The star fish foster home

I know this entry will appear first in the blog but it is actually part II of our trip to Xian. The first two days we spent sight seeing and the last 2 days of our trip we spent helping out at a place called The Starfish Foster Home.

It's name comes from a well known story about a man who asked a boy why he was throwing starfish that had washed up on shore, back into the ocean. The man told the boy that he could never make a difference because there were too many and he could never throw them all back in. The boy, throwing a starfish back into the water replied, "I made a difference to that one."

This story could not be more relevant to the work that is being done in the Starfish Foster Home.

When I was a missionary in Taiwan I met a lady named Amanda De Lange. She was a tall blond South African Lady teaching English in my first area. We became good friends as she helped me cope with all the culture shock. After my mission we lost contact except for a few emails. When we were preparing to move to China, a family that had lived here in China told me about a South African lady named Amanda who started an orphanage in Xian. I knew immediately it was the same Amanda that I had met in Taiwan. Right then I knew that if we ever visited Xian, I would make sure we went to her orphanage to see her and the babies.

The time came for us to go to Xian, so I called Amanda and arranged for us to meet at church and then go over to the orphanage. Going to church on a trip is always an adventure in an of itself. As our taxi drove up to the university where the branch in Xian meets, Chris recognized it as the place we went to church 11 years ago. At the entrance we met up with two other families with children, one we knew well from Shanghai but were now living in Beijing, and the other family was from a city near Shanghai called Ningbo. With our three visiting families, including 11 children among us, we outnumbered the the Xian branch members. The branch president and his wife were so happy to have us all there but were taken by surprise to have so many children.

There was no primary so we had to do an impromptu primary. The mom from Ningbo took the reigns and did a great lesson on pioneers for the class lesson, then we played hangman "guess the song," for sharing time and singing time. The kids had a great time and even learned a few things. There was a great feeling at church with such a small group of people gathered together. There was only one deacon that passed the sacrament and it was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop.



After church Amanda took us over to a place to eat where she got to indulge in some western food including a bunch of deserts. There she told us a little bit about the foster home she is running. There was an article recently about her work in BYU magazine that gives a much more thorough explanation than I can give on this blog but I can give the short version. Essentially, she was teaching English in Xian a few years ago and spending time at the city orphanage as a volunteer. After 6 months she got so tired of seeing the neglect and abuse the babies were having to endure as well as the donated supplies being stolen by the care takers, that she almost gave up going any more. She said it was just to depressing and heartbreaking to watch. A friend of hers that had gone to the orphanage with her asked her if she could start her own orphanage would she ,and the answer was a resounding, "YES!" She got a call that week from that same friend telling her the orphanage wanted to work with her and let her take an unlimited amount of babies who needed special medical care. 3 months later, after all the legal papers were signed, she went to the orphanage and picked out 6 babies from their dying room and took them home. She laughs at her own ambition. A single lady taking care of 6 malnourished babies, some needing to be fed with a dropper, all on her own. She knew she couldn't stop at just six so she hired some help and from there it just grew and grew. She hired more help so she could go and get more and more babies and now she has two large apartments housing 51 babies and 26 nannies. Most babies have cleft lips and palates, while others have heart conditions. Amanda, in all her spare time, also fund raises for the babies to have surgeries. She has been able to raise funds for about 25 surgeries I think. There was a team of Dutch doctors that came two weeks ago and did 9 surgeries on babies with cleft lips.



After lunch she took us over to her foster home and what an experience it was to be there! The sheer number of nannies and babies overwhelms you right when you walk in the door. The smell of that many diapers and spit up rags also hits you as you walk in the door. In a nutshell, it was pure chaos. It made Jon and Kate plus 8 look like a walk in the park. There were a lot of volunteers there as well trying to feed and play with the babies so it felt really crowded. Our kids were a little overwhelmed by all the commotion but eventually they both found babies to play with. Emily and a little 2 year old girl name Antonia bonded very quickly and played together for most of the time. We were so happy to find out she was going to be adopted on Sunday by a family in Canada. Gabe was a little slower to warm up but found a little boy with a cleft palate about 18 months old named James who would clap at everything Gabe did. Who wouldn't like that much applause? The nannies at one point put Emily in charge of feeding the babies in the high chairs. They handed her a spoon and a bowl full of rice meal something and down the row of high chairs she went giving a spoonful to each hungry mouth as she passed. Sara and Anna just hung out and played with the toys lying around. Chris' lap was occupied most of the time as well by a cute baby boy.



When I surveyed the scene I noticed a college age boy volunteer sitting on the couch trying to feed a 1 year old with a bottle. The baby kept arching his back and wouldn't take the bottle. I thought to myself, "That kid's got a major burp in there." I asked if I could hold him for a sec and after a few minutes of holding him upright he let out a huge belch. It's amazing how nice that sound is even when it's not your own baby. It's the sound of no more fussing! This little guy was dripping with sweat cause he had a fever and they had him in winter clothes eventhough the temperature outside was 90 degrees. I just held him and stroked his hair as I blew on it to cool him down. After a while he wanted to get down and play so I picked up another little guy who was just laying there on the ground.

