Proud Sponsor Parents

Barb and Tim meet their sponsor son!

God gets the glory

We are in the process of processing what has happened over the past two weeks. We arrived home on friday and are almost over jetlag, but just beginning to get over what we've experienced. The time with the kids in HengYang was amazing, even more so the time with the staff. To meet these women who have given years of their lives for these kids was so encouraging. They are just young professionals with simple hearts ready to serve. God let them in on His heart for the kids of China and they've come to help out. It was amazing to be led in worship by them, both in musical worship (thanks Alison) and the worship of serving the kids (thanks Kyla, Allison, Karen, Liesel, Annah, Hannah, Suzie and Barbara). God receives glory everyday as these people serve these little ones.

Hengyang

We arrived at the newer Hengyang Spring Project, where ICC has been working the last 5 years. Conditions are much improved since they've started and the lives of kids are being radically transformed. A big part of being on a short term team here is just to be extra hands with the kids. They have the ratio of caregivers to kids down to 1:4 instead of 1:20, but they know the kids long for much more personal interaction with adults. we've spent the last two days doing that and loving it. We've seen some hard things - heart breaking, but when we shared around the table tonight our highs and lows, we had plenty of highs and the only lows was that we wish we had more energy and time to give.

It's also great to get to know the local caregivers who give so much to the kids.

Tomorrow we will be meeting with the ICC ex-pat team where we hope to bless them in many ways. Its been wonderful to hear their stories as they've come from the UK, Canada, Australia and elsewhere to give their lives for this little ones.
oh ya and tonight we had pig feet for dinner :) and the ladies were asking for men to father their children - they mean the orphans ;)

A whole lot more pics (via facebook imperialism)

Here are a bunch of pics from the trip on facebook - come join us on our journey!

http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=606665660&k=34AX54RRRZYM5EDFPG54VT
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=606665660&k=R3FU2XPRRY6M5EDFPG54VT

the abominable cupcake

After a road-trip that some thought harrowing (and Barb thought positively exhilirating) we've made it down from Changsha to Hengyang. This is another big city, but with with very few foreigners, and the ICC work is less developed. We've enjoyed spending time at the big child centre here, holding the babies and playing with the kids, hearing moving stories from the ICC staff about the journeys on which these disabled children have travelled. Stay tuned for more photos (or if you're lucky enough to have him as your friend, check Randy's facebook!)

Back in Changsha a few days ago I drew a little maze for Miranda to work through in our spare time. She solved it in record time ("I'm so good at mazes!" she said) and the prize, I promised, was a cupcake. Easily produced, I thought, and I found one that same day at a bakeshop. It had purple icing and Miranda was very impressed. After supper that night, family-style, after we had finished our dozens of delicious and spicy entrees, M opened her cupcake and took a bite. It was a traumatic bite for her: the cheery purple icing concealed densely packed chunks of red-bean. So that was the only bite she took - who could blame her? But the rest of us didn't want to waste a perfectly good (if somewhat culturally surprising) cupcake, so we took turns digging a little deeper into it. You can imagine our chagrin when we found beneath the red-bean density a heart of pork floss! Purple candy-icing, red-bean chunks and pork-floss - now THAT's a cultural experience!

I'll feel terrible if Miranda never wants to come back to China. But the good news is she seems to have taken it all in stride! This morning at the children's centre she was taking the lead in reaching out to children with down's syndrome and cerebral palsy, hugging them and letting herself receive their often overenthusiastic hugs. She's become a good friend of the ICC "poster girl," Liang-liang - you'll see some photos of them shortly. Miranda doesn't seem to be intimidated by some of the gaps that I feel between myself and these ICC kids.

I was thinking of that line from somewhere in the Bible - "and a little child shall lead them."

-Steve