Monday, March 14, 2011

Monday morning came all too soon. We had breakfast at 7:00am and loaded the bus at 8:00am to head to the House of Hope, which is a foster home for Children's Hope International. They have 18 special needs kids and 1 non-special need little boy that we are trying to help name. He goes by No. 5 right now. His biological parents signed the papers to withhold medical supervision and left him at the hospital. The staff couldn't stand to let him die and nursed him back to health. He recovered and became the "mascot" of sorts. All of the staff took turns caring for him until he became a danger to himself and others on the floor at the hospital around 18 months of age. I believe they said he was pulling on electrical cords, etc. and they asked CHI if they could take care of him and help find him a home.

At the home, we were given plastic booties to put over our shoes and hand sanitizer before entering the door of the small playroom of the facility. We played, sang songs, cuddled & prayed over those precious little kids. They were mostly toddlers. The older 2 boys were about 7 years old. When we left, Gabi said to the helpers, "thank you for the shoes!" as she walked out the door. : ) We got a snicker out of that. From there we took the bus to the new property for the future House of Hope. They are trying to raise funds to complete this desperately needed facility that will give more room to the children & volunteers and be a big improvement. It is still seemingly small to house around 20 children, according to American standards, but it will be a really nice area for them. If any of you feel lead to give monetarily, the building for the new House of Hope would be a great ministry to support.

Following that, we went to tour the CHI offices and meet the staff there. They took us to lunch across the street and we thoroughly enjoyed the food. It was our first authentic Chinese meal for the trip. We all got a kick out of the "squatty potty" experience. The men's and ladies' rooms shared a common lavatory. I cracked up when I was walking out of the ladies' room to hear Connie say to Steve, "Steve, what in the world are you doing in the ladies' restroom?". Ha!

After the nice lunch, we drove to the Great Wall and enjoyed hiking up the steps to the 2nd & 3rd towers. It was tough!! I thought I had made it nearly to the top and decided to take the little girls back down because we had to leave in 45 minutes. Lindy, Danielle, Stefanie, and Steven wanted to go up a little more. Steve took Gabi, I took Mollie, and David & Melody helped Grace. We got to the bottom without tripping or falling and our legs all felt like jelly. We enjoyed a much deserved Magnum bar (chocolate dipped vanilla ice cream). When we all stopped at the restroom, as I was going in, David & Steven were quickly exiting the ladies' room! Ha! They followed Lindy, Danielle, and Stefanie right in! Hee hee! I'm sure anyone watching would say, "Look at those crazy Americans!".

We headed right to the Beijing airport from there and caught our flight to Luoyang, Henan. We got to Maria's Big House of Hope around 11:00pm. Our group was wiped out by then and we were happy to be directed to a dorm-type room that had 8 beds in it. There was one for our family and another one for the Fowler family. David & Mikey had another room down the hall. We could hardly wait to get up the next morning and get to go hold the babies...