Meet the Kids at Chenzhou: John

John, most of you know him as my little boy. Well I claim him as mine :) I have watched him grown up in a weird "see him 2 weeks every year." I first met him when he was 1 and was dressed in all pink. We were convinced he was a boy until we finally had to change his diaper! He is blind and has some rare disease where he doesn't have eyes. He has the most precious laugh and smile and loves to be tossed in the air and kissed on his face and neck. Anything involving touch and sound, obviously because he doesn't have the sight sense. John goes just above my knee when standing up and I'm 5'8". He cannot stand on his own yet or walk but he can stand using support and can almost walk. He has improved quite a bit from last year but he is still so behind for being four. I have been trying to get him moved to a foster care in Beijing that is for visually impaired children with other special needs as well.  It seems so awesome and I pray that I can get him moved there. The orphanage has said they would love to help but they recently had a brain scan done on him and he has some problems with his brain and delays, we aren't sure what exactly though. Please pray for this sweet boy, he is so thin, small, and delayed. He needs love and help to get him to where he needs to be. Please pray that the foster home will still take him even though he has brain problems and that they can help him get the care he needs. Also, he is on the shared adoption list so if he were to get adopted that would be even better.

Meet the Kids at Chenzhou

So I'm not really sure anyone is even reading my blogs at this point since I haven't been posting much....I have decided to post pictures and little descriptions of each kid so that you can get to know them a little better. We have named all of the kids to help keep track of them when talking about them and I know we all use their names in our blogs and sometimes don't show pictures. So I am doing this so you can put a name to a face and hopefully a few of you will enjoy it.

If you would like to read other blogs from our team you can read those:

Megan's Blog

Charlie's Blog

Shannon's/Team Blog

Makenna's Blog

Katherine's Blog

Day 1 Blessings

Our first day at the orphanage went a little better than I had expected. I’m sure those that had never been to the orphanage were in a bit of a shock, but it was pretty much how it usually is, maybe even a little quieter since most of the older kids are in school and we will only see them for a few days.

It is still survival of the fittest at the orphanage, don’t get me wrong. Pretty much all of them are bruised and scratched from either hurting themselves or having others hurt them.

There are quite a few new children there since I was last here. Two little girls that look as if they could be twins that look around 4-6, a boy with down syndrome and probably quite a few other special needs, quite a few new babies, and one older boy that we have never seen.

It is so hard to see new kids come, especially the older ones. There is a boy that we call Taylor because he looks just like Shark Boy (Taylor Lautner) and he came to the orphanage last year. He is so smart and sweet and he still remembers his parents’ phone number. They haven’t been able to get a hold of his parents yet so soon they will put out ads for his biological parents and if they don’t hear anything back they will start his adoption papers so that he can get adopted. He is such a sweetheart and it breaks my heart to see him there. Later in the afternoon Annie was taking some pictures on a small digital camera and Taylor asked to try it. He is so stable and good with a camera; you can tell he is so bright. He continued to go around the room taking pictures of everyone. When he came over to me I was with one of the new little girls that we named Dora and we were in front of the window. He held up the camera but noticed that the picture would not be good because of the sun in the background so he shook his head and grabbed my hand so that he could take me to the other side of the room with better lighting. I pray that they find his biological parents soon before he has to spend too long in the orphanage or even that they get his paperwork done so that he can leave, he truly is one of the sweetest boys.

This blog is a bit jumbled, but when we first got to the orphanage in the morning a few of the nannies were there and then crazy little Mia came running out and bounced me her little soccer ball and then grabbed my hand smiling and “ran” as best as she could with her leg with me in tow. She is 8 now and we’re not sure exactly what her special need is. She doesn’t talk and in the past she usually kept to herself and just watched from a far. It’s the little things like seeing her smile, laugh, and pull me into the big kid room that are blessings to me.

