I Know It Has Been Forever....

But I hope you will forgive me when you see these faces!  I had a chance to drop by Eagles Wings 5 today and just couldn't resist taking photos until my camera batteries died. (They always seem to give out in Eagles Wings 5...I wonder why!)

 Here are our littlest eaglets sitting at their new "big kid" table waiting for their afternoon fruit snack. (And please don't worry about those serious expressions...I am not sure whether my foreign hair and nose or the sight of the camera is the true culprit, but there usually are lots of smiles and giggles).

Our newest eaglet!

Our littlest eaglet.

This little guy is actually not an eaglet, though I tried to bring him home with me. But I promised his mommy I would try to get a photo. Happy Birthday! Sorry about the serious expression. :(

Some people think I am crazy to come so far to do this job....I think I'd be crazy not to!

Donna

Director, Eagles Wings

Field Trip!

On our way out of town (to the US for passports, visas and a family visit), we spent a few days in Beijing. My daughters and I did the same thing the last time we left Eagles Wings for the US, and we took Hong Wei, our oldest boy with us for some sightseeing. I can tell you there was a LOT of whining from the other big kids who didn't get to go! But I promised them their chance would come, and Hong Wei was only chosen because he was the oldest (eldest?). So true to my word, this time we took the two girls who live with us...YuanYuan and Liu Er. They were SO SO SO excited for the couple weeks before hand, it was fun to see their excitement for the big trip. They turned out to be great travelers and we had an awesome time. Our two Australian volunteers, Andrew and Noela, also came along to see the sights and help me keep track of the five girls!   I'll let the photos tell most of the story. :)

Yuan Yuan on the train

Andrew and Lindsay

Liu Er and Noela

Eating

And more eating

Liu Er and Yuan Yuan meet the Great Wall!

Liu Er keeping the sun off

Kristen and Liu Er doing a photo shoot. YuanYuan was the photographer!

With a thankful heart,
Donna
Director, Eagles Wings

Eagles Wings 3 Children Singing for Children's Day

I haven't had much luck posting video from China, so I hope it works!

Children's Day!

Children's Day is a very special day in China...definitely bigger than Mother's Day or Father's Day. (gulp, which reminds me that I didn't call my dad yesterday! ouch!!)
There were Children's Day activities all around the city for several days leading up to June 1. The orphanage was a special focus as volunteer groups from the area came to bring gifts and celebrate the children for three or four days in a row. The Eagles Wings 3 children performed alongside some other entertainers from the community, including a belly dancer (?), a martial arts demonstration (very well done) and a group of very young wanna-be rock stars. Our kids were definitely the best!  Sadly I am clueless about uploading video so you'll have to take my word for it. :(  (But when they were signing along with their singing, I can tell you I was crying.)

That's not all though! Two of our little girls, XiuXiu and Gao Jing, go a private kindergarten in our neighborhood. Their school put on a BIG Children's Day program that reminded me of our Field Day events in the US. So bright and early (and hot) Zhang Ying, our translator, my 3 daughters and Gao Jing and Xiu Xiu headed out to the big park nearby. There were more than 200 kids there and at least two parents or grandparents for each kid! I will say that the number of dads there was very impressive.

    

FGJ

FXX

FXX, Kristen and FGJ

We did all kinds of relay races, played with parachutes and generally got hot and sweaty, but it was a lot of fun, and I am sure a wonderful experience for the kids. Then we had ice cream while waiting for our ride home. :D

Operation Smile or Guess Who Has A New Lip?!

Our little Nancy had a very successful cleft lip surgery on April 22nd. We are so thankful to Operation Smile and their international team who traveled to Zhengzhou to do approximately 120 surgeries in just a few days. Our visiting nurse, Cathy from Australia, took Nancy and two other children to be evaluated by the team. Unfortunately, only Nancy was able to have surgery, but we are thankful for the beautiful job that was done on her lip and new friends and contacts made.

One of those contacts was a speech therapist with Operation Smile, based in Hangzhou. A very wonderful twist of fate is that Jiaozuo is this young woman's hometown! So she asked if she could come and evaluate some of our children while she was visiting family in the area. Talk about an offer too good to refuse! We were so thrilled to have her great advice as she did one-on-one speech evaluations with 15 children and then spent some time discussing speech issues and some basic therapies with our management team. We look forward to developing this relationship more in the future and also accessing some other services of Operation Smile now that we have made some contacts.  All things really DO work together, don't they?

