GongYi Home of Hope

Ben and I, along with our three sons (Jaxin, Eli and Tyler), live in the town of Pingyu. The word “Ping” in Chinese, can mean level or flat. So when we get to go back to Gongyi, we are so mesmerized by the beautiful mountains we drive around and even have to drive through! They are so beautiful, and as soon as we start seeing them, we start getting very excited as we know we are soon to arrive to see our Gongyi family.
Regrettably, the orphanage is still not allowing too many visitors and especially not western visitors. Understandably, they want to protect the children and with all the different social media outlets, they don’t know what is being said or betrayed. So, we look at the cup half full and try to do all that we can do with what we are allowed to do. Our hopes were to go visit the children at the orphanage, then have a dinner with all the older children who grew up with Nathan as their Yeye(grandfather). Since we cannot see the younger children, we still try and see the older kids



Some of these young adults were just in high school and middle school when we first arrived in China. Pictured above with Ben and I, are Julie and her husband. They have one son and she is doing very well with having her own art school.

Holly with her daughter and Lily hanging out.
It was so amazing to see our little brothers and sister starting their own families. There were 4 babies (Lilly is 5 months pregnant), and two little boys that joined us making our dinner very exciting. Yeye would be so proud to see all these beautiful babies and even more so, how well everyone just helped each other out. These babies have more aunts and uncles than anyone else in China:)
Heidi with her son, who is 22 days older than Logan’s (Heidi’s older sister) son.

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Unfortunately, we have not been able to come visit as often as we would like, as we are still diligently working on getting the Next Towns Foundation Inc. established here in the Henan province. We have been weekly working with our lawyer and the Security Police filling out applications, giving countless documents proving our legitimacy and intent to continue helping the underprivileged children of China. It looks like everything has been approved and all we need is the final stamp. We will open our first office in Pingyu as that is where we live. Once we understand the law better and learn how to better serve under these new strict laws, we will try opening more offices throughout the Henan province. Below is a picture of Shirley. She currently works with us in Pingyu learning how to run the next office that we hope to open in Gongyi!
Hazel and Shirley are sisters and are both with us in Pingyu!