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Update August 2004
Dear Friends and Supporters,
This month has been a very busy one for us with kids coming and going. Our family attended the wedding of our oldest daughter Natasha in Bali and that was a welcome rest for us. Our recent trip to Singapore with Ellie has sparked a lot of interest there and many people are contacting us offering help. As of today, with your help, we are currently caring for/financially supporting 49 special needs children.
Foster Home Shunyi, Beijing:
Construction: We have moved into our personal home and the rest of the renovations in the Foster Home building are being completed.
The babies:
Evan has been adopted by a couple from Holland. It was sad to see him go and we miss him very much. Hayley is in New York awaiting surgery which unfortunately has been postponed to September 2nd. But at least she is over there. The place is really quiet without these two little terrors and Charmaine is lonely for them. Most of our new babies have settled in but we have had a couple of scary moments. Ji Shan, from Qing Hai province, 3 months old who had Cardiac surgery in Shanghai before coming to us, was quite unstable when he arrived and he stopped breathing on one occasion. William our premature baby from Jiaozuo did the same. We resuscitated them both and thankfully they are both well. This brought to our attention the urgent need for some emergency equipment which we have now purchased. Christina and I are taking turns, not leaving them unattended. Xiao Xin, a new baby from Jiaozuo is in Beijing United Family hospital in cardiac failure. We are trying our best to get him to Singapore for treatment. Rebekah, who was born with extrophy of the bladder, is scheduled for surgery in Sydney, Australia in October if we can get her paperwork done on time. Teresa, Josie and Jesher await a US neurosurgeon coming in October. We will soon be taking in a new baby Nathan, from Jiaozuo as he is also on this neurosurgeon’s list. This surgeon has also agreed to operate on 2 more children from St Joseph’s orphanage in Renqiu, Leah and Zara. We will be taking all 6 children to Changchun, Jilin province in October. We will need financial help for this. (Please see below, under Needs)
Volunteers; Most of our volunteers have left and we have Julia (US) and Clare( Singapore) with us for this month. We had a team from the UK who was with us for about 2 weeks and they were very helpful with heavy manual labour Thank you very much. Shannon and Ashley (US) have been very helpful too. Christina is back with us for another year and she hit the ground running. She has not stopped working from the day she arrived and apart from the medical work here at the Home, she will be busy escorting several babies in and out of the country for surgery.
Shunyi Outreach Foster Care Program: We have 4 babies (Mary, Eloise, Dana and Andrea Ellen) in out Outreach program and we have 3 more families all ready and waiting for their babies. So far this project is going very well and the babies are very well cared for. They are dressed beautifully and they smell heavenly. Their foster parents just love them so much and are so proud of them. We will bring in more babies soon. We hope to have about 10 families in our Outreach program by the end of this year and then move on from there as long as the funds become available.
Foster Home Sai Qi, Fujian Province
Marsha, our Project coordinator visited them recently and things are going well over there. 18 out of 28 of the children have been sponsored so funding for this Home will continue. They have asked for us to be more involved with the Home especially in renovating the new premises for them but we will need to finish all that we have started in Shunyi and in Jiaozuo (the Palliative care Unit) before we start on something new. This could be something for the early part of next year if funds are available for us to do so.
Our needs;
Our most urgent needs are for the following 6 children. They need US$3000 each to cover their hospital costs and travel to Changchun, Jilin Province to have neurosurgery. The surgical team from the US is waiving their fees. To put this in perspective, it would cost us at least US $40,000 per child to have this done by the same excellent surgeon in the US.
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All of them have meningomyeloceles, congenital neural tube defects that require surgery to prevent them from being paralyzed below the waist and being wheelchair-bound when they are older. We would be grateful if those of who are able and willing, would chose to support the surgery of these children. You will be helping to make very major changes in their lives.
Our thanks;
We are grateful to all of you who have supported us in so many ways. All those who silently send us funds for all our various needs, you are very special people. We thank Northwest airlines for helping with Hayley’s travel. We received Hep B testing kits from Canada. Thank you Tom. We continue to receive clothes and much needed medicines from all parts of the world. Thank you all.
With deepest
gratitude
Rob and Joyce.
Never lie down at
night without being able to say “I have made one human being at least a
little wiser, a little happier or at least a little better this day” Charles
Kingsley.