Having finished the proposal template in the morning, I finally got a chance to play with the kids in the afternoon. Children are housed in three individual houses: The House of Joy, The House of Love and Luke's House. Children are grouped together by age. To prevent spreading disease, we must wash our hands, and take of our shoes before playing with the kids.

The first house we visited was House of Joy. The kids there were 1 - 2 years old (see picture). They just woke up from their afternoon nap, sitting side by side on their own high chairs. Most of the kids here have yet to be adopted. One of the girls has a severe cleft lips. Normally, the orphanage will arrange surgery to repair the lips before they are being adopted. In this case, her future parents decided to take the girl to the US, where she will undergo surgery to correct the cleft lips. Like many of the other kids, she was abandoned at birth simply because she had a birth defect, which, not knowing to her natural parents, is correctable.

We then moved onto the older children. They all sat side by side by the wall. A local Chinese Ayi was teaching them to sing. Interestingly enough, she was signing "Jesus loves me this I know." (I actually recorded the singing but the file is too big to put into this email.) It was one of the many touching moments the past few days. I also made friend with one of the kids named Alex. Alex is 3 years old and, to my surprise, can understand and speak a little bit of English. I think he picked it up from the American helpers. That's a picture of me and Alex sitting on my nap.

With much work done, I departed the village at 5:00a in the morning, hauling my tired body, but enlightened spirit with me. I tell myself: I'll be back.