VOTE - Loving Livia

Have you cast your vote for LWB yet in the Chase Community Giving Contest? I want to introduce you to Livia so you can see how taking the time to do so can allow even more vulnerable children a chance at life.

Livia came into LWB’s hands from a rural orphanage when she was four months old, weighing just 5 pounds. She was malnourished, weak, and truly fragile. If she had not been moved to our cleft home, she would definitely have passed away.

Our trained caregivers got right to work and Livia began receiving her feedings with specialized cleft bottles and high calorie formula. Over the next few weeks, she began gaining weight, began smiling, and most importantly began realizing what it means to be loved. Just four months after arriving in such a weak condition, Livia was ready for her life-changing surgery! She recovered beautifully and began hitting all of her development milestones. In fact, she recently celebrated her first birthday and is now beginning to walk. She is now in LWB foster care, ready for adoption and an unlimited future. What joy she brings to the world! What a tragedy it would have been if this beautiful little girl had not been given a second chance. Her whole life is in frontof her now, thanks to our cleft healing homes.

And by voting today for LWB, you can help us open even more specialized homes to save the lives of babies just like Livia. Please take the time to cast your vote today, because every baby’s life is important.

Photo of the Week - Vote Today

Our photo of the week comes from our Zhang Village Foster Care. This is baby Landri, and I think you can tell just how much she loves being with her foster momma. Obviously the feeling is mutual!

Landri's life was saved through our Cleft Healing Homes program, as she arrived from a rural orphanage extremely sick and weak. Our dream is to have a healing home in every province in China, so that babies like Landri can have a second chance. You can help LWB reach that goal by voting for us in the Chase Community Giving contest. Cast your vote from January 15-22 to save even more lives and to make even more moments like the one above possible!

http://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/charities/263934?m=7ccbc80f

Photo(s) of the week - 10/16/2009

Quinn and Cambree from our Anhui Cleft Healing Home both were scheduled for surgery this week. We couldn't decide on just one photo this week as BOTH of these pre-op photos in the hospital were just too cute for words!

Photo of the Week - October 9, 2009

We recently had several graduates from our Henan Cleft Healing home. One of them was sweet David-Michael, a true charmer. Before he left to meet his new foster parents, the aunties snapped the following photo. Doesn't he look cute sitting in his Bumbo seat looking like he is ready to strum a guitar? We think he wanted to serenade the lovely ladies who took such excellent care of him in the cleft home!

We certainly will miss you in the healing home, David-Michael....but we know we will get to follow your continued progress in foster care as well.

Imagine This - please help!

I know this will be a longer story than usual, but I am going to ask you to read it all the way to the end. Something amazing happened to me today, and I believe it was for a reason. I hope you will feel the same after reading this letter.

LWB has been working in China since 2003, and just a few months after we began helping children there, we decided to do our very first cleft surgery mission to Guangdong province. It was on that trip that I met Dr. John Padilla, one of the most extraordinary men I have ever had the honor to meet. His love and compassion for children born with cleft was humbling, and he influenced me in an enormous way. He helped heal 53 children on that first mission, and he promised me he would return to China with LWB every year to heal more. Tragically, John died just a few months after our trip to China in a plane crash. I wrote a blog dedicated to him that you can read here. I hope you do have the time to read about this extraordinary man, but for those of you who don’t have the time, I will tell you that John Padilla is a hero to me. He is the man who dared me to “dream big”, and our cleft healing home idea was created completely in his honor. I think of him every time we heal another child born with cleft.

