March Update

March 4, 2010

Dear Friends and Family,

The boy who was in therapy is walking with help from his mother or father! What an encouragement to the therapy team, to us and his parents! His father is taking an active part in working with him and love him. What a good report for our therapy team. Please keep him in your thoughts as he has lots of work ahead of him, we can just picture his new independence!

Grady and Clay enjoyed their trip to Fuzhou and Grady shined while he reconnected with his friends at his orphanage. Sharing a room with Grady was quite the experience. He bounced from bed to bed and to the bathroom (a lot!) and got sick a couple of times. He was so pumped to be visit his orphanage and get his ID and passport. We should have it in hand by the first of the week. There is still more to do before he can go to the US but this is the first step. Please keep lifting him up to the Father for successful handling of the visa and other steps that need to be in place for his surgery. Clay “enjoyed” seafood; more than he would care to remember! There is a meat type of hotdog with whole pieces of corn in it that we tried. It is rather like a raw hotdog and Clay said he would prefer to eat it over seafood any day. What an experience! Of course Grady was the center of attention and did his pushups for his friends. (he can do about 75 and thinks he is a “hero” because he can do so many!) Clay spent more time in the police station than he ever hopes to again and one time he was grabbed from behind by someone who just wanted to speak English to him but gave him quite the scare! One of those times when you aren’t guilty of anything but are sure you must be! It is difficult to actually get into a state run orphanage but the director let Clay in without any trouble. They have about 290 children. It was a blessing for Clay to be involved with this event in Grady’s life and share the excitement as this brings us closer to helping the quality of Grady’s life through surgery.



Before the Chinese New Year we had dinner with the single office girls. It’s a great challenge to stack peanuts with your chopsticks. The record we have heard of is 7. Christina and Sara were able to stack 3, definitely a challenge! You’ll find a picture of Christina with her stack of peanuts. Do try this at home, quite a fun challenge! Speaking of the Chinese New Year, that is quite an event! A larger celebration than anything we have in the states. And..there are no regulations on fireworks! They must not be very expensive either as they fired them off almost continuously from February 12th through the 14th. The debris was all over the roads outside SF. We had to chuckle every once in awhile as we reflected, “only in China!”



February 14 to 17th we spent in Xi’an touring with our friend Kim from Kalamzoo, Mi. Haven’t you always wanted to say you know someone from Kalamazoo?! We took our first train ride and rode on a hard sleeper as we took the night train there and back. That means the bed was hardJ and we shared an area with 6 others; although the train wasn’t crowded on the way there. We had a great time seeing the Terra-cotta warriors and walking the city walls around the only city in the world to still have the city walls still standing. It is amazing to see the warriors that were put in place to guard the tomb of one of the emperors. 6,000 or so warriors to guard a tomb! The work that went into it, burying them in the ground in the first place and then covering them with grass matting. Menial labor was so cheap and the value of human life so small. They thought nothing of asking people to spend tons of time doing something so they thought would protect the emperor in the afterlife. If we would only spend that kind of time on our relationship with those that matter and the one who created us, on things that count for eternity. How grateful we are to be part of “caring for the orphans”. James 1:27

The 18th we had the primary class over for a movie, popcorn and of course, finger jello! We watched “Happy Feet”. The kids were disappointed it wasn’t in Chinese but they still enjoyed it. The 23rd we had them over to the Inn for a dinner of fried chicken and friend rice, carrots and cucumbers. They loved everything of course! They like the food that isn’t processed better than our typical American processed food. They have a way of letting you know what they really like! Jerak is the youngest in the class at 6 years old and speaks the least English but he is learning! When Clay pr&yed over dinner they all folded their hands together and were very quiet and still, except for Jerak, who every time Clay would pause slightly would stay in position with hands folded and eyes squeezed shut and say “ok?” “ok?” We were all chuckling since he wasn’t sure when or maybe if, Clay would quit and he would miss out on dinner!

Clay recently went to the tool market with Mr. Yu to buy some allen wrenches. They had both metric and standard sizes. Of course Clay went for the metric because we are after all in China and everything here is in metric. But what he didn’t count on is the wheelchair he is going to repair is probably made in the US. So back for some standard sized allen wrenches. Just when you think you have something figured out…you have to think again. And why did Mr. Yu go for the standard size first anyway?!

