For today… they have hope. A China team update.

Here is a sweet update from our hardworking One Orphan Hope Journey Team. They have worked tirelessly this week to collect updates on the children and send advocacy information back to us. We will continue to highlight several children today but wanted to start the day with some special words from team leader Darin. 

We begin our days here on the 2nd floor of our hotel eating breakfast, sleepy eyed and drinking some pretty bad coffee. The breakfast is good and the conversations go immediately to our day. We plan, re-plan, talk of the children and laugh at stories of the prior day. Before leaving, we meet in a room and go over any last minute details of our day, we pray our team out, for the kids, for their lives, for you our dear friends back home who our helping us in this journey and that our Lord would be glorified through it all.

We walk the dirty yet interesting streets of the city (about a 1/2 mile) to our facility where we are met with the sounds of children laughing and excited to see us. We lay in the floor with them, play with them, laugh with them and through it all simply love on them. It is a crazy yet beautiful scene of what these trips are all about. They ask us not to leave and we tell them it's okay, we'll be back soon after they eat lunch. In the backs of our minds, already dreading the day we won't be able to say that again without tears in our eyes. We know that day looms so close. But for today, today we play, sing, laugh and dance with them.

For this week, for each day, they have hope. Hope in us, hope in knowing we will be there. Someone to love them and play with them. Someone to hold them and maybe for the first time in their lives, be family to them. Despite the fact that they've may have never known of true family before. They hope in a family, hope in adoption, hope in us.
We come home in the evenings and we continue our work for them. We will fight for them, though love and endurance. We go to bed late and get up early and never consider anything short of that. They are our mission and we couldn't be happier because tomorrow we get to go back.

Please continue to follow along as the team sends back updates on some pretty awesome kids in need of pretty awesome families.

You can learn more about the China waiting child program here.