“You’ll be coming to the real China”, is what the email read. I turned to Sara and said, “Oh boy”. Now, let me tell you what ran through my mind next…
No western toilets. Living in huts on a remote mountain side. No showers. Rice for every meal. Its cold this time of year in China, so I expected to freeze my butt off! No power. No running water. No nothing really! I literally thought, “yep, here it comes. A month like I have never experienced before in my life.”
And that is exactly what I got… Funny thing is, it really didn’t involve any of that stuff that I had expected. Nope. It was far different than I could have ever imagined. God radically changed my life.
We had water. We had western toilets. We were actually in the middle of a huge city! We lived in apartment complexes. We ate rice occasionally, but for the most part we had noodles, lots of pasta, tofu, fruit, and vegetables. There was lots of smog. Nobody, and I literally mean NOBODY spoke a lick of english, and we had real showers with really hot water!
I knew that God wanted me to go to China for some reason, but I could have never imagined how much that country would actually change my life forever.
Our ministry contact this month was called, “Eagles Wings”. Its an orphanage/ foster program that works in Jiaozuo, China which is located in the Henan province. Its an amazing program that works specifically with children who have special needs. Some children have very mild needs, and others are so severe that they cannot do anything at all for themselves. There are different houses that are home to the children with specific needs. For example: House 6 is the host home Matt & I stayed in and none of the kids can walk. House 5 is the baby house. This house is mostly full of children who are born with cleft-lip, downs, and things such as that. House 2 is home to the deaf and blind kids. Houses 3 and 4 are mostly CP children. And so forth and so on.
In China, children with special needs are more or less, kicked to the curb. They are abandoned a lot of times and seen as no use to society. Certain places in China that some of the World Racers have worked, the children are tied up and placed in rooms where orphanage workers make the decision to not feed certain kids and just let them die off. A harsh, but true reality. This is what human life has been reduced too in some countries.
God broke my heart this month through these children. I learned to love in a way that I have never experienced before. I learned to not judge and to always be thankful for all that I have been blessed with. I learned what having a, “child like faith” really means. I realized that life is so fragile. I learned that we don’t understand a lot of the things that happen in life and some things in life “don’t seem fair”. Most importantly I was reminded that God is good. Even when we cannot see the good in something, He is still good.
Too be continued…