Thursday the 25th we took 26 of the children from school and went to the Lantern Festival. It was kind of cold but we saw the colorful sights and blow up cartoon characters all over the park. Some friends of one of our teachers met us there and proceeded to spend the morning with us and help take the kids around the park. Of all things, as we gathered to leave, Grady is wheeled up in his wheelchair with a bunny rabbit in his lap! We all (from SFCV anyway) looked with must have been confusion at this bunny, what was the guy thinking!? What are we going to do with a bunny rabbit? And of course the children thought it was the most wonderful thing! Well, Brady or Shiao Pao, aka; bunny became Grady’s “son” and suddenly had a birthday and a whole life story including the times he was supposed to eat. The Ayi’s weren’t excited about this new “friend” and told Chris, our intern, she had to take it because a bunny is for food not for staying in the house! So now Brady is being “adopted” by one of the office girls’ mother and will have a new “forever” family. How we wish adoption was that easy for all of our children here! Did you know in the Word we are called “sons of adoption?” When we receive the Father and acknowledge Him as G&d, He adopts us into His family. We are His heirs and we “inherit” eternal life!



Monday, March 3, we were able to spend time in the clinic with Lily Diana who will be 2 years old later this month. She had been in the hospital for about 9 to 10 months and came home just over a month ago. She has had a difficult time in these few years of her life and quit eating sometime the weekend of the 27th. Her Ayi loves on her as tears drip down her face and she quietly speaks comforting words to her. Zhang Ayi, our head Ayi, asked us to come in and pray for Lily Diana and the Ayi’s that care for her. It has been decided that she has been through enough in her short life and we will keep her here with her family at SFCV and love her. We are so blessed to see the love these women have for these children. They aren’t throw away kids to them, they love them as their own. The daytime Ayi’s eyes are swollen from tears and in our own fashion we “talk” about Lily Diana and how her life has touched others. We pr&y the Father will encourage these people in their work. That they will know what they do is very important. That the Father says “what we do to the least of these, we do as to Him.” That they will see the love of the father through us.

Thank you for your thoughts for us as we plan our trip home and anticipate what staying at SFCV means to us. One of the things we need to change is taking time away from work. You might imagine we put our whole selves into connecting people to this place and these special children. We have an idea to insure we take time for ourselves, now we just need to make it happen. When we leave SFCV on April 8th we will be spending about 10 days with a friend going to 3 different areas in China and looking at different foreign run foster homes for children with special needs. While we look forward to seeing more of the country will you pr&y we learn from this time how we can better be aware of the needs here and how we could be of help?

Would you also please be pr&ying about how the Father might want you to continue supporting us in the future? We appreciate so much your pr&yers, support and encouragement. Not one of you is small or unimportant to us. We hope you are blessed with what we share with you and that you know you are a part of letting us be His hands and feet here with these children. Wow, you bless us.

Please be on your knees for:

• Grady’s passport to get here soon and his surgery to be scheduled.
• That His light will shine through us, that we will be His hands and feet.
• Funds for Lucas’ cochlear implant.
• Lily Diana and the 5 or so other children who have more critical needs.
• Study in the book of Esther, lesson 4 study being especially impactful to Jewel.
• Lift up the mother and her son as they continue therapy at home and let His light shine.
• Guidance as we plan our trip home from April 18th to May 20th. That we will see the people we need to see and accomplish what we need to get done. And while you are at it, that we will know what to do with our things and what to keep and what to not keep!
• Getting a shower ready for Wendy’s use in her house. She has had to crawl upstairs and pull herself in and out of a bathtub since she has been here. This project is almost to get underway. Pr&y this gets done “quickly”.

Big thanks for:

• $505 towards Lucas’ cochlear implant!
• The boy from therapy who is walking! Thank Him for this answer to this pr&yer.
• For His continued guidance.
• For faithful supporters and faithful pr**yers!

“..may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep His love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God!” Eph 3:18 to19

With our love and our prayers,

Clay and Jewel


Some fun times:

Spa Day with Lingling!

An armful of Grace!

Wendy and Stacy getting a 'Baby Fix'