughters, and the father's tears, which he did not hold back,-a scene that every father is apt to have for his own daughter, but this time on the face of a father who is not related to him by blood.
What is difficult for outsiders to read is that the father's tears are not just the usual father-daughter bond of dismay when a daughter gets married, but they also contain a sentiment that all biological fathers don't have - the third daughter, Sophia, was born with a serious heart condition, and by the time she was adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Vick, she had already been determined to be at the end of her life and not survivable. After the adoption she was operated on by the best heart surgeons in the United States. Today she has graduated from the University of Missouri in Kansas City and is a fourth grade teacher.
In her father's eyes, how could he not weep with joy that the little being who had been abandoned by her biological parents and who was dying of disease had now emerged as such a beautiful and touching bride to be married?
At Sophia's wedding, her father, David, gave a speech about his daughter's marriage, in which he mentioned a little-known detail - that
Daughter Sophia was refusing to communicate with him, her father, when she was first adopted into the United States. When his daughter was in the hospital for surgery, David went to the hospital one day to replace Maggie in her bed. Wanting to try and break down the divide, he brought along a box of animal crackers. --As he was talking, he pulled the box of animal crackers out of his suit pocket, walked over to his daughter and said, "It's from this box that I take the little crackers and give them to you piece by piece. You started paying attention to me right away."
David then turned to the groomsmen and said, "You know, from now on you'll be the man who pampers her, and don't forget, when she ignores you, you give her this animal cracker."
......
I repeatedly scrutinized these two daughters' happy, sunny looks on their wedding day, and I couldn't stop feeling a lot of emotions -
They were both abandoned by their biological parents, once so pitiful beings, and now each one of them is a winner in life under the careful parenting of Mr. and Mrs. Weik!
In a world where everyone has their own way of showing love, adopting eleven abandoned Chinese babies and changing their lives forever is the way Mr. and Mrs. Weik have chosen.
In the End...
Looking at the wedding photos of these two couples, I can't help but be reminded of that wedding photo of Mr. and Mrs. Weik 36 years ago. The young couple back then is now full of vicissitudes of life. They spent the most precious 27 years of their lives raising 11 abandoned babies in China. Except for one daughter who passed away due to illness, all 10 children are growing up healthily.
While Mr. and Mrs. Weik have given love to the world throughout their lives, they have also taught their children to pass that love on from generation to generation-
When I interviewed them in April, I asked them a question, "Have you ever thought about what will happen to your children who can't take care of themselves for the rest of their lives when you leave the world before them?
They answered frankly, "I have thought about it. We have discussed the matter with our eldest daughter. When we pass away, my sister will take my sister, who cannot take care of herself, with her."
--While other parents are thinking about how to leave their children more wealth, they leave their children a responsibility. The torch relay they pass on to their children is a great love on earth!
Since becoming a father of two, I have also come to understand more and more the love a father has for his children.
I want to tell Mr. and Mrs. Weik, as a Chinese, I thank you for every hug you give to these children, who are not related by blood and have been adopted home from thousands of miles away, and for every sleepless night you give to these children!
I am humbled - I can't be what you are, but I will do everything I can to support you along the way.
(The author of this article (far left) with the Weik family during this year's U.S.-China Business Summit)
My foundation, Perfect Love, plans to set up a special education fund for the Vick family to help with the cost of sending their children to college. For anyone else who has been touched by Mr. and Mrs. Weik, let's join forces!
Ways to donate:
Donations within the United States can be made directly to A Perfect Love and donations are government tax deductible.
PayPal or Zelle account: aperfectlove.org@gmail.com
Mail a check. Make checks payable to A Perfect Love.
Mailing address: 14725 Finisterra Pl, Hacienda Heights, CA 91745
A Perfect Love President
Chairman of the China-US Business Summit
Qun Shen
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