After learning about the urgent need for families to adopt boys from China, the Griffis family switches their gender preference from "girl" to "either" — a decision that has blessed them in ways they never imagined.

From the moment that adoption was on our hearts, it was always China. As I would read blogs about China adoption stories and browse the waiting children lists, I felt deep in my soul that soon, I would be looking into the eyes of my future child. It was always China. Always special needs. And always a girl.

Because it was China, we assumed there were girls upon girls waiting. We believed, like so many others, that the effects of the one-child policy in China were still rampant and that there were baby girls just waiting for families. I read blog upon blog written by families who had adopted from China, and at that point, most of them had adopted girls. This gave me a vision for what adopting from China would look like, and I started to dream of adding a daughter to our family.

See, we have two boys already. So adding a girl seemed like a no-brainer. As we were submitting our medical conditions checklist, we also checked "girl” without even giving it much discussion.

And we started to plan to add a girl to our family.

That is, until we started getting emails from our agency that read:

There is an urgent need for parents to adopt boys, but you will wait 6-9 months for a girl.

An URGENT NEED. It is boys who need families. The orphanages and foster homes were not overflowing with girls... but boys.