Hope Foster Home Visit

Today was another incredible day as we visited Hope Foster Home. This is an awesome facility run by Dr. Joyce and Robin Hill outside Beijing in the Shunyi district. The home takes in special needs babies(cleft lips, heart defects, bladder problems, etc...) and provides surgeries, physical therapy, and other medical attention and works to place them in foster home until they hopefully get adopted. Hopefully the children above will be part of a forever family.

As with New Day, the love and attention these children receive is phenomenal! There is one nanny for every two children, the facilities are spotless, and the children thrive as they bond with the staff at Hope. It is truly amazing to see the drastic improvement of these children in the before and after pictures -- often in only a few months!

We were able to deliver blankets to Hope (which were collected from Jeff's church in Orlando)as well as "premie" diapers which are hard to get here in China. There are many volunteers who visit from all over the world and typically stay for a week or more and live in special "yurts" behind the home. Almost all of the babies eventually are adopted into forever families - most of them in the US. Lee and Becky from Hope were superb hosts for us!

After visiting Hope, we took a quick tour of the Hutong in Beijing. These are extremely old living sections of Beijing which are over 500 years old and have been relatively untouched since then. Families still live in these ancient quarters in spite of the modern growth around them. Speaking of growth, you can definitely tell the Olympics are coming in 2008! Many buildings are sprouting up, clean-up is everywhere, and sporting facilities are being constructed all around. Beijing will be a different looking city in a few years.