Shannon and Makenna made us little journals with the Bible verse that we picked out for this trip and ourselves and decorated them for us. They aren’t very big but Shannon gave us one challenge: to write down at least one blessing from that day that we saw in the orphanage. Sure, these kids are in orphanages and most don’t have forever families and may never get that chance, but I can see a few blessings from today. My first would definitely have to be Mia interacting more and even laughing now, this may seem so minute to some people, but to me it really is a blessing considering I have seen how she has been the past 3 years of her life. Another blessing that I saw happened when we went upstairs to the 5^th floor where most of the babies and rooms are. We went into the middle age room and I saw my little boy, John. He was on his rocking horse, of course. He loves that horse; the rocking and the falling when people pick him up are definitely his two favorite things.

I walked over to John and surprisingly felt a sense of peace come over me. I had thought that I may lose it when I saw his small fragile body that is around the size of a 2-3 year old, definitely not a 4 year old. Or maybe even the fact that he still doesn’t talk or stand by himself without help would have made me cry, but surprisingly I didn’t. He is still smiley John when you give him attention and tickle him and he is still standing up with some help and walking around for a while. Later in the afternoon he even stood by the table with some support and fed himself his snack. These little improvements made it a bit better for me to see him this year.

I think that it may have also had something to do with our trying to move him to a foster care program in Beijing that is for blind special need children. I plan on talking to the director with Shannon at one point this week to talk to them about this possibility of moving him. We had someone talk to Chenzhou previously asking about it and supposedly their response was that they would love to. So hopefully they still feel that way and the pictures that I brought will help them decide as well.

These little improvements with John are so small but so great in my eyes. Is he where he should be at 4 years old? Definitely not. But I am trying to count as many blessings as I can, because like the man that came to our church said before I left home, we are all blessed, no matter what (he was born dead for 18 minutes and has cerebral palsy).

That message gave me so much hope and it makes me want to look for the blessings that God has given these children and me so much more. He loves these children even more than we do and I know He has a perfect plan for each of them, I’m just glad that I get to be a very small part of it.

Ok it’s almost time to get ready for our day here so I better go. Sorry this is a bit scatterbrained and went off in one direction, but this is how I’m feeling right now so I guess it’s better than nothing. I’ll try to give a more detailed account of our day today later. Please keep the prayers coming; they are greatly appreciated. 

Journey to Chenzhou!

I’ll be honest, at some points yesterday I didn’t think we were ever going to make it to Chenzhou.

We left LAX (10/12 of us) at 1:40AM and arrived in Beijing at 4:30AM. It was a 12-hour flight and I slept for 10 of those hours, definitely the best international flight that I have been on, thank goodness for zzzquil! Once we landed in Beijing we went through immigration and then tried to figure out whether we had to pick up our bags at baggage claim or whether they were going to be checked all the way to Guangzhou. We were told that we wouldn’t have to mess with them but we decided to go to baggage claim and check just in case since we had about 3 ½ hours until our next flight.

Our bags never came so some of us exchanged some money and then we went through customs with only our carry-ons. Once we were through customs we found where security was and started to head that way. We finally got to the counter and they started checking our boarding passes (we were split in 2 lines). Right away one of the girls looked at Megan’s passport and boarding pass and started yelling something to someone behind security and then when they didn’t answer she started yelling out to anyone that would answer. At the same time Charlie was at another counter and the man looked at her boarding pass and started yelling too. At that point I was sure we had doing nothing wrong…I wasn’t sure what we had done but I knew it wasn’t good. The security people eventually got in touch with someone who called us all out of line and to the side where he informed us that our flight to Guangzhou had be cancelled.

Let the panic begin.

Miraculously, we had met a man that we later found out was Bo who was on our LA flight and from Guangzhou. He had just gotten his phD in the states and spoke perfect english! By the end of the day we were so glad that we had waited for our luggage because without him there would have been no way that we would have ever gotten on a flight.

Bo told us that we needed to go find out how to change our flight to a later one so he helped us eventually get to the Air China domestic ticket counter…there was easily over 100 people in line, and by line I mean in a mob, and it was only 6:00AM.

