Our first day at the orphanage. Doing what we came to do. Since it’s after 11pm right now and I’ve got some work yet ahead of me, a few glimpses with little words are all I will give you.

Besides, my words right now wouldn’t be that wordy. I’ve been speaking in simplified English sentences, saying them maybe three times in three slightly varied ways all day long. I don’t think I have much brain power left right now to write anything worthy of reading. But, I believe these glimpses will tell a bit of a story of what our day looked like. Summed up, today was foundation building.

 

We met a lot of caregivers and a lot of kids today. We’re overwhelmed by names that are very hard for our mouths to say. And, team members are taking deep breaths tonight…hopefully, they’re all asleep by now while I burn the midnight oil. The first day is hard, wrestling with what each team members’ role is in their room, wanting to do significant work but not knowing the best way to do that, feeling the weight of the sheer number of children all of whom could use an entire day of one-on-one time.

I’m taking a deep breath myself and trying not to bite my nails down to nothings. At 4:45, literally minutes before we left today, one of the directors of the orphanage who has been working with me asked me to change the plan I had for the daily ayi training and instead combine it into one presentation and give a lecture tomorrow for about 40-50 staff including ayis, therapists of various types, and administrators.

Ummm…okay.

For the past 3 hours, I’ve been sorting through video clips that the team members took today and reworking all my notes and Power Point slides to create something that might work for tomorrow, all the while trusting that whatever He wants said will be said in spite of me.

Yup. I can’t say I’ve got this. But, I know He does.

We saw them–1,000 amazing life-plus sized clay warriors which are quite literally the universe’s hardest puzzles.

We conquered those 3 pits of warriors, learning all about them from our flag carrying tour guide.

This lady clearly came ready to conquer them as well.

(that’s a plush tiger head backpack with matching animal print jumpsuit in case you were wondering.)

We then started into what I had told the team would be the hardest part of this whole trip (tied with driving away from the orphanage on the last day)–the van ride into the city where we are serving. We’ve always had one van. That is, one maybe 18-passenger van. For 18 people total counting the staff on board. And, an exorbitant amount of luggage. On previous trips, some team members were left to stand for the entire 3 hour drive while others sat on luggage in the aisles.

But, we all witnessed a China miracle today.

We were met on the highway to move from our charter bus to the orphanage-owned vehicle by not only the orphanage van BUT they had rented a second vehicle for our luggage.

Could you hear me singing from the other side of the world when I saw those two vans?

The energy built in that van full of people and not a mound of luggage and people as we made the last leg of our journey and entered into the city that we came here to serve in. By dinner…at this well-named local fave….

Every single one of them seemed abuzz knowing that tomorrow, we’re going into the orphanage.

As I go to sleep tonight with cars beeping outside and the glow of neon lights reflecting onto the wallpaper in my little room, I’m looking at this pile of goodness that somehow made it over here by another miracle. This isn’t even all of it.

Ready or not, here we go.