My Last Day

I leave Shepherd's Field today and head to the Beijing Airport where I will board my plane destined for home.  It will be a day of sad goodbyes.  Please pr*y for me as I say goodbye to the kids and staff here.  I will miss them terribly.  Also pr*y for my travels home.

Wrapping Up

My journey is coming to an end. This is the hardest thing that I think I have ever done... Saying goodbye. I'm ready to go home and see my friends and family but I am not ready to leave my 75 kids.  Over the weekend I got to go to Hope Foster Home to meet this little girl named Ting Ting. A family friend is adopting her so I got to spend a couple hours with her and take pictures and videos of her.

Sunday Melissa, Bethany, and I went to ch*rch and then we got a little lost, so we ended up spending two hours in downtown Beijing trying to figure things out.  Luckily we did.  It's been great being able to hang out with the interns and bond.  I've made life long friends here at PHF.  The trip is sadly wrapping up.  I came hoping to change life for the orphans but really they changed me. I am forever grateful for this experience.

Family Near and Far

Today I got to hang out with who I call my brother, Grady. I got to have a good couple games of UNO with him despite the fact that I lost just about every game.
Also today,  I scared this little boy, Bill, who is two. This child hates me and always has. Haha. He likes to bite,  hit, and claw at me. I found out one reason why. I'm sitting on the couch with Tess and Bill.  I blow a bubble with my gum and Bill freaks out, runs off and throws a fit. I kept doing it (shame on me) to see if that's what was scaring him.  It was.  He told the nanny that he wouldn't go to the bathroom because that meant he had to cross  in front of me. He just about peed his pants before the nanny grabbed him and took him potty. He saw me a few more times and was terrified of me and my gum. There is my interesting yet funny story for the day:)
A week from today I will be leaving for Spokane, even though I call China my new home. I don't know if I will be able to leave this place. I feel like a mother leaving her 75 children behind. I grow closer to the children, interns, and staff everyday.  They have become like "family".

Tess and I in the ball pit at SFCV

Only One More Week

The weekend was mostly spent in Beijing with Tess and the girls. Saturday included shopping and the most awkward massage I have ever gotten in my life. Ha Ha!  But Tess (my roommate) still had a good time. Sunday we headed to ch*rch and then to the Water Cube that was used in the 2008 Summer Olympics. Melissa, Tess and I were quite popular and had our picture taken what seemed like a thousand times. We would freeze in poses and people would come up and have their picture taken with us. Later that day we headed to the Night Market where we ate scorpion, chicken heart and a lot of weird little things. The weirdest was the chicken heart though! We saw a pot of dog meat which looked and smelled nasty! Over all it was a great weekend especially since it was Annie's last weekend with us:( but I'm ready to see what the Father will bring this week! :)

Night Market

Chicken BBQ  that we eat by the dozens.

Jacob Jai

 

Pictures from the week:

This little one is getting paper ready so she can be adopted and go home to live with her new family!

              Peek-a-Boo!

Going for a ride with Sarah Zhou!

Visiting the Summer Palace

The days have been busy and hot but Thursday afternoon it finally rained! If you haven't seen when it rains in China, it pours! The streets and everything flood. Annie, Melissa, Tess, Sara, and I all went out in the pouring rain and danced and ran around in our bare feet. We played in the mud and also went to the windows of the houses and said hi to the children. We also went and played on the playground, and I went down the slide and came shooting out because it was so slippery. It made my week!:)

Please  pray for this little girl, Joelle.  As you can see, she is very sick and said to be the next little one that will probably die.  It breaks my heart as she lays for hours.  Many of the nannies are afraid to hold her.  Not me.  She loves to be held and is all smiles when I do.

He Got Me!

A Note from Mom

Hi, I'm Carrie and I'm Hannah's mom.  I'm going to be Hannah's guest blogger today. I want to take some time and share with you parts of a letter Hannah wrote to me today.  It gives you a glimmer of her heart for this special place called Shepherd's Field and the beautiful children that have captured it:

Today I helped Pam Baker and then us interns took the kindergarten class out to lunch and tomorrow we are taking the older class like Grady, Stacey, Windy and so on. It is crazy watching them be out cause they eat a ton. Like they never stop to take a break. They just eat eat eat.

Today we get a new intern who is 19 and her name is Bethany. And Becca and Linda, who are two of my roommates, leave this weekend. Then I am moving into an aparment with this girl named Tess who comes on Friday my time. She is here for a couple weeks and she is also my age. So, two 17 year olds living in an apartment! wohooo!:)

I really dont want to leave this place. At night I just think that I have to leave here in a couple weeks and I will just cry. I can't even think about it.  I have grown so close to some of these kids, expecially Grady. He wants to go to America so bad. He is always talking about it and asking me questions about it. Then he sees the other kids getting adopted and its so hard on him. He asks about 3 times a week when am I going back home and when I tell him he just sits there all quiet.

I am working with this girl Joelle for physical therapy and she doesn't get any attention because they are pretty sure that she is the next to die.  The nannies won't go by her because they know that she will die soon. Its so sad. She is blind and hard of hearing and something is wrong with her head.  But I just sit there and hold her and cry just thinking that I may be the last person who holds her. Is there any way that I can stay here longer? :)

 

Hannah

 

I also want to take the time to thank you for not only following her journey as she interns in China but also for your pr*yers and encouragement.  It not only means a lot to her but also to her family!

Carrie