By this point we were quite panicked, especially because Amy and Julia had flown in on another flight and had stayed in a day bed overnight since they had a 9 hour layover. They didn’t have any texts pre purchased and the wifi wasn’t working in the airport so we had no way to reach them. We also were trying to get a hold of our team coordinator back in the US and try to figure out what to do since we wouldn’t meet up with our guide Steve until we got to Guangzhou.

Shannon and Bo started looking around the airport at other ticket counters etc and eventually tried to announce over the intercom for Amy and Julia (the line was too long) while the rest of us stayed in line with all of our bags. We even witnessed a fist fight breakout in front of us…it was an experience to say the least.

A few minutes later when Shannon and Bo got back someone spotted Julia’s Visiting Orphans shirt and we started yelling at them so they knew where we were. By that point we were so glad that we finally found them and that we knew we would all be together at least.

We eventually got to the front of the line where they told us that we would be on a 12:30PM flight that afternoon and they gave us each a paper ticket with some Chinese writing on it that we had to take to Terminal 3 to get our actual tickets.

So we lugged our carry-ons downstairs, keep in mind we all have backpacks, some of us have totes, and some have roller duffles, and Amy and Julia had all of their luggage, so it didn’t really feel like we were travelling light at that point and all of our shoulders were hurting too, but we made it down the elevator and got on the shuttle to terminal 3 from terminal 2. Their shuttle isn’t quite like our’s in Orlando’s airport, it’s a bus that takes about 10-15 minutes on the expressway and streets to get you to the next terminal.

We got to terminal 3 and found domestic departures. There was quite a line at the ticket counter but they saw our shirts and took us to the other side where we all got our real tickets with Bo’s help and checked Amy and Julia’s bag on to the flight. After we had done that they also told us that we would have to go back to Terminal 2 and locate all of our baggage since the flight was cancelled and we would have to bring it back to Terminal 3 to check again.

So at 8AM everyone on the team besides Amy, Julia, and I went to Terminal 2 to get our bags. Amy thought that it may be easier to leave all of our backpacks and carry-ons there instead of lugging them back on the bus and to Terminal 2, so I decided to stay to help them watch all of the bags since I only had 1 small checked bag and there were a lot of carry-ons.

We got quite a few stairs sitting on the floor of the Beijing airport with about 14 backpacks, 2 totes, a computer bag, and 4 duffle bags, not to mention, Amy and Julia are both blonde so that attracted attention as is. We all just ended up talking about the trip and their adoptions from China (they adopted a baby girl from Chenzhou last year). I had texts that I could receive and send and so did Shannon so she would update me on how everything was going. At about 9 she told us that it would be another hour until they got luggage since it took awhile to find where to go (even with Bo) and now it would take awhile to receive it all. They had to wait at a baggage claim where the bags would come off very slowly and one by one. In the end, they got the 3 walkers that we had checked and everyone’s bags except for both of Charlie’s, one of Megan’s and one of Sarah’s. So Steve, our guide, has been trying to find those bags last night and today to get them to Chenzhou ASAP.

Around 11AM our group finally got back to Terminal 3 with most of the luggage and we then had to quickly go back to the counter and check our bags. Once that was done it was 11:30 and our flight was boarding at noon. So once half of us were done with our bags we ran to security and started waiting in line and then the rest of the team joined us when they were finished. We thankfully all got through security ok and headed over to our gate where we got to put down our bags, finally get some water (none of us had water since we had gotten off of the plane) and use the restroom (our first squatty potty experience).

Our flight was eventually delayed (a little bit of a panic since we didn’t know when our train tickets were for in Guangzhou and when the last train left) and then they moved our gate to the other end of the terminal. At around 1:30 we were finally on the plane and left around 2.

It was a 3 hour plane ride and most of us tried not to sleep, but sleep ended up winning. We got into Guangzhou around 5 and headed to baggage claim where we got all of the walkers and baggage that we had checked in Beijing, still missing 4 bags though.

