GongYi Home of Hope

On April 19th, Nathan was invited to be the guest on a nationally televised talk show presented by Henan Television. The format of this program is a host and hostess who ask many questions in the first part, and then the studio audience is invited to question the guest. This show has become very popular in China and has a large viewing audience. The producer of the program asked us if there were any questions we DID NOT wish to be asked during the program and we told him that we would welcome all questions and would do our best to answer them as completely as we possibly could.

We took Jenny, Sam, Julie, and three of the staff with us to also answer questions if the audience wanted to talk to them about their life and working at the orphanage. Jenny was sitting on the side watching the proceedings and when I was telling the audience about my family back home and about the passing of my father, she ran up and sat on my lap. It was quite an ice breaker to say the least. The audience broke into applause which I think shocked the host and hostess. However, even though Jenny is quite the “ham” she would not talk to the audience. I am sure she was completely overwhelmed by the thought of being on TV.

There were about 300 to 400 people in the studio audience and they consisted of people from all walks of life. University students, news reporters, government officials and professional people from various occupations.

It was quite an interesting program and needless to say it gave the Home of Hope substantial exposure throughout the country. It must have made quite an impact. The next day I left for Beijing for Isaac‘s surgery and no sooner had I arrived in Beijing I received a call from my assistant in Gongyi telling me the police were at the orphanage. They wanted to go through all the rooms in the orphanage and “have a look.” He was rather shaken I think but I told him to be cordial with the police and give them free access to everything we had there. They visited for several hours and then sent me word that if I ever needed their help to just call them.