Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Wednesday morning came all too soon. We were all sad that we would only have the morning left with these special babies. I was so proud of my girls! Lindy & Danielle would just go pick a room and bring love & laughter to it. They played with, giggled & held those babies and brought them joy. Grace was so confident with the babies...and I have to admit, she would go right to some of the children that I struggled with wanting to divert away from. I didn't know how the girls would do with the open cleft lip/palate babies because it is often difficult to just look at them. But you know what, they didn't skip a beat. Grace & Gabi usually hung out in whatever room I was in or Steve was in. Gabi mostly played around in the room and entertained the kids with all of the action that comes with her little busy, bubbly self. On this morning, Gabi & Naomi ( a 3 year old with cleft lip/palate repair) raced around on little scooters. Then Grace gave little Suzannah rides on the baby walker (had her lip repair 2 weeks before and was waiting for palate repair), along with Naomi standing on the back of the walker. I'm not sure that they get much playing & horsing around, although they are taken good care of. The rooms are very quiet & calm....most of the time. There is a nannie for every 1-2 children. After we played the morning away, we packed up and got the suitcases back to the bus. I had this crazy idea....how about our group "caroling" for each floor as we deliver our gifts to the nannies! So we did just that. We all sang "Blessed Be the Name of the Lord" and walked floor to floor singing and handing out gifts to the nannies. Joey played the guitar for us and I have to say we sounded pretty good! I'm not sure there were many times that we all sang at once, because we were all fighting tears as we were singing the song, knowing this was good-bye and we would most likely never see those children again. We all long for those babies to be connected with families of their own. We were a pretty big group by now...David Trask, Mike Shook (aka Spikey to Gabi), Jonnlin and another nurse, Steve, me, Lindy, Danielle, Grace, Gabi, Joe, Connie, Stefanie & Steven, Joey, and Mollie.

We took our last photos and remembered a little girl named Maria who brought so much love in her 5 short years, but had such a great purpose and has provided a motivation to help so many others like her. David shared a little about Maria and it was a very touching moment.

We are heading to the train station now for the 2 hour fast train to Xi'An. We found out that morning via email from CHI that the local high officials will be at the Journey of Hope meeting and we are scheduled to speak for 30 minutes following the officials. Yikes! Steve passed the buck to me, I in turn passed it to Connie. We decided we (Steve, myself, Connie & Joe) would share the time and show our videos we had made just before we left of our daughters' lives with their families. Melody at CHI had requested the videos just the week before we departed. When we got to Xi'An, the bus took us to the hotel and we checked in and went right to the room with the 23 children and nannies, along with the CHI staff members and local Shanxi orphanage directors and Civil Bureau officials. We had our gifts for the children and presented them to the kids as they took their turns introducing themselves in the front. Some sang songs, one danced, and others just said a little bit about themselves. The ones that made us have a knot in our throats were the kids that said they just wanted to find a Mama and Baba (Daddy). Out of 23 kids, there were about 5 that had no special medical need, only that they weren't a baby and if they weren't adopted before turning 14, then they would never be allowed to be adopted. They would have to be taught a vocation and take care of themselves. There were 3 twelve year old girls and 1 thirteen year old girl that were just beautiful and their time is running out to find a family. They all appeared to be healthy too. Grace gave one of them an English name, Olivia, and she in turn gave Grace a Chinese name, which means "little green". I will have to find out how to spell it. I think it was Xiao Liu....? They are planning to be pen pals. I sure hope it will work and she will receive the letters. She told me she had been in the orphanage since she was a baby. It just grips your heart to think that is all she has ever known. You could tell she desperately wanted a family and just quietly observed our interaction with our family. Grace was pleading with me to help find her a home. I will just throw this out there....if any of you have ever considered adopting, these kids will be on the fast-track through Children's Hope International and they will do everything to expedite these adoptions. They could be home in 6 months' time. If this is God's will for you, you will know it in your heart and it won't let you go. If this isn't your calling, then please consider supporting orphans monetarily through the various ministries that assist them. That's all I will say about that.

We watched the movie "Up" with the kids and CHI brought in Kentucky Fried Chicken for all. It was the best chicken I've had in a longgggg time! Gabi was so excited about how many bones she collected. Hee! Hee!!

Melody told us the next day that the meeting, our videos, and our question/answer session really helped open the minds of the directors. They said they realize that these kids need loving homes. All children need a family to love them and take care of them. They were impressed by the love of our family units that was obvious. They also had a young lady, Jenna, who shared about her adoption experience. She was adopted from China when she was 8 years old to a family in Pennsylvania. She is now working in Beijing for CHI and speaks Mandarin. Also a young man named David spoke, who was never adopted and CHI helped get his education. He now works at the Beijing office. The next morning we all checked out early and took a bus to see the Terra Cotta Warriors. The children & nannies joined us there and went through the museums with us. I hope that we were able to share hope with them. They were all just wonderful and it gripped our hearts that they have never been able to be on any adoption lists. They have very little chance of all finding homes. You want to just rescue every one of them. Their little faces will always be remembered by us...and we will still hear the echoes of their voices as they stood in front of the group and introduced themselves one by one....pleading for one thing, a Mommy and Daddy to take care of them and love them.

We left the Terra Cotta Warriors and took a bus to the airport, where we separated from the Fowler family. Our flight would take us to Guangzhou, then Zhanjiang late that night. We ate dinner in the airport and realized that Steve had left his iPad in the seat pocket on our last flight. Our guide that had now joined us to go to Zhanjiang/Lianjiang made calls and took Steve to lost & found to no avail. It was gone. I was just sick about it. I had to take a walk. We had moved around so much and had so many flights, buses, hotels, trains, that we were doing good to keep it all together. Thank goodness our kids are such great travelers and go with the flow. While Steve went with Melody & Simon to lost & found again, David helped me get the girls and luggage to our gate. We took a wrong turn and a young man with a cart pulled up to us and started telling us to get on the cart. We jumped on and then he starts saying we had to pay the ladies at the desk! What!? David finally jumped off and laid $100rmb on the desk and jumped back on. Off we went...wondering if he was taking us the back way because it seemed like an awfully long ride. At one point, I have to admit...I screamed! He was driving so fast and went right toward a crowd of people that had their backs to us. He didn't even slow down, but finally honked his horn. I'm not sure if it was my scream or the horn that saved their lives. Anyway, we made it and Steve & the others were already there waiting for us. Oh boy. So we flew to Zhanjiang and checked into the Crowne Plaza Hotel. We got right to bed, exhausted from such a long day once again. We needed to be fresh for our exciting day ahead!