China Dolls

So let me apologize for two things 1) the fact that it has taken me this long to post on my China trip 2)the fact that this post is so long! I am actually just posting the update letter I sent out to all my supporters. If you have other questions or things I left out that you would like to know, just leave me a comment. I'll post a few of my favorite pictures next week, and maybe a few favorite memories as well.


Wow! Where to start? First, let me just say thank you, thank you, thank you! Your prayers and support throughout my preparation for and time in China were remarkable! I could feel your prayers surrounding me every single day. Thank you for sacrificing to support me financially as well. What a blessing! I will never be able to truly express to you the level of my gratitude, but thank you!

I’ll begin by giving you an overview of the activities we participated in while in China. Our Show Hope team first met in Newark, NJ. The team was composed of 19 women (17 of us girls and 2 team leaders). We came from all different areas of the country-Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, Alabama, Montana, Indiana, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Mississippi. It was incredible to sit down with these girls and have everyone share how God had brought them here to this place, this mission, with this passion. It was evident from our first night together that God’s hand was all over our trip, including our two amazing team leaders. We flew out to Beijing the next day. After 13 hrs on a plane, we were finally there! We went straight to New Hope Healing Home right outside of Beijing. Let me give you a little history about the facility. New Hope is actually the foundation God used to start it all. The facility is run by Joyce and Robyn Hill. Joyce is a doctor from Australia and Robyn is an engineer from Britain. The couple met, married, and moved to China where through different circumstances they were allowed the opportunity to see the need for special needs orphan care. Through the guidance and blessing of the Lord the couple was able to found New Hope Healing Home-an orphan care center for special needs children in particular. Once again through the hand of the Lord, Steven Curtis Chapman was able to see the work of New Hope and partner along side them through Show Hope to build and fund Maria’s Big House of Hope—a six story facility committed to the care of special needs orphans. What an incredible experience to see and hear how the Lord has blessed these two facilities. God is doing big things for His name’s sake in China! We spent our first afternoon at New Hope meeting babies, touring the facility, and hearing and seeing the work of the Lord. The next day we attended an international church service. You had to present your passport in order to be allowed access to the service. We then went and hiked part of the Great Wall. This was our first immersion in the Chinese culture. So neat! Chinese people are very proud of their country and its accomplishments. After some Chinese Tex-Mex, we boarded a train bound for Luoyang, which is located in the Henan province, southwest of Beijing. What an experience! We discovered that until the lights go out on the train (which is at 10) the bottom beds are considered extra seating. We had several Chinese people come and sit with us and talk with us even though we were limited on the amount of Mandarin we could speak. One of our leaders, Katie, who lived in China for 6 years, was sweet enough to sit with us and help translate. The people were so friendly and curious. I loved it! We arrived in Luoyang the next morning around 7 and headed for Maria’s Big House of Hope. We would spend the next 7 or 8 days getting to love on the nannies, babies, and nurses, as well as our team members at Maria’s. The facility itself was incredible! Joyce and Robyn helped in the design. They knew what worked best for them, and how to make the facility most efficient and functional for the care it would be delivering. What a blessing! There are 6 floors at Maria’s. On the bottom level you will find the healthiest kids. They are kids awaiting surgeries, families, etc. They all have a special need, but their needs are not immediately life threatening. These were the active babies, the ones into everything! The first floor was also the home of the new Kindergarten. They are designing curriculum to provide the children who are developmentally ready with the experience and opportunities of a kindergarten classroom. It was incredible to see a few of the girls on our team contribute both to the curriculum and teaching opportunities there in the kindergarten. The second floor was all cleft lip, cleft palate babies. The best smiles you will ever see! They are awaiting corrective surgery. The nannies on this floor blew me away with their compassion and dedication to the children’s growth and development. The facility does not have many of the therapeutic, medical devices we are accustomed to here in the states that assist in the feeding of cleft lip/palate babies. But no matter how long or messy the feeding time, as long as that baby was still eating, the nannies persevered in feeding and nurturing these precious, growing, little ones. The third floor was home to many of the cerebral palsy, brain dysplasia children. You talk about a blessing. You had to watch your heart on the 3rd floor. The fourth floor, where I spent majority of my time, consisted of many of the chronic illness children; the children with downs syndrome, cerebral palsy, brain injury, heart defects, malnutrition/failure to thrive. Some of the children were post surgery, some were awaiting surgery, and some were simply there for comfort care. The fifth floor was a palliative care floor, or end of life care floor. These children had been medically assessed and found to be in either a critical condition or in a state that could not be treated aside from simply providing comfort care. The fifth floor also housed the operating room, which will actually be used for the first time at the end of June to perform 12 cleft lip/ cleft palate repairs. These surgeries will be the first in house procedures performed. Praise the Lord! The sixth floor was the residence of the doctor, facility coordinator, as well as extra room and board for teams such as ours. Everything about the facility was astonishing! So for the next few days, we fell in love with the babies, nannies, and nurses at Maria’s. We could not get enough of these kids. They were so full of life, personality, love, and joy. They were such blessings to us! We were able to participate in a few service projects at the facility. We organized and restocked the pharmacy, helped lay the foundation for the playground and put together some of the equipment, assisted with the kindergarten program, painted, and did a little gardening as well. A few of us were also able to make rounds with the doctor one morning.
I know God is moving and working among the orphan system in China, and I hold fast to His promise in John 14:18! Oh how desperately I need to pray for the Lord to break my heart for the things that break His. While in Luoyang, we were also able to experience the culture through walks and time in the old town area as well as the town square. Oh and authentic Chinese food is so good!! I know, I know. I can almost hear the wise cracks now, but let me just say that regardless of the animal it may have been that I consumed, it was some kind of tasty! After many tears and the heartbreak of leaving the place and people we had grown to love so deeply in Luoyang, we boarded yet another train. We headed back to Beijing and New Hope for our last few days. We loved on more adorable babies there at New Hope, did a prayer walk through Bei Wu village, as well as visited some of the tourist sites in Beijing. We went to the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, took rickshaw rides, walking tours, bargained in local markets, saw an acrobatic show, saw some of the Olympic sites (from a distance), visited the Summer Palace, etc.

