Since our last web site update we have had several birthdays. Clockwise starting top left we have Henry He Long Qiang with roomates Hank (on the left) and Jerry; Julie Zhang Yan Yan (now nineteen and entering college this year); Seth Yang Xiao Ke; Michael Yang Wen Bo; Lydia Kang Lin Lin in the center with roomates (left to right) Rena, Heidi, Linda and Gail; Tim Tian Zheng Tu; Logan Zhang Xin Zhuan (also nineteen) and in the center of the group is a picture taken at Paul Yao You Bin’s birthday (Paul is on the left) shown with Nathan and Jim Yang Jin Duo. Nathan is telling Paul that Paul is now taller than Nathan is. How well we remember the first day we ever saw Paul. He barely came above Nathan’s waist back then! My how time flies!

Summer Work – For Pay!

Some of the older children, Sam, Hank, Julie, Holly and Tim asked Yie Yie (Nathan) if they could find a job during the summer this year. They said they were old enough now and really wanted to earn some money during the summer.
We try to paint the interior of the dorm building and the other buildings if possible each summer as by the end of winter the walls are showing the effects of having fifty plus children living there.

We told the children they could work right here if they wanted to, painting the inside of the buildings and they all jumped at the chance! It is almost finished as of this writing and it looks really good!

On the left is Julie Zhang Yan Yan. She is studying art in school so she was elected to do all the detail work. The taping of the windows and doors… door knobs… light switches and plugs then paint the places that took a lot of care so as not to get paint all over the adjacent items. She did a great job!

On the right is our “Handy Man” Tim Tian Zheng Tu… actually that is just what we call him. He follows Nathan around anytime he is not in school and even though he is still in middle school he can weld, do plumbing, fix minor electrical problems and much more. Between Nathan and Hai Tao (our true maintenance man) Tim is learning all he can and says he wants to stay at the Home of Hope when he finished High School and be the General Maintenance man for all the different Home of Hope’s in China.

In the back ground is Sam who graduated from High School this year and is preparing to enter college in the fall.

We painted the downstairs (the boy’s section of the dorm) an eggshell white with a 1 1/2 meter high band in baby blue at the bottom.

Upstairs, which is the girl’s section and also the nursery area, we used the same egg shell white with a very, very light pink band on the bottom.

To the left is Hank Cao Hai Kui who also graduated from high school this year and he too is preparing to enter college this fall.

Both Hank and Sam speak excellent English and so it was very easy for Nathan to give them detailed instructions on how he wanted everything done!

We felt this to be a great thing. We would have had to pay a contractor to come in and do the work as we normally do every year but this year the children who are working on this project earn their own money, are learning about having a work ethic and are helping to improve their own home!

On the right is Hai Tao our general, all purpose, all around…. EVERYTHING! He is our driver, driving the children to the doctor and other places as necessary; driving the house mothers to take the babies to the hospital; going out and negotiating good prices and buying many of the necessary things to keep a place like the Home of Hope operating on a daily basis and when not doing that he teaches the boys and does general maintenance work…

The neatest thing about Hai Tao is just what you see! That perpetual smile! He has been with us for over four years now and we have to say we really can’t remember a single time when he was not smiling!

Excitement never ceases here in China. First of all on October 14th, late at night the police brought us an abandoned newborn baby, and we named him Xiong En “Moses.” Not long after that, many friends sent us a box full of “baby shower” things for Moses. Strangely enough, some of the clothes they sent were little baby girl clothes… you know… pinks and frills and the like. We kind of chuckled at first and then it hit me. We are being prepared for more of this! Wow… what a thought.

Moses was premature by about three weeks and has a major cleft palate which we are going to have surgically corrected in the Beijing Children’s Hospital sometime in December, or as soon as the funds come in for the surgery. He is growing, gaining weight and has now started making the normal “cooing” baby noises that all normal babies make.

It was nip and tuck for the first couple of weeks but he is doing fine now. We have been so amazed at how small he is. Small in our eyes, that is, until today.

It is 11:30 PM, November 28, 2000 as I write this, and we no longer think of Moses as “small.” Today we were brought a precious little baby girl. As soon as we saw and held her we realized how much Moses has grown during the last month. He actually seems huge next to this tiny newborn.

An off-duty policeman came to our door a little after 10:00 AM and told us how eleven days ago he found a newborn baby dumped on the street with a note attached to its rag wrapping that said it had just been born. Not having any way of feeding the baby, he took it to the hospital where they fed it by IV. The hospital bill was running up and the policeman could not pay for it. He and his wife really wanted to keep this little baby but they were informed that since they already had a child and the one child rule cannot be violated, he would lose his job if they kept the baby. The couple didn’t know what to do. They couldn’t pay to get the little girl out of the hospital and even if they could they couldn’t keep her because he would lose his job. They thought of the “Home of Hope.”

This tiny, precious baby girl is one month premature and has only been fed intravenously since birth. We immediately named her Ruth after several wonderful ladies in our lives… My own Mother, Ruth Bell who has nurtured and guided my life for so many years; Ruth Rogers, a wonderful friend and the Website Mistress for the Home of Hope; her mother Ruth Edwards, a lifelong friend, and of course the Ruth of “Ruth” in the Old Testament.

Ruth’s Chinese surname is Xiong. Two years ago the Chinese gave me the Chinese surname “Xiong”, which means “Bear”, and the Chinese given name of “Fan” which means “humility”. Xiong Fan. We have given both Moses and Ruth the surname “Xiong”, and we gave Moses the given name “En” which means “restoration”. We have not decided on a given name for Ruth as yet.

Since the Home of Hope children’s quarters are not yet properly set up for a nursery environment (this was a little unexpected this soon) we have converted an extra room in our apartment into a nursery. There are now two new little lives being sustained, nourished and loved here twenty four hours a day. We expect that as the word gets out there will be more and more.

We are now in our Phase III fund raising program and as more and more children are brought to us we realize how quickly we must get into our new facility. All of the children at the Home of Hope are doing great. We had three who made perfect scores on their mid term exams this semester: Paul, Lily and Heidi. It is amazing to see them now as we are so conscious of how they were when we first found them. Their eyes are full of hope and expectation where when we first found them their eyes were dull and they had nothing showing on their faces but hopelessness and despair. We extend our heartfelt thanks to all of you who have helped in this great endeavor. Your sacrifices are having eternal impact on so many lives.