A piece of our hearts will be here forever!

When our original plans for the 9 day National Holiday to teach at an English camp fell through at the last minute, we needed a quick plan since the idea of a 'stay-cation' at this point in the year causes me some level of panic about what we would do here all day every day besides go stir crazy.  So when you have holidays and no place to go, the choice becomes pretty obvious - if my kids can't be in Fayetteville Arkansas, there is one other place they all gravitate to here in China...Shepherds Field Children's Village (SFCV) outside of Beijing.

Quick run-down on SFCV - they currently have 57 special needs orphans ranging from 2 months old to   20 years old.  They have one complex including a school, dining hall, medical clinic, a therapy house, 4 children's houses, an Inn, a huge playground and are building a vocational center.  In a word it is amazing!

Maggie & Abigail

Days are spent simply loving on the kids!  The kid's houses are open between breakfast-lunch and again after nap to dinnertime.  During that time you can go into any house and hold the babies/play with the kids/take them to the playground.  Most times everyone (old enough) ended up on the playground because the weather was so nice.  Maggie buddied up with Abigail the first afternoon and wanted to play with her every day after!  Bill & Luke just adored Zoe and did not leave her side every minute they could play together - at one point she came up to me and said "They called me Mama!"  She loved playing and

Zoe taking Bill & Luke back to their house

helping to take care of them!  Lindsey could often be found taking Kennedy in his wheelchair for walks around the complex or inside playing with Moses, Josiah and Cody.  Megan actually got connected with the SFCV doctor the first full day and helped him the balance of mornings giving all of the kids medical check ups and updating their files (a great chance to see so many of the kids, learn about the medical procedures SFCV has already gotten for them or future treatment plans, and personally love on each of them!).  Andy & I mainly played with all the kids along with Joseph out on the playground.  There was also a

Lindsey and Kennedy out for a walk

 team of local Beijing high school students each day - they loved on the SFCV kids and also took quite the liking to Joseph so he enjoyed playing with them too!

We had some great local Chinese food at the nearby restaurants for dinner (gotta love the pictures on menus because no one speaks English in this more rural city!).  We also took a quick trip to the local WM - quite an experience but we did purchase some ping pong balls that the Ayi's loved and got into some intense games as they waited in the dining hall for the prepared food to

Megan with Natalie

 take back to their houses!  Also as 'icing on the cake' someone abandoned a puppy at the SFCV gate on our second day...so the girls named him and provided him lots of love too when we couldn't be in the kids houses!

Lots of smiles & laughter....playing with the kids, hearing about who has forever families, watching the kids in each house take care of each other as family, seeing kids go off for cleft lip/palette surgery.  And also some tears...listening to the cry of a 2 month old (when you're already holding a 5 month old and no one else is around), thinking

Joseph enjoying the swings

 about the parents who tried to get their infant son surgery but it was more complicated and ended up abandoning him, saying goodbye to those kids who won't be there by the time we visit again as they go off to their forever families and promising the girls we will go to SFCV at least one more time before repatriating so this doesn't have to be their goodbye.

God has immensely blessed SFCV as they carry out His command in James 1:27!  And we were so blessed to spend one week with them!