Day 8

Day 8:  Where to begin.  We had two big events.   The first was a visit to our hotel by Mike, the director of the Luoyang branch of New Day Creations foster care program. http://www.newdaycreations.com/foster/ We had been in email contact with Mike as we progressed through the process of adopting Z.  Mike oversaw Z's foster care situation and was very helpful to us.   M presented, and he accepted, a donation of warm fuzzy blankets the Girl Scouts had made, as well as a bag of children's pharmaceuticals that were donated by many wonderful people in the Evanston, IL area.  

The second big event was our afternoon visit to the Luoyang Orphanage.  We were greeting by the deputy director, and given a very nice tour of the site by another person.    We began our tour with a visit to the 5^th floor this is the site of The New Hope Foundation, we had collected over the counter pharmaceuticals form the Evanston homeschool community and our adoption group from Y's adoption.   We had over 70 pounds of donation, so much in fact that we left a box in Beijing for Global Grace Outreach, a special needs foster home in Beijing, and we'll try to post the web site.  The director of New Hope, Linda accepted the donations and gave us a tour of the facility.  The children that are brought to them form the orphanage and not expected to live, but with the loving care given to the children by the nannies and the good food, the children our growing stronger.   One nanny takes care of 3 children and they work 12-hour shifts.  At this time they have 42 children and can take 3 more when they have the staff.   Every thing that New Hope does is done with donation, if you haven't gone to the New Hope web site we urge you to.  As we left the New Hope floor, it was like entering another world the world of what a large orphanage it truly like and it's impossible to describe in words what the experience was like.   This orphanage has well over 600 children, with 200 in foster care, and adopts out approximately 40 per year.  Luoyang is classified as a special needs orphanage and we where told that the number of orphans abandoned each year has been increasing.   Although classified as special needs they do have non-special needs children.   Z's foster sister Sarah (New Day Luoyang) is non-special needs. The children's ages ranged from infants to teenagers and we were told that 200 of the children attend the local schools.   We found one little boy, Dang Fu Ke that has long been sponsored (Half the Sky)http://www.halfthesky.org/work/sites/luoyang.php   by a family in Australia and were able to take his picture.  Check out some of the photos we posted.  The children were wonderful and amazing.   We took many pictures and then showed the kids themselves on the camera screen – a real hit.  The caregivers seemed genuinely happy that we were there and let us play with the children, pass out candy, and take pictures.   We were able to locate one caregiver that had stayed with Z during one of his cleft surgeries (see picture) as well as his crib room and even the specific crib that was his. It was an amazing and very emotional and heart wrenching visit.   We were very thankful for the warmth the adults showed us and the warmth they seemed to show the children. 

Following this visit we went to the street where Z was found abandoned in Luoyang.  Another piece in the puzzle of Z's life was revealed for us.