Visitors from Hawaii
Some time ago, a friend who lives in Hawaii contacted us about the possibility of a church group coming to visit from the islands.
As time went by the planning just seemed to come together without a whole lot of problems and it finally came down to their asking, “what can we do for you while we are there?”
For some time we had been wanted to build small ‘gazebo’ type shelters at each one of our outside tables to protect the children from the rain in any season and the scorching sun in the summer. They do like to sit at the tables and do their home work or read or play ‘table games’ with each other, but at times the weather is just too prohibitive.
This wonderful group from the New Hope Leeward, a church family in Hawaii not only agreed to come and build the gazebos for us but to fund the work as well. They also wanted to do something to help out at our XuZhou facility, which they did and I am sure Bob will write about their visit very soon.
The group arrived and they hit the ground running! Amazing. The very next morning construction started. They only had a few days and the plans were for five of the gazebos so there was a lot of work to do.
In the pictures above, not only were they doing the work but they were also taking the time to show the Home of Hope children how to do some of the work themselves!
It wasn’t long until saws were being heard, hammers were banging and there was a lot of chatter as the visitors and the children worked and got to know each other at the same time.
Above left in the red shorts is Tim and above right in the blue “T” shirt is Henry.
Little Moses got into the act, helping carry lumber (above left) while Mark Gallagher (the group leader) showed his prowess at driving nails! (above right)
The children were introduced to the Hula Hoop (above left, Joseph is trying his hand or should that be “hips”) and there were many different hand crafts taught and shared with all the various age groups.
The New Hope Leeward group was in turn introduced to Chinese BaoZi and the various art work by some of our really talented children. Above left Liu Qiu Xian, one of our cooks is preparing the BaoZi and on the right Esther is showing some of her paintings.
Above left Jenny is posing with her new found friend from Hawaii and on the right a spontaneous “goofy group” shot and they even got Ye Ye in the picture, head covered lei and all!
Rena and Jenny sqeezing into the picture with one of the group and on the right, Ye Ye is lending a hand with the gazebo building!
They did so much we can’t crowd it all in here… they sang, (in the picture above, some of those who sang, pose in front of one of the almost completed gazebos) they danced, they taught Hawaiian dancing, they passed chocolate covered Macadamia nuts around (it seemed like all the time) but most of all they brought a tremendous amount of love to share with the children and the children responded in kind!
All in all the visit by the New Hope Leeward group was an awesome and inspirational time of sharing ideas, cultures, a lot of love and spiritual growth by all. We all hope they come back soon!
Some more snapshots of the New Hope Leeward visit. It was estimated that during their visit, with all their cameras and our Home of Hope in-house cameras that more than 20,000 snapshots were made.Even so, none of them could show the exciting time enjoyed by all!
A few days after the New Hope Leeward group had returned to Hawaii, we received this letter from one of them. We have deleted any personal references for their own privacy and have their permission to publish this letter on our website.
Hi Nathan!Aloha! Thank you for the love and the joy I received from the children, from you, and from the staff of Home of Hope. Upon my return to Hawaii, I re-read the backgrounds of the children on the HOH website. I now can connect the person to the picture and story, and I am filled with so much hope for the children. I treasure the conversations I had with the older kids, like Sam, Hank, Esther, and Julie. They are mature, responsible young adults who are great role models for the younger children. We exchanged email addresses with the older kids, but I would like to write to the younger children as well.Can you ask Siao Ping to look at the list below and let me know who I am missing? I would like to address the children by their names when writing to them.Room 210 Holly, Logan, Hazel, Julie, Esther
Room 211 Lydia, Linda, Heidi, Rena
Room 212 Lily, Gail
Room 213 Jenny, ShirleyRoom 110 Henry, Seth, Joey, Hank
Room 111 Matthew, Ben, Zak, Jim, Dennis, Brian
Room 112 Calvin, Joseph, Tim
Room 113 Luke, Adam, Peter, Tony, Zhi Huang
Room 115 John, Paul, Vincent, David, SamThank you, again, for your hospitality. (And, of course, a great big “shey-shey” for the deeeelicious Texas BBQ ribs!)
Aloha and God Bless
Posted: May 7th, 2007 under Visitors.
Tags: Building, Expanding, calvin-ge-hua-wei, Esther-Kang-Wen-Jun, gazebo, Hawaii, Henry-He-Long-Qiang, Jenny-Yang-Jin-Feng, Joseph-Li-Shi-Yan, Moses-Xiong-En, New-Hope-Leeward, Rena-Ren-Xiao-Na, Visitors