This little guy, James, looked like he was in bad shape. He was covered in mosquito bites and his mouth had a hint of dusky blue around it. His teeth also had the tell tell signs of malnourishment. He was moaning in such a pathetic way and every once in a while would wince as if in pain. I found out after talking to the nannies that James was actually 2 years old. He had the body of a very small 5 month old baby. He had a severe heart condition that would require 2 major surgeries in the states, which he most likely wouldn't get. He was also born with his bladder on the outside of his body which would need surgery to repair as well. He didn't have the energy to play so I just held him.

We stayed there for a couple of hours and then headed out. All that night we thought about that experience and the impression it had made on all of us.

The next day we went to a big store called Metro which is similar to Costco, and loaded up on baby supplies for the foster home. We bought diapers, wipes, toothbrushes, band aids, diaper cream, tissues, etc. We only had a taxi to take the stuff back so in all of our enthusiasm, we still had to consider how much stuff we could actually carry. Chris took Sara and Anna back to the hotel for naps and I took the stuff with Emily and Gabe over to the foster home. It was not quite as shocking walking in the the second time around. Emily and Gabe felt comfortable enough to go find their little friends they had made the previous day and I took the baby items to a storage room in a newly acquired apartment for the foster home on the 1st floor of the apartment building. In this apartment I found some volunteers sorting summer clothes. There were bags upon bags of donated summer clothes that had to be sorted and folded so the babies wouldn't be dripping in sweat anymore. I put the baby items away in the storage room and then sat down to help them sort the clothes.

As I got talking with the other volunteers, who were three women from the Netherlands, I found out that they were the ones responsible for the medical mission that did the recent 9 surgeries. I guess they came and helped out at the orphanage 1 year ago and fell in love with a tiny newborn named Tina who had a cleft lip and palate. They went home to the Netherlands and started the Tina Foundation to raise money and recruit a team of doctors and nurses to come and do these surgeries. They raised several thousand Euros and recruited a medical team. This time the surgeries would be done in Xian for the first time. All the other surgeries had been done in Shanghai or Beijing making them more expensive because of the traveling. The hospital in Xian had been reluctant in the past to let foreign doctors come and do surgery because of the liability, but they finally gave consent this time.

Everything was set for the medical mission and then the volcano in Iceland erupted halting all flights out of Europe. The medical team couldn't get out of the Netherlands. Everything for the surgeries had to be timed just right and time was running out. Once the skies were open to flights the women from the Tina Foundation got on the news and begged people to donate their tickets to china for this medical team and they got a great response. The team made it to China! Originally they were going to do 14 surgeries but ended up only being able to do 9 because of time issues. The hospital would only let the surgeons do 3 a day and with so much time lost they could only fit in 9 children. What a miraculous story though! These women are so dedicated to this cause. The two of them even stayed in the hospital to care for the children after their surgeries because Chinese hospitals do not provide recovery nursing care, only the bed. In China Families are expected to take care of patients night and day in the hospitals. The nurses only take the patent's temperature and do shots or IVs. These two women provided all the food and diapers and cared for these babies night and day for 3 days.

The ladies and I talked about their experiences while we folded clothes for about 2 hours. Chris in the mean time, had brought Sara and Anna back to the foster home and was busy carrying boxes and boxes of diapers from one apartment into the new apartment storage room and then spent time organizing all the stuff in there. The Dutch ladies continued to tell me about their plans. They told me they plan on staying to help take care of the children until August of this year and then go back to the Netherlands to raise more funds for more surgeries and make arrangements for another medical mission next year. It was very inspiring to listen to them. One of them is a retired nurse so she will go with Amanda, as she has in the past, to chose more babies from the dying room at the orphanage next week. Since a few babies are being adopted this week they have room for more babies and Amanda is bound and determined to save as many as she can. We left there that day feeling good about what we had done but realizing how much more work there was left to do.

The whole experience has been a bit haunting. My mind just can't let it go. The faces of the children covered in mosquito bites, seeing them reaching their arms up to be held, the sound of them crying, watching the nannies brush several children's teeth with the same toothbrush and feeding several children with the same bottle. Watching them be bathed in little tubs as if on a conveyor belt and fed in their high chairs the same way. The hardest part too think about is that these babies have it good compared to the babies in the state orphanage who have it worse...........much worse. This foster home may not be a place where the children are pampered but Amanda is saving their lives and giving them a chance to be adopted. She is truly a hero. She lives in one of the apartments that houses 26 babies. She is never alone and constantly taking care of babies or having to deal with the endless problems of managing 26 nannies who don't have medical training or basic hygiene training for that matter. Her work is endless but she keeps on going and keeps rescuing as many babies as she can. She keeps throwing starfish into the ocean knowing she's making a difference to those she saves.

We left Xian Tuesday morning and on the way home the kids said it was the best trip we've taken so far.