THE first Little House children to be adopted overseas, Billy and Anne, leave tomorrow for their new home in the United States.
The brother and sister have spent every waking hour since Sunday with their adoptive parents, Craig and Merilynn Pearsall, who have come from Oregon to collect them.
The Little House in Pinehill Village in Tai Po was set up four years ago by the Hongkong Association for the Mentally Handicapped and is designed to give orphaned mentally handicapped children a chance to have a normal family life and improve their chances of adoption overseas.
The association was the beneficiary of the RTHK/South China Morning Post Operation Santa Claus 1992, which raised more than $4 million. Some of that money will fund a second Little House, which is nearing completion in the grounds of Pinehill.
House-parents Billy and Eliza Lee knew before they became Mum and Dad at the Little House that they could lose some of the eight children, but these first adoptions have proved to be something of a crisis.
Father Billy has not slept for several nights and mother Eliza's eyes are red and swollen from weeping.
The children themselves are in two minds about leaving the only home they have known. Billy, 10, and Anne, eight, were raised separately and did not know of each other's existence until they arrived at Pinehill four years ago.