With a thankful heart,
Donna
Director, Eagles Wings

The World Race

March came in like a lion with snow and wind and on March 7th the World Race blew into town as well! A group of eleven young people enthusiastic to serve and learn on a trip around the world, they certainly made an impact here in Jiaozuo. First of all, they pretty much doubled the foreigner population in our city, and they stood out wherever they went. Second, they brought so much love, joy and laughter into all our homes. And I mean into all our homes. We had team members staying in visitor quarters in all Eagles Wings homes, where they could really get to know our children and our staff in an up-close and personal way. What an amazing experience it was for them, and for us, too. Here's a little bit of what they were up to during their three week stay:

Cindy Pearson and Beth Griswold
Special Education      Physical Therapy

1) Provide care for the children while we did staff training. We were able to do two full days of training on policies, processes, and fire safety for the entire Eagles Wings staff of managers, ayis and teachers. We were also able to conduct special education training for the teachers in XWLY and the orphanage and special needs child development training for staff from Eagles Wings 4 and the orphanage thanks to volunteers from Jian Hua and Christian Action.  During all these training days the World Race team members gave tender loving care to the children whose ayis and teachers were in training. They took care of the blind children in EW2, manned the school and handled the care and feeding of the Eagles Wings 4 kids. They did a great job and brought a lot of joy.

2) Brighten our homes with color! The teams designed colorful murals for four of our homes. Eagles Wings 4 activity room had two walls painted in bright colors, including one wall with bright yellow paint and geometric shapes to bring some sunshine in. In the activity room for Eagles Wings 3, the teams painted a large tree with the fruit of good character which Chew Gim has been instructing the children about. Eagles Wings 5 now has a bright rainbow, a smiling sun and lots of butterflies to inspire our babies. Eagles Wings 6 was painted with an undersea theme, complete with octopus, jelly fish and coral and a bright sunrise over the water.

Rainbows and butterflies at Eagles Wings 5

Eagles Wings 3 Activity Room

Eagles Wings 6

Eagles Wings 4

Eagles Wings 4

Parker enjoys a Blizzard!

Chris - flying along in his racechair

3) Outings! By far the most valuable part of their service to us was the outings they were able to do with our children. Twenty-six of our eaglets were able to go on outings with team members. Two team members took two children (two by two just like Noah) outside for a morning or afternoon of fun geared specifically to those children. The kids were paired up by age, gender and ability. These outings allowed the children to get away from their normal environment and out into the community as well as to get some special attention from the volunteers. What an amazing success! Once they began, the children were anxious for their turn and they talked with great excitement about their experience after they returned. Some children went kite flying, some went to DQ for ice cream, some went to the park, some went for manicures

Mia and Hailey show off their pretty nails

Chad and Zach had fun shopping

 and some just went for a ride through the grocery store, picking up some goodies along the way. In addition, most of the children who were not singled out for these outings were taken outside to play on numerous occasions by the team members.

Chris and Wayne - boys day out!

Wendy and Shaelyn go cruisin'

Barry tries on a new look

Obviously  our first experience with the World Race was a great success. We miss our teams very much. They really were a blessing to us in so many ways. We hope we will have the chance to host more World Race teams in the future. See The World Race to find out more, learn how you can support a team, host a team or become part of a team!

With a thankful heart,

Donna

Director, Eagles Wings
(Please forgive the terrible layout...it isn't as easy as it seems!)

Happy Birthday, Hailey!

Today is Hailey's 10th birthday.  A big milestone for sure, but an even bigger and better one will be the day she has a forever family of her own. Today I met with her house mother and she asked me if I would consider taking

Hailey into my house once my oldest foster daughter goes for adoption. Here was her reasoning:

"Hailey is a great kid, who would benefit so much from being in a real family home. She has some mild aspergers-like characteristics but is really just a good
kid who needs a chance for a normal upbringing. She is bright and learns quickly so she can adapt well to family life, and she responds well to instruction and
correction. Her only area of weakness is sometimes being stubborn and a little impulsive, but she has learned to control herself much of the time. We would be losing a really great helper who is so good about helping her friends who have less function. But she deserves a chance to be part of a family, to go to real school and to live a
normal life."

As much as that statement was directed at moving her into my home with my kids (some adopted and some fostered), doesn't it apply even more to Hailey having a forever family home? What I would like more than anything is to keep Hailey right where she is, knowing that a forever family will be here soon. Hailey just turned 10, is really a lovely kid with a special spark.

Hailey is doing great in Eagles Wings, and we sure love having her here, but our greatest birthday wish is that a family will realize that Hailey is the daughter they are looking for. Can you be part of the chain of people that helps this wish come true?

With a thankful heart,

Donna

Director, Eagles Wings