Goodbye Chenzhou

We've left Chezhou and we're now back in Beijing. We are coming to the end of our mission in China. Tomorrow we will visit Shepard's Field an orphanage about 2 hours away, then it's a day of sightseeing and then home on Friday afternoon.

Hard to imagine the Great Wall of China and the Forbidden City being anti climatic but I am sure it will be. Not just because I was there just a year ago but because our time in Chenzhou, our time with these children has been so deeply meaningful.

How can brick and mortar ever compare to flesh and bone?

Earlier this week I was beating myself up. Feeling silly and useless and insignificant.

What was I thinking?

How could hauling over a bunch of baby wipes and Tylenol help in any long lasting way? What
have we really accomplished? What did we change?

But now I realize I am the one who has changed.

There are 147 million orphans needing families. Together they would form the ninth largest country in the world. The crisis is epic, the numbers really too big to relate to in anything more than an academic
way.

And that's really what this trip was about for me...humanizing a global tragedy by putting a face, and a name and a heart to a seemingly hopeless statistic.

Don't forget to click the banner...need to keep this blog high in the rankings if we want s lots of potential families to see our Chen Zhou kids.  (Pssst: Pics are coming soon!)