Thursday 11-13, Nanchang

Today was the day they wanted to take us outside of the city. We waled around a village and visited with some of the nicest and most wonderful people. They had so little, compared to what we have, but seemed very happy.


There were a lot of emotions associated with this visit. It was hard thinking of how comfortable and easy I have it and seeing others who don't. It was very humbling and I am thankful for it. I also felt guilty because I felt like an invader coming into their homes to take pictures. They didn't seem to mind at all. So many people came out of their homes and up to us to greet us and see our babies.


Our guide told us that 70% of Ch*na, this is their lives. So being the math nerd I am, I quickly did the numbers - there are 1.3 Billion people in Ch*na so 910 million people live in poverty. That's almost exactly 3 times the entire population of the United States. Take everyone in the US, multiply that times 3, and that's how many people in Ch*na live like this. Keep in mind that as far as land size, Ch*na and US are virtually the same size.


It was another very sobering moment. It was hard to leave, because we came in looked at there lives, and left them to them. This was probably the hardest part. The whole bus ride back, I kept thinking what can we possibly do. I don't know the answer to that. The government doesn't allow "missionaries". For now, please join me in prayer.


I've always known there is much poverty around the world and have even seen it in other countries, but it's so easy to forget until confronted with it again.


Here's kind of a guided tour around the village:


This is a row of houses. You can see the individual doors and windows along the way.



This is the front door of someones house.


This lady invited into her home. She was very welcoming and very sweet. This picture is actually her standing at her back door.


This is the wall in her living room.

This is her kitchen.

This is another shot of her living room.

This poor lady. She was so interested in us and the babies and very much willing to grab onto to you or the babies and followed us nearly the entire time. Most of the other people when they saw her pointed at her and then pointed at her head. One of our guides, Lineker, told us that she had "mental problems" and "not to talk to her". We disobeyed. We kept a tight grip on Audrey, especially when she tried to take her from me, but we let her talk to us and Audrey.



If the other women saw her reach for us or a baby, they would smack her arm very hard and chastise her.
Even though, we couldn't speak the same language, one way I found to interact that was great for both of us was to take their picture and then show it to them. I wish I had a way to leave the pictures with them. There were dogs and chickens everywhere.

This is a view of one of the fields where they work.

This is a shot of where they dumped some of their trash. You can see it is very close to one of the houses.
This is last picture I got as we were getting ready to leave. After looking around Julie & I realized how much what we were looking at looked like the background of the latest pictures we got of Audrey before we came to Ch*na. Audrey is one of those rare orphans who spent her entire orphaned life in a foster home and not an orphanage. We are still thankful that she had a foster home, because she most like got more personal attention and an opportunity to bond with her foster mother, much more than she would have in an orphanage. But we both feel strongly that she did spend her first 14 months in a village similar to this one, and we wonder if any of the babies we saw are foster babies.


The first picture here is a baby we saw yesterday. The second picture is the picture of Audrey I was referring to.

After we got back to the hotel, we did what all rich/spoiled people do when they have free time - we headed to Walmart. Three other families and us headed out walking. It was a beautiful day and only about a mile or so to walk. There was a city square right next to walmart with a large monument to the Communist revolution. Nanchang is where the Communist revolution started in Ch*na.

This is our Walmart group,minus Jeff who took the picture. Thanks Jeff.


Audrey slept most of the way to Walmart...

...but woke up in time for lunch. This is a common sight around a shopping area, hundreds of bikes & scooters.
I've mentioned before how people treat us like celebrities. Here's one of the girls in our group getting her picture with a local lady who wanted a picture with her.

After we got back from Walmart, we took a short break and then joined the other families for a time of prayer, which was great. Thanks, Steve for suggesting this. We then decided that we'd had enough Ch*nese food, so Mike & I headed by taxi to Pizza Hut and got 6 large "American Specials" - pan pepperoni pizzas.

Tomorrow we head to our last location in Ch*na, Guangzhou, after we get Audrey's passport. We'll fly out around 1:00pm, midnight for most of you, and land about an hour later. So we get to ease her in to flight travel a little. In Guangzhou we meet with the US consulate to begin the process of making Audrey a US citizen and take care of necessary paperwork for her to come home with us.