What A Difference A Lip Makes...

Try this...get a cup of water, or a juice box with the little straw thing or a bottle of pop/coke/soda (depending on what part of the country or world you reside in). Now take a sip...wait! wait!  You can't close your lips -- just take a drink with your mouth slightly open. Hey, stop cheating....open your lips just a little and try again.

Well, if you are using a cup you probably have a mess dribbling down your chin onto your clothes. If you are using a straw you are completely thwarted because you can't get any sucking action going. And that's what trying to eat and drink is like every day for DangDang and Zhe Nan, two of our cleft babies. Add to that a cleft palate which makes whatever you do get to stay in your mouth come out through your nose. (Don't you HATE that feeling?!) For babies born with cleft lip and cleft palate, just surviving is a daily effort. Feeding these babies takes a lot of patience (and lots of clean towels to mop up what doesn't go down). It's a mess for everyone and frustrating for a hungry baby to have nourishment so close and yet so far. Eagles Wings 5 is our home for babies with high maintenance medical needs, like cleft lip/cleft palate.

It's already July 13 at Eagles Wings and although they don't know it, in just a few hours, Dang Dang and Zhe Nan are going for a very important journey. They will be going with two of their ayis to Xian, a 3 hour train ride away, where they will have surgery to close their lips. The next few days will be scary and a little painful, but the benefits...being able to actually close their lips!...will be well worth it. In addition, after their surgery, they will be able to be processed for adoption, and their chances of being chosen by a family are far higher after this surgery than before it. Just a fact of life. One of many "facts" that have made life pretty difficult so far for DangDang and Zhe Nan.

So, if you don't mind, say an extra prayer today and over the next week for DangDang and Zhe Nan and their ayis as they travel and as the babies have this healing, and life changing, surgery. Please also pray for the doctor and other staff who are traveling from the US -- on their own time, raising their own funds -- to do the surgery on 20 little ones just like DangDang and ZheNan. We are so SO thankful for their skill and their willingness to go where they are needed.

THIS is what it's all about.