Is It Possible???

I'm not even sure if I should blog this yet...but I think it is an awesome illustration of what God can do. So here goes...

Back last Spring, our church did a RCCares Ministry project for an orphanage my friend works with in China. They did not have running water, and we collected money for the China Well Project (to helped fund the orphanage to dig a well and, in fact, they were also able to get a purification system so they won't want to boil it any longer!). Anyways, the staff decided to also give us $1,500 for Megan's orphanage to use to meet needs at her orphanage. We were overwhelmed at the time. We had NO IDEA what doors it could open for us when it was time to find out WHAT orphanage she was at, or when we would bring her home.

I found out today. The director of our adoption agency is in China right now doing humanitarian work at the three Hunan orphanages the girls from our travel group are currently living. I emailed to find out if he could tell me how best to meet the needs as Shaoyang orphanage. He was so grateful that the church would donate money and offered either 1) to find out what needs they have for us to purchase the items when we arrived OR 2) to pool the money with funds he had already alloted to give to Shaoyang and purchase the items right now while he is there. I felt that giving him the funds to meet the needs NOW is the best option (for a number of reasons not excluding the positive impact it could have on our agency--and other China families with the agency--in future relations with China). He then...and here's the miracle...asked IF he could arrange for us to visit her orphanage to see the donated items, would we be interested?

If you remember in my previous post, since her orphanage is so far away and many orphanages do not allow families to visit, I figured there would be no way for us to visit on this trip. I figured maybe when we go back when Megan is older on a "homeland tour" we could visit, but I NEVER expected to be able to visit now! Look how good God is...that because of the kindness of our church family almost a year ago, we may be able to visit her orphanage because of the items that will be purchased.

Is that not amazing? I'm flying on cloud nine...and it's still only a possibility. It might not happen, but the possibility is simply exciting to me!!!

Where is Megan?

Shaoyang CWI

Megan is located in Hunan province, as I mentioned before. But we have found more information about her orphanage. First off, we found a photo of her orphanage! I don't know when it was taken, but I found the photo at Half The Sky (HTS) as they have program there. This is good news. HTS is a program that hires nannies to come and work with the children so they can be more developmentally on target. They nurture the babies and decrease the nanny-to-child ratio so each child can receive more one-on-one attention. HTS is a non-profit program which does not increase costs to the orphanage. We have sponsored various programs with HTS. In fact, this past Christmas, several family members received the present from us of sponsoring a nanny for a month (and who knows...it could have been Megan's nanny!).

It would also appear that this is a very small orphanage. According to here, there are only 68 children there. Of course, I don't know when that number was recorded as the program began there in 2003. There is also more information about the city of Shaoyang.

It looks like her city is likely 2 hours away from where we will be in Changsha. So, I would say it's safe to say that Megan will be hungry, cranky, tired and in a need of a diaper change when we meet her! And I don't think we will be given the opportunity to go to her orphanage since it is so far away. It would be neat to do so, but maybe we can do that when we got back to visit one day. It's been so neat to read more information about where she is right now.