Recently LWB was invited to submit a project to a new proposed television reality show called “Imagine This”. This show was created in large part by an actor named Eion Bailey. Many of you might have seen him in Band of Brothers, on ER, or in many movies. He is a man with a heart of compassion, and he came up with the idea of doing a reality show where each episode would be shot in a different location around the world, and a team of people would come together to do something amazing…whether it is to build a school for kids in South America, or provide a well system for a village in Africa. We were asked to submit a project for consideration, and immediately we knew that we wanted to submit the idea of a new cleft healing home for a province in China, where all the orphanages in that province could send their children born with cleft for loving, one on one care. We have created our sample episode at this website location: http://imaginethistv.com/group/chinahealinghome

Today Karen Maunu and I had a conference call with Eion Bailey and one of the show’s producers. We were discussing the possibility of building a new cleft healing home, and Eion told me that he would really love to see it happen because it had personal meaning to him. He went on to tell me that he had a friend who had been so influential in his life. This man had believed in him from the very beginning, had invested in his future and his career, and was someone that Eion admired greatly. He told me that he wanted to see this episode happen because he wanted to dedicate it to this man’s life, as he had sadly passed away. And then he told me that this man had an absolute passion for children born with cleft, and I got goosebumps all over my entire body. “Are you by any chance talking about John Padilla?,” I asked holding my breath. And unbelievably, beautifully, miraculously…he was. So while I tried my best not to cry, I said, “Eion…I need to tell you a story.” And so I told him about LWB’s relationship with John, how he had gone with us to China and fallen in love with the people there. How he had told me he wanted to return every year to China to help even more children in the future. How he had told me that if I really dreamed of a day where no orphaned child would die from being born with cleft that I needed to never give up until we made it happen.

I think everyone on the call was emotional by this point. Somehow a mom in Oklahoma helping orphans was on the phone with an actor in Hollywood who wanted to help bring change to the world, and we were both tied together through the same amazing man who had died far too soon. I am sure that John was up in heaven at that moment smiling, saying “I told you all to dream big.”

There have been times with this foundation where I have known I was part of something absolutely extraordinary. I have seen miracles happen and have felt the enormity of God working for the good. I remember baby Kang, the baby who started it all. The heart surgeon in China told me he was not going to survive post surgery, but when thousands of adoptive families came together through the internet to pray for that one tiny baby, he rallied the very next day, and LWB was born. I remember baby Hercules from our cleft mission in 2005, and knowing that I was in the middle of something so beyond me as everything came together in the exact right way to save his life as well. I remember Baby Li, and Cui, and Chang, and hundreds more lives which have been changed because people came together and believed a difference could be made. I have been so blessed to see again and again that when people step out beyond themselves to help others, the EXTRAORDINARY occurs.

Today, I felt again with everything in my heart that something extraordinary is going to happen. I don’t know what, I don’t know when, but I felt so strongly that something wonderful is going to come from this show if it becomes a reality. It might not even be in China…it could be an episode shot in Peru, or in Haiti, or in the US, but I believe that Eion Bailey and I were supposed to speak with each other today and learn about our connection to John Padilla for a reason.

PLEASE join with us one more time and be a part of making something wonderful happen. We need your help! We need as many people as possible to visit http://imaginethistv.com/group/chinahealinghome, sign up to join the group, and leave a comment on how important this project and show would be to orphaned children. The producers will be meeting with the networks very, very soon, and there are still people out there who don’t think that America would want to watch a show where people are doing good in the world.

YOU CAN HELP MAKE IT HAPPEN. Log onto our page, join our healing home group, and leave your feedback that this type of show is EXACTLY what we want to watch, what we want our kids to see, what we believe is important. Forward this to everyone that you know, help spread the news for as many people as possible to voice their opinion. I know every single person who supports us believes that saving the lives of children is absolutely important. But now we need to take action and let the networks know as well. Thank you so much in advance for believing this project should be done and that our healing homes can give orphaned children a second chance. Let your voice be heard, both in John Padilla’s honor and in honor of every child with cleft who is in heaven right now with him because they lost their struggle. You helped save 10 babies’ lives with the Facebook challenge, you saved even more with the Cookie Contest, and now we have a chance to impact countless others by showing our support for this new series and an episode to help orphaned children in China. Thank you, thank you, thank you….for always believing that every child born deserves to know love. Together, I know completely that we can make this show and a new healing home a reality, and give some of the most vulnerable orphaned children real hope.

