Even at our busiest times, we have to be ready.
Celebrating Christmas with 30 children and 12 staff members takes a long time to prepare for. Michelle and I started shopping back in October. Our children and staff have been practicing their songs, dances and dramas for over a month that they preformed during our Christmas program. We also welcomed 4 western visitors to come and join our Christmas program…to say the least, we are extremely busy. Even though we were busy, the needy don’t stop needing for the holidays. In the above picture you can see our newest son named Sammy Xing EnDian.
We were contacted by Sammy’s neighbor telling us that he lived with his 82 year old grandmother who was so old that she could hardly move. The neighbor said that Sammy had started a fire in his house trying to cook a meal for the both of them. As you can see in the picture below the damage was pretty bad. We were quite surprised to see how bad the damage was and to know that Sammy and grandmother were still living there.
Sammy’s dad died from a brain sickness when Sammy was 1 year old. His mother died this year but the grandmother could not remember the cause of death. His grandfather died 30 years ago. He does have an aunt, but her husband also died a few years ago and she is trying to raise her own children and will not help. This was especially hard to know that this poor old woman has a daughter who does not live too far away, and yet this grandmother is here, in a burned down house laying on the floor taking care of Sammy. Thankfully the neighbor had been going over to try to help care for the grandmother and Sammy. We asked the grandmother how they were able to get food because she was too old to cook and Sammy is obviously too young to do so. The grandmother told us that the neighbor brought them food. When we asked Sammy what he had for breakfast that day, he told us he drank soup. The neighbor did not have enough vegetables or steamed bread to feed her own family and them.
As you can see in the above pictures there was not much left of their house. Sammy did have a bed that the neighbors set up for him but the roof was partially burnt down above his bed…not a safe place to stay at all. So even though we were at one of our busiest times of the year, we very quickly had Sammy get a medical exam and with in a few days he came to live with us…the day before our Christmas program.
Sammy is fitting in with all of our other children perfectly. When we told our other children that we were going to bring him in, they immediately made sure that Michelle and I bought him enough presents for him and reminded Michelle she needed to make his stocking. Sammy will be starting the 1st grade next semester after the New Year. As you can see he was quite happy to join in on the festivities:) The above picture shows Sammy with his roommates.
In China before any big event there is most of the time a talent show. Our children worked really hard practicing dancing like you see our boys doing above and our girls doing below…by the way in the boy picture that is our dogs tail…George is a very big dog and always wants to be in the middle of everything.
During this drama Wendy is explaining to her mom who is played by Abby about each person in the nativity scene. As she explained it to her, the other children silently acted out each part. Mark played Joseph. Debbie played Mary. Ellie played the angel. Anna, Lester and Graham played the shepherds and Gabe, Eddy and Jaxin played the 3 wise men. Emma was also in the drama as the INN keeper and she also worked the lights during the play…unfortunately her part was so fast during the play that we could not get a picture in. Also the amazing back drops were painted by one of our young staff members named Janis and all the costumes were put together by our housemothers.
We thank you for taking the time to read this long update but there was so much fun we did not want you to miss out on any of it. If you are interested in sponsoring Sammy please click HERE.
Blessings and all of us from the Pingyu Home of Hope wish you a Merry Christmas!
Posted: December 24th, 2013 under Uncategorized.
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