Thursday, November 27, 2008

We Visit the Orphanage

Many of us were skeptical of making a 2 day trip to Maoming that would take us over 6 hours in a bus both ways. But after visiting the Orphanage, I know that no one believes that now.

Maonan Social Welfare Institute (SWI) houses about 80 orphaned children. Most of the healthy babies are readily adopted. But as with all orphaned children, there is that group of babies with special needs (cleft palates, heart conditions, mentally disabled, etc..) that become society's cast offs. It's truly heartbreaking to see these children grouped together. And this is just one small orphanage. There are many, many more throughout the world. And the tragedy is that many of these handicaps are treatable through surgery.

Matt and Tim walked through the older children and gave them candy. Many of them were a little hesitant (as was Matt & Tim) but eventually they came around and accepted the candy. While we were there, they also gave a present of 6 dozen childrens toothbrushes to the Orphanage.


After we gave our gifts to the orphanage, the orphanage gave us a gift: a small package with the clothes that Dan-Dan was found in. Clothes is a generous term. What she was left in was a diaper and a small green sweatshirt-like jacket.


Matt and Tim received a jade pendant for good luck, as did Dan-Dan.

The caretakers are people that are truly selfless. Going to work each day and seeing new babies come and go, but also giving attention to children that will never leave the system.


This happens not only here, but everywhere. My God bless all these special people. They truly are doing His work.

Next, we visited Dan-Dan's finding place. The Wedding Photography Studio moved about a month ago, but we visited the place where an abandonment of a little baby set in to motion a series of events that brought us together.

In situations like this, there truly is a silver lining to a storm cloud.

We have no doubt that this Thanksgiving will be the most memorable in our lives. Not just because of us getting Dan-Dan, but because we had the opportunity to visit her orphanage and see the environment that so many children like Dan-Dan grow up in. In addition, the general environment here in rural China is so much lower than anywhere in the U.S. (Slums, ghettos included) that you can't visit here on any day and not feel truly thankful for the wonderful opportunities we have.

We hope you all had a blessed Thanksgiving!

1 Comments:

Blogger Dave Franz said...

Greg, Sue, Matt, Tim, Elizabeth,

Sounds like you had a great Thanksgiving. Mom and dad were over here today and just left.
We talked about you guys and are excited to see Elizabeth. We have been checking in on the Blog, sounds very interesting.
Hopefully the rest of your trip is safe.

Dave, Paula, Kate, and Nick.

November 27, 2008 2:57 PM  

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