A week in Nanning

I'm going to keep this short as I am not feeling well today.  Pray whatever has taken over my body leaves quickly as it has zapped my energy and Wen Xiang has a lot!  So thankful for Justin who has been an awesome help!

This week has been an emotional roller coaster.  First being away from home just leaves me feeling vulnerable and sad after this many days.  As I reflect, at the beginning of the week there were four of us families eagerly waiting to meet our little ones here in Nanning.  Three girls, one boy.  Now it's Thursday night and only three orphans are snuggled in bed with their new mamas and one orphan still sleeps alone in her crib at the orphanage.   I will not go into details of why or what happened but to say it was a choice I do not understand.   My heart aches as I think about the little one only 11 months old, now abandoned twice.  Labeled as a disruption through no fault of her own.  I think about Labels, diagnosises and prognosis and how different our family would look if we would have allowed  our emotions or doctors decide our future.  Who do we want to serve?  Man or God?  The Dr who wrote a letter four years said my daughter's life was not valuable or worthy enough to be adopted because of her diagnosis and  prognosis.  Well...... I disagree.   And someday the other three children adopted after her will too....and every child and family that comes in contact with her knows her life is worthy!   So we have a prayer mission to pray for this family who went home without their daughter for reasons we don't understand.  And an advocacy mission to find this girl a family.

Wen Xiang is all boy! Wild, climbing, running, hold onto him, he's going to break something boy!  And yes I am worn out....because it's impossible to get him under control without being able to speak with him.  He gets more wound up when he's tired too!   He loves to be held and  cuddled.  The only time he cries is when he is going to bed.  He misses his foster parents dearly because he's used to sleeping with them. 😢   He cuddles with me instead and calms down within a minutes.  He is not speaking any words at this point, which I love how God placed a child's speech pathologist behind us on the airplane from Chicago to GZ.  He already knew we would be needing that assessment!  She said he should be evaluated in his native language, not wait.  I think till is where the other two boys fell through the cracks, waiting for them to acquire the Engligh language.

Onto the miracle of the week, beside our Wen Xiang.  Yes two in one week.  From the moment arriving here, I have been asking our guide to work with the orphanage to get us a visit.  I should back up a bit.  Joseph is from this province and we wanted to see his foster parents, but previously requests to see them were denied by government.  Joseph had a special relationship with his foster grandparents who he was with for two years.  Long story short, our guide worked out a meeting with them and we travelled to Guilin on Wednesday and had lunch with them!  It was so wonderful.  I recognized them immediately and we exchanged gifts and talked about Joseph.  They told me about him when he was younger.  THey truly loved him.  Then the best part of all we called Joseph via Skype.  Yes it was 2 am for him but his face lit up once he realized who it was.  His foster parents chatted away while the guide translated.  Gods hand was truly in this.

If this was not enough....these foster parents were originally asked to be Wen xiangs foster parents but they declined because they were too broken heartened after Joseph leaving.  They are friends with Wen Xiangs parents. And Wen Xiangs knew them!  So I suspect there will be future visits to China for a little boy whose wish is to see his foster parents again!