We had slowly been developing a relationship with the Mayor of Gongyi but suddenly he was gone along with many of the other bureau leaders of high ranking. Knowing that favor with the government is a primary pre-requisite for the type work we do here, we began to attempt to contact the new Mayor. We had no success. As the weeks went by we realized we were hearing nothing about the new Mayor but everyone was talking about the new head of the Gongyi County Communist Party, Mr. Wang Xiao Ping.
Actually, he is the highest ranking officer in the government and he was making many changes quite rapidly in Gongyi. He started a major drive to beautify the city! Started building new and repairing existing roads. Traffic law enforcement was seen to be improving rapidly and at night one would see more and more police on the street where before one could not be found after dark. Everyone was talking about Wang Xiao Ping! Most favorably and some a little disgruntled (which is always the case) if one happened to own a business and had received an order to make his place of business more presentable. People were finding that ignoring a request to repair their business sign would result in a team showing up in a couple of days to tear it down! Things were happening like we hadn’t seen them happen here before.

We decided that if anyone could help us it would be him so we contacted him. A few days ago he came to visit. He even brought his wife and daughter which is quite unusual. We had a great visit which culminated in our children getting their Hukous.

Left to right above: #1 – Mr Zhang, Nathan, Mosie and Ruthie in front, Wang Xiao Ping’s daughter, Wang Xiao Ping and his wife. #2 – Nathan giving them a tour of the facility. #3 – Wang Xiao Ping and Nathan discussing various situations in the HOH office. #4 – Nathan sharing some humorous things with Wang Xiao Ping and #5 – Telling them good bye as Wang Xiao Ping and his family leave.

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!

Aloha and God Bless

They went to the XuZhou Home of Hope first and then came to visit the Gongyi facility. As they were leaving we were able to get this picture. Left to right are Ron Bishop, Christi Bishop, Julie, Esther, Bob Sayre, Cindy Sayre, Justin Learned, Linda Thompson, Sam and Wade Thompson. Everyone really enjoyed their visit.

You can see more about their visit by visiting our XuZhou Home of Hope web site, “Our Babies Find New Homes – Visitors”

The whole team is shown in this picture along with Mr. and Mrs. Wang and their seven adopted orphans from Zheng Zhou who came to sing and play their ancient Chinese instruments for the Home of Hope children and the visitors from America. It was truly a fun and interesting performance and not only did the Wang family sing and play but some of the Home of Hope children and the visitors from Palm Beach Atlantic College did a few performances of their own.

There were several activities prepared for the team of young people from Florida. The Home of Hope staff coordinated visits with local schools, government orphanages and other points of interest. Their first day here we took them out to the new Home of Hope facility and let them do some work. We had a large wall to tear down and we got the team from the States to help. Everyone there that morning worked at something and before lunch time we had a lot of the wall down and broken up almost to the degree that the brick was ready to be cleaned and reused in our renovation work.

Brandon loosening the bricks for the “push”

The team prepares to push the wall over!

Going……………………………..

Going……………………………..

And Gone….. and the photographer had to have help getting down from the next section of wall. (below left) Next the team started breaking the walls apart (below right) so we could salvage the good brick to use on other new walls, planters and things we need to build during the renovation of the facility.

Even “Moses” got involved in the work at the new facility and held a shovel for the first time. Of course if you look close you can see he is right up to date with the times of this modern age. He has Lao Wang’s cell phone in his other hand.Many groups and schools were glad for the opportunity to meet the young people from America and we had a great time while they were visiting. One of the highlights of the visit was the Home of Hope children challenged the foreign visitors to a game of baseball.

The visiting team from America quickly jumped in front with powerful hitting and a true size advantage over the children of the Home of Hope. The three hundred or more spectators and the local TV cameraman all enjoyed the antics of the foreigners as they laughed and clowned their way to a stunning ten run lead in the top of the seventh inning part of which was the result of this “bases loaded” home run. However the children of the Home of Hope never gave up. Aaron Bell who was the captain of the Home of Hope team moved the players in and out of the line up and when the final score came in at the bottom of the ninth it was The Home of Hope team 26 and the USA team 25.

The children were very happy, especially “Dean” shown batting (left) as he had been grounded for a slight altercation with one of his brothers at the Home of Hope and wasn’t sure he was going to get to play. He was relieved and thrilled to have his punishment lifted just in time for the day of the game. All in all the children thoroughly enjoyed the visit of the students from Palm Beach Atlantic College.

Other Things of Interest

As summer gets closer the days get longer and warmer in Gongyi. The other day some of the children got to stay home from school and wanted to know if they could eat lunch outside, which we did. They really enjoy that and seemed to have a greater appetite than when they eat in the dining hall. Later all the children came to me and asked if we could schedule at least one day a week for eating outside.