加油 China! We believe in You!!!
Happy Chinese New Year! This is the year of the Rat! It’s been a rough 2020 so far for China, but they have shown their strength and unity to overcome this time of tragedy. People all over China are coming together to try and fight this Corona-virus. The leadership is taking measures to help protect and contain the virus, which can be a hard thing to do when over a BILLION people usually travel during this time of year. China, we believe in You! We want to share what’s been happening in China and a bit about our personal family too. As most of you know, our time with the children during normal school time is very restricted. We get so excited for the different holidays because that gives us extra time with the children in our program. Chinese New Year is equivalent to Christmas. The children got off school about a week before the New Year day, which was January 25th. We started hearing about the corona-virus then, but were not too concerned about it. When our friend cancelled our New Year meal, that really grabbed our attention…that was basically like cancelling Christmas. As all the children and our staff were back in their villages and hometowns being told to stay inside, we cancelled all our other activities until things opened back up.
We stay in constant contact with the older Gongyi Home of Hope children. We try meeting up with them for a dinner and family get together at least once a month. It’s such a blessing to see these young adults get married and have children. We met most of them when they were in middle school, high school and just beginning college. We were so grateful that we went in the beginning of January to see them before everything was shut down.
Thankfully, we were able to do one activity before everyone left. We invited children from the Home of Hope orphanage, from the Special Needs school, and the other children who are in our program to go play at the trampoline house. We had a great time and the children really enjoyed themselves!
As stores, organizations and businesses shut down more and more, and especially as the children and our staff could not come back to Pingyu, we felt that we could do more for our family and for our organization (the bank needed more documentation from the States) if we went back to America. There are many confirmations that have proved this decision to be right, one of them was when the mayor called one of our staff members to ask about our safety. She told him that we were back here and he was relieved as he was trying to figure out how to get masks for our family.
While we are here, we daily call the children to try and encourage them. Most of them use two different social media apps that we can send video messages, text messages, voice messages and video chats. Every child in our program, our staff and their families, all the Gongyi children (in the orphanage and out), and all of our friends and family are healthy and strong.
We also make weekly conference calls to our staff. Right now, all three women (from bottom left clockwise:Nicky, Jessica and Shirley) are working out of their homes. Nicky calls the children in our program to help them with their online classes. As schools in our area are temporarily closed, all the children have to do online classes. Nicky calls them to see if they need extra help with their homework assignments. Jessica is our translator and officer manager. She makes weekly calls to the different government leaders to give them the monthly reports that we are required to give to keep our NGO status. She also keeps in touch with the orphanage leader and school head masters too to see how we can help. Shirley is another one of our teachers and she also helps Nicky call the children, but she also makes weekly calls to the list of potential children we want to interview to grant scholarships to. She is helping us build a relationship with the student and their caregiver.
We are very proud of our staff and lift them and the children up daily. We asked our staff to brainstorm ways for us to help get medical supplies. We were able to purchase over 1000 masks, over 200 liters of rubbing alcohol and 100 glass thermometers to donate to the orphanage, special needs school and to prepare to give to the other children in our program. We also have contacted the education department, the security police and hospital to see about how we can help them get the same medical supplies too as they are preparing to go door to door to check on the people throughout Pingyu.
Jaxin is our eldest son and he too is a senior in high school. We are using this extra time here in the States to help him acclimate to America life. He needed to learn how to drive, get a job and buy a car. He is looking a different colleges and deciding what to do for his future. We are so grateful for this extra time we have with him in the States. He has lived over 13 years of his life in China. This is a huge and scary step for him and for our family. Please be lifting us all up for strength, wisdom and safe driving skills!
Michelle and I want to thank you for lifting us all up and for all the encouragement and support you have given. As you can see, we are still finding ways to serve the lost. While we wait for the doors to open back up in China, Michelle and I, along with our boys, are getting involved with different ways to serve the underprivileged. I, Ben, play basketball with the youth in south St Louis, Michelle has been helping my sister Crystal with her P.O.P.s physical education classes. We just found an outreach that helps feed and minster to the homeless that we will be getting involved with and ours boys are getting involved and making friends with the youth groups at Grace church.
Blessings to you and we leave you with this, a dear friend of ours told us that her daily prayer is, “Father, You lead and I will follow.” Michelle and I are praying the same prayer and are being still in this time of patience.
In one of our staff meetings, we were thinking about gathering masks and thermometers to send to China. With the Corona-virus spreading, most of you probably have realized that masks are very hard to purchase these days in the States. When we told our staff this, Nicky was very upset and said they will ship masks for my family. We thought this was too cute; what love her family has for others.