We walked out and met Steve where we talked for a few minutes and then headed out to the bus which would take us to the train station. Our train was scheduled to leave at 7:00 and they do not wait for anyone, you only have 2 minutes to get on and situated as is. We got to the train station at 6:40 and went in, dropped our bags on the security belt, grabbed them and went straight up to where they check your tickets before going to the platform. They open those gates around 10 minutes before you have to get on the train so everyone lines up with their bags and then heads down all the stairs and goes to the platform and carriage number to wait. Then it is a bit of a frenzy and pushing fest while everyone tries to get on with all of their bags.

It is a high speed train so it goes up to around 200mph and we got to Chenzhou about an hour and ten minutes later. We were greeted at the train station by the director, Mr. Ren, and the head nanny, who I have to say is my favorite, she is so sweet. It was so good to see their faces and give them hugs! They had a bus come and pick us up that took us back to the hotel. We got to the hotel at 8:45/9:00 and that made it 40-48 hours (42 for me) of traveling for all of us to finally get to Chenzhou. We were given our room keys and went upstairs to drop our bags off and then headed downstairs to go get KFC across the street with Steve and our friends from the orphanage too. Once we were done with the craziness that occurs ordering from KFC and eating, we headed back to the hotel and took showers, unpacked, and got the internet to work before we all headed to bed!

It is 7:00AM here now and in about an hour we head to down to breakfast and then we will be at the orphanage by 9:00 to have our usual meeting/welcome and then we get to go see the kids. Most of the older kids won’t be there except for one day this weekend since they are still in school and stay there.

I have so many emotions going through my head right now, I cannot wait to see all of the kids faces and especially my little boy John. I am going to try to not lose it, but I’m not making any promises, it’s always so hard to see him like he was the last year, not improving much.

Thanks to anyone who actually read all of this J My roommate, Charlie just woke up and said “You’re still blogging?!” It is quite a rarity that I write this much, but I couldn’t sleep this morning so I figured I would at least write this since it didn’t really involve putting my emotions into words. I will try to blog again tonight about our first day. Thanks for all the prayers! 

42 Hours Later...

Hi everyone! We finally made it to Chenzhou....42 hours later. It has been a very long journey to get here but we are all so happy to finally be in Chenzhou. It's almost 11PM here so I am going to finally take a shower and try to get some sleep. I'm sure I'll be up before 8 when we have to meet for breakfast so I will try to blog about all of our wonderful/terrible adventures.

Thanks for all of the prayers, we are all doing well & getting excited to see the kids tomorrow!

China Here I Come!

So, I am on my way to China, for the 4th year in a row! I don't think I have quite realized it yet.. It's hard to believe that I am going back to see the sweet faces of Chenzhou. Every year it is so hard to leave them knowing you are not guaranteed of ever seeing them again. But thankfully, I have been blessed to go back and love on them and I cannot wait.

I am currently in LA with my team, minus 2. There are 12 of us total on the team, but two of them (Julia and Amy) will be meeting us in Beijing. It's 11:00PM here and our flight leaves at 1:40AM so we have quite a bit of time.

I have already been traveling for about 11 hours and I have around 25 hours or so until I will finally be in Chenzhou. We have a 13 hour flight to Beijing, 2 hour layover, 3 hour flight to Guangzhou, 2-3 hour layover, 2/3 hour train ride and then about 30 minutes in a bus!

Thank you so much to everyone that has supported me financially and in prayer, it means so much to me and the children and nannies at Chenzhou.

Please be praying for safe travel for our team, good health, team unity, for our guide: Steve, and the people of Chenzhou as we get to see them again soon.

Talk to you all soon.

P.S. Those of you that have followed my blogs in the past know that I have a tendency to stop blogging toward the end or not blog everyday..it's not necessarily because I don't want to, it's just that it is so emotionally and physically tiring that 1. it's hard to stay awake and write 2. It is so hard to put my emotions and thoughts into words sometimes. So bear with me and I will do my best to share my journey with you all!