Now that I have gone on and on about all that we did (and that actually probably was not everything), let me share with you my heart and a few prayer requests. My time in China was unbelievable! God never ceases to amaze me with the opportunities and blessings He lavishes upon us as His children. God not only opened my eyes to part of His heart, but He allowed me to grow in Him and to see His work—not only His work in China, but His work in my life as well. Even just to see how my job here in the states was preparing me for my trip, and possibly what is to come, was incredible. God truly will sustain us if we will trust in Him. I will never be able to help you to see and feel what I saw and felt while in China, but I can and will pray for God to break all of our hearts for the things that break His. I can pray for each and every one of us to make time to get alone with God and truly surrender our lives to the call He has placed on us individually. I can pray that God will reveal to us more intimately His passion for the nations, His desire for all to hear and worship His name, and His design that all come to salvation through belief in the sacrificial life, death, and resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ. And you, you can pray for the millions of orphans in the world; the millions of precious children who desperately desire love, attention, care, and the embrace of a forever family. I know that adoption is a huge step. It is a big sacrifice for some, a challenge for others, and perhaps not an option for many; but, please pray and seek after the Lord’s will for you and your family concerning adoption. It may be that instead of adopting you could support a child through New Hope Healing Home or Show Hope or Compassion. It may be that you feel called to give to Show Hope's adoption aid grant fund. Whatever it may be, the Lord has charged us with the task of caring for orphans, so please seek after Him and His design for how you and your family can do just that. Pray that God will lead families to adopt these precious children of His. Pray that the Lord will continue to accomplish His work in China. As one of the pastors at the church I attend in Birmingham preached the other Sunday, in Ecclesiastes we read how everything “under the sun” or all that is apart from the Lord is futile or vain (all the work, material things, life in general), but everything above the sun, all the work of the Lord is eternal and worthy of all our time, effort, and resources. What a beautiful reminder of our call to count the cost for the sake of the gospel. What could be more wonderful and rewarding than a life spent with the soul aim of glorifying our Lord and Savior? “Let’s use the grace of God in us, for the glory of God around us!”
With Love and Thanks,
Lucinda

You can continue to follow the work of Show Hope through their blog, located online at http://blog.showhope.org.
Also if you have questions about supporting a child through one of the organizations I mentioned, I would be more than happy to help, just let me know.