LWB Community

Announcing The 2012 Teacher Training Team

The wait is over, and we are ready to announce that we have found our team for the 2012 teacher training! We are so thankful for the dozens of amazing educators who applied this year. We had a really challenging job narrowing down who would be on this year’s team as all of the applicants were so talented. How awesome that so many teachers and therapists across America wanted to give a week of their summer break to help orphaned children with special needs in China!

The team that has been chosen represents a diverse set of skills that we feel will be extremely beneficial for the training. Our team members include Amy H. from Florida, seen above with her family. Amy brings 11 years of teaching experience in Elementary Education with special education inclusion. Read more.

Visiting Duyun

Love Without Boundaries was invited to visit Duyun, Guizhou in March. This beautiful area in southeast Guizhou is home to the Buyi ethnic minority group, whose villages are almost always located near rivers and whose homes are traditionally made of stone. This region of China is famous for the Libo wilderness area and is filled with rivers, waterfalls, and forest covered mountains.
Read more.

Jiangmen: LWB’s Featured Project of the Week

These little ones, lined up to have their photo taken, are part of our nutrition program in Jiangmen, Guangdong Province. The program started in 2011 when an adoptive parent brought to our attention the need these children have for nutritious formula.

Our program is small as it is new, but we serve about ten babies and toddlers. We send a shipment of formula quarterly and receive new photos of the children in return. With rising formula costs, it is becoming harder and harder to keep our babies’ bottles full! You can make a difference in the life of a child through a suggested monthly sponsorship of at least $20 per month or a one-time donation in any amount. Read more.

An Adoption Story: Lauren Madelyn

With our 2012 Cleft Exchange Trip just around the corner, we are all very excited at the possibility of so many lives being changed. So when we heard from a family who adopted a little girl who was part of our 2010 cleft exchange, we thought it was the perfect time to share exactly what this surgery can do for a child.

When we started our China adoption journey back in 2007, we were thinking things would be fast since at the time referrals were being made in six to eight months. Things in China changed quickly, and the wait went on and on and on. Fast forward to August of 2010. We decided that it was time to think about switching to the special needs program in hopes of speeding things up. Read more.

Visiting Guizhou

The next part of our recent trip to China was to Guizhou Province, which is home to several minority groups, including the Dong, Miao, and Yi. As we reported last year, the Dong people live primarily in eastern Guizhou and are renowned for their beautiful songs about both nature and love. Their songs are very important to their courtship rituals, which always involve music. In early relationships the young men and women sing traditional songs, but as the relationship deepens, they will begin singing spontaneously to each other. We were blessed to be able to listen to several traditional Dong songs on our first evening in Guizhou.

The next morning we visited the new Qiandongnan orphanage facility, which opened earlier this year. This is truly a massive facility, with space to someday hold over 1,000 children. Read more.

Give Them the Power to Dream

For many of us in the United States and other western countries, opportunities abound, especially when it comes to the world of education. All American children know they can attend high school, and most will attend some college. On the other side of the world, however, children face a completely different reality.

In many of the poorest and most rural provinces in China, many children have no chance at an education. It is not because they are unable to do the work but that they are unable to pay the astonishingly high price of a high school education. Read more.

Getting Ready To Change Lives: The 2012 Cleft Exchange

Our 2012 Cleft Exchange in quickly approaching.  In less than one month, four doctors from the United States will travel to Kaifeng, Henan and perform up to 40 cleft lip and palate surgeries.  At the same time they will be working with Chinese doctors and training them in the best methods of performing quality cleft surgeries.  It is our hope that through this training, more children in China will have beautiful cleft repairs for years to come.

Our last cleft exchange took place in Fuzhou in the fall of 2010 where thirty children received life-changing surgeries.  Most of the orphaned children who were a part of that trip have since been adopted by their forever families. Read more.

Isaac: LWB’s Featured Child of the Week

Isaac is a gentle and kind-hearted four-year-old. He lives at the orphanage in Huainan and attends the Believe in Me School there. Isaac’s teachers say that he participates happily and follows directions well. He is a good helper and clearly very bright. His favorite activities at school are playing with playdough and doing puzzles. Although he is shy and quiet, Isaac is a good friend to his classmates. He especially likes spending time with his best friend, Maxie. They can often be seen walking hand-in-hand. Read more.

An Adoption Story: PeiPei

From time to time, we love to feature adoption stories of children who were profiled on the LWB blog. It’s incredible to see children who so many hoped and prayed to find a family finally have that opportunity! We think you’ll enjoy reading this adoption story about a little boy who was in an orphanage that is part of our orphanage assistance program. His winsome smile and sweet expression touched the heart of his future mom, and this is the story of how they became a family.

In 2003 we adopted our first daughter, Sophia, a beautiful infant girl from Hunan, China. Four years later we adopted our second daughter, Aimei, a precious two-year old girl from Anhui, China. We were pretty sure that we were “done” adding to our family. But, there was always a nagging thought that perhaps one more, a boy, would be just right. Read more.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!