Because every child counts,

Amy

Photo of the Week

There was no question this week as to what picture we were going to choose. Our cleft home nannies are so amazing. As you can see in this photo of our little Lyn with her nanny, there is a true sense of love and connectedness that exists between the two. We just loved how this was captured in this beautiful photo. Our nannies go above and beyond the call of duty and truly love and care for "our babies" as if they were their very own. We are just so grateful for them all and the role they play in each babies' story of hope and healing!

Before and After

Our photo of the week was an easy choice this Friday! Little Gavin had a severe facial cleft which took Dr. Ness four hours to repair on our medical exchange in Shanghai. We absolutely love the before and after! Thanks to everyone who supported our 7th medical trip. You wrote such a beautiful story of hope for 22 wonderful kids.

Were You Prepared for Adoption?

I picked up the phone one night at 2 a.m. and found myself talking to a father in China who said they couldn't go through with their adoption of a child with cleft.

"When she eats, stuff comes out of her nose," he told me.

"That's perfectly normal in a child with cleft", I tried to reassure, thinking quietly to myself that surely they should have known this before they traveled.

"It's really freaking us out," he said. "We don't think this is the right child for our family." After listening for a few more moments, I knew the decision had already been made in their hearts. They would not be bringing her home despite anything I could tell them.

I hung up from that call troubled, as disruption always makes me sad, but I was also realistic in knowing that if the family felt disgust towards their new daughter, then that certainly wasn't a good situation for the child. But I did have to ask myself how someone could go a whole year of paperchasing and waiting to adopt through the waiting child path and NOT take the time to educate themselves on their new child's special need.

And so that is the question for today's blog. Were you prepared to adopt internationally? What books did you read to get ready? If you adopted a child with special needs, did you do research in advance? Was there anything that you absolutely weren't ready for? Did you have any moments during your adoption trip when you thought, 'I don't think I can do this?" Let's share any and all advice for people considering international adoption, especially through the special needs path.

I am a firm believer that education is essential. What have YOU learned from the journey?

And don't forget to keep following our cleft exchange in Shanghai. Visit our story blog for more details and links to absolutely great photos.

Amy

What's Your Dream?

LWB's 7th medical exchange just started this week in Shanghai. You can read more about it on our main LWB blog at http://www.lwbblog.com Seeing the photos of the children has made me reflect back on the missions I have been on, and it made me think today of the very first international medical exchange we ever did, back in 2004. I can only smile when I think of that trip, as I knew absolutely nothing about sending a medical team to China, of getting medical supplies through customs or obtaining international medical licenses. All I knew was that there were babies in orphanages who needed cleft surgery, and I knew we wanted to help them. Thankfully everyone involved on both sides of the ocean granted me a lot of grace for my mistakes, and wonderfully.....SO wonderfully.....over 50 babies were healed.

It was on that trip that I met Dr. John Padilla, who has sinced tragically passed away. We were sitting on a bus in China when he first turned back in his seat to ask me, "hey Amy...if you could dream anything for your foundation, what would it be?" How's that for a question that makes you stop and think? And so I began to tell him what I dreamed of, about a day when no baby would be abandoned simply from being born with cleft, of a day when any family who was too poor to afford surgery for their child could have it for free, of a day when LWB would be throughout China helping kids. And then he looked right at me and said, "then make it happen."

Of course I tried to protest and tell him those dreams were too huge for our then tiny foundation, but he smiled with confidence and said, "Dream big.....dream big....dream big."

I can't help but think of him each time another LWB cleft trip happens. Because of John's encouragement to never stop dreaming, LWB now has a cleft home specifically for babies born with cleft. We have a Unity Fund for rural families who have children born with medical needs so they don't have to make the awful decision to abandon their children in order to get them healed, and we of course are now helping babies in orphanages throughout China. John's words have stayed in my heart that great things can happen when you do dream big.

So my question today is whether you have a dream of what you would like to do in this world. Is there something really big you want to do but you don't even know how to get started? Do you think you will act on that dream? Why or why not? Of course this mom from Oklahoma would encourage you to try....as I have seen amazing things happen when people step out in faith to help others.

Amy