When preparing to travel for the medical team, we were all told to be flexible and expect the unexpected. I guess where I’m going with this is, I didn’t quite expect the impact the foster parents and the orphanage would have on me! I spent about a week at both the hospital and orphanage in Nanchang City. Two events stood out to me.

The first was a foster dad nervously awaiting the doctors from America, a wonderful old man with a 6-month-old baby boy barely weighing in at 10 pounds, with a severe bi-lateral cleft lip. We communicated through actions and he let me hold the baby, as I held and kissed him, he smiled, his cleft widened and his eyes lit up, although never letting the old man out of his sight for too long. The next day I spent more time with the two and saw more affection and interaction. I stayed with the baby for a while so his foster father could bring back some hot water to make a bottle for the baby and noodles for himself. I was totally taken by these two, the way they looked at each other with such trust and obvious love in their faces. This was an old man that took a baby with severe disfigurement and saw beyond the gaping hole in his face and society’s disapproval, to care for and love this child. Not only did he love his child, he was obviously proud of him!

The second was at the orphanage. We met a woman that was confined to a wheelchair; she had a beautiful baby sitting on her lap happy and playing. We stopped to talk to her, and she told us she had been orphaned as a child and grew up in this particular orphanage where she now lives as an adult. To help out she fosters one of the babies at the orphanage until she is adopted. She then will take another beautiful baby and care and love her unconditionally until an adoptive family is found for her and so on. While facing her own adversities in life this woman has found it in her heart to care and love a child with the foreseeable heartache of giving her up for a better life. I witnessed love with no limits.

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