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

It's Shane's Day!

I have been really blessed to see three of our eaglets leave the nest for a forever family during our short time here so far. It's always bittersweet. We love the kids and pour ourselves into them, spending time getting to know them, weighing and measuring them while they wiggle, worrying about them when they are ill and laughing over their silly antics as they learn to crawl and walk and run. And then we say goodbye. We are so happy that we know where Shane will be going and hope his new parents will let us know how he is doing from time to time.
God bless you, Shane! We love you!

With a thankful heart,

Donna

Director, Eagles Wings

Wow! Busy Month!

It's been a very busy two weeks as we have enjoyed the Spring Festival here in Jiaozuo. On New Year's Eve, February 2, we celebrated with a party at Eagles Wings 3. The children from about 9 and up were allowed to stay up late playing games, watching the official CCTV New Year entertainment marathon (which is actually pretty good) and eating traditional snacks (oranges, peanuts, sunflower seeds and some candies). The Eagles Wings 1 kids taught the others to play Uno, Swap, Jenga and the Beijing Memory Game, some of our favorites. We also had a mini (mini mini) pool table which kept some of the kids occupied for hours. At about 10:15 I realized that some of the kids were starting to fade so rather than lose them we had our midnight festivities a little early. We set off four confetti fire works. Those things are WAY cool. They are large tubes filled with paper confetti that explode with a pop and shoot the confetti into the air. A great way to usher in the year of the rabbit.

 

Last night was the full moon which signifies the end of the spring festival, and my favorite part of the holiday...Lantern Festival. Traditionally families will light paper lanterns and send them into the sky (kind of like a mini hot air balloon). It's so pretty when the sky is dotted with little lanterns. And then there are the massive fireworks! Just a great time as hundreds of people gather to watch. It's one of the things that makes me feel part of the community. It's also a very, very noisy day as firecrackers explode from morning until night along with smaller fireworks displays pretty much everywhere. The explosions echo off the buildings and car alarms go off everywhere. It's very exciting, but also nice when it stops. Which hasn't quite happened yet...we woke up at 7 this morning to the boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom of firecrackers just below my window.

Eugene Needs Your Prayers!

Please pray for our little Eugene. He is one of our two 4 month old babies. Today he went to the hospital for the second time this winter. Winter here is so hard for our littlest ones, they are still gaining the weight and resistance that they need to survive.

He has come home once this year when it looked pretty bleak. Please be praying that he will pull through again. Our God can do it!

With a thankful heart,
Donna
Director, Eagles Wings

Eagles Wings Program for Blind Children

One of our focus areas is for blind children. We currently have seven vision impaired children in our care (one was adopted in December). This is a really challenging area, and few programs like ours have the training to meet the needs of children with significant vision impairment. With the help of Bethel School for the Blind in Beijing, we are getting trained to help these children reach their potential. In the fall, I went with one of our staff to a week long training to help us see firsthand how to run a program for children with visual challenges. After six years, they really have a great program and are willing and excited to share what they have learned with others.

Most of our vision impaired children have other issues as well, so we are working on several fronts at once. Sensory issues are common and one of the first things we need to work on so that we can get to strategies for managing their vision problems. We currently have one staff member who works five days a week with our three most affected children. The improvements have been quite amazing, and we are so encouraged about what is possible with this kind of focused attention!

This past week a team of four from Bethel came to Jiaozuo and spent time evaluating each of our vision impaired children and giving us some additional advice and strategies for working with them. We appreciate this help so much! Learning from these experts makes us all smarter and also encourages us that we are on the right track.

Of course, I don't have any photos...I had my camera but was too busy soaking up all that knowledge. :)

With a thankful heart,

Donna
Director, Eagles Wings