Sunday, July 27, 2008

Weekend Update - Camp #1

Here's the weekend update from China. Thank you all for your part in making these smiles possible for the orphans of China!
From the kids: "This wonderful week made me feel our relationship is just fish and water, we cannot depart..." "I can say I am the happiest girl in the world."
Youtube videos of the week: From Zheng Zhou Camp: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=It2qTAG6q9c
From our Staff: (Nicole Chmelar)This afternoon when we told each other our life stories, we learned so much about each of our girls' lives... things that hurt to know. Things like the fact that most of the girls from my team were orphaned because their parents killed each other. When they started telling, it was like a water fountain broke loose... they were almost sobbing so hard they couldn't talk. How can you comfort an eleven girl who lost her parents only four years before? We listened and I told them that I was so sorry, but that we love them so much. We held hands. We cried. I wanted to pr so bad... I am so thankful that our Father can see their little broken hearts and He cares for them so much more than we ever could.


Monday, July 21, 2008

Beijing Pre-Camp Update: Plan B

Hello from Xin Zheng, China! About 1 week ago we had some news that none of us saw coming. We found out that our Beijing camp would need to move because the government was shutting down the hotel we were staying in. I still don’t understand exactly what happened. But everything is CRAZY in Beijing with the Olympics coming. Anyway, we had four days to be out of the hotel. So we prayed! The months of preparation for the Beijing camp were gone in just a few seconds. And we still had over 400 people coming. We began putting the word out and ended up really connecting with an orphanage that has about 600 orphans. We found a college university (www.sias.edu.cn) that was willing to host our camp and within 2 days we were off to explore. We got the approval from the school and had the rest of the team leave Beijing and take the train to our new camp. One of my favorite memories was unloading the truck with ALL our random camp items. One of the translaters said, “You brought everything but the kitchen sink… But I saw that you brought one of those too.” Kids and volunteers and craziness arrive at the train station tonight. I’ll let you know how the week goes!

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Leaving for the unknown

In just a few hours I'll be on my way to China. Even though I've been so many other times, this trip feels different. There are more unknowns than ever before. But it is a God summer and I'm really looking forward to seeing God perform miracles in the hearts of people and with the obstacles we face. Thank you all for your prayers. I'll be keeping you updated.

A couple days ago several of us went down to Mexico. I met this little girl at the orphanage. Her name is Chloe and she is getting adopted soon. The mom that is adopting her wanted to bless us before we left. Chloe put her hand on our heads and then her mom prayed. At the end Chloe said, "Amen!" This little girl gave me the most amazing send off for China I could have ever hoped for!