Chinese New Year, which begins on January 23rd this year, is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. Families clean their homes to sweep away bad luck, decorate windows and doors with red colored couplets, feast with family members on the eve of Chinese New Year, and end the night with firecrackers. Early on New Year’s Day children like Ben and Lance will don new outfits and receive money in red paper envelopes. But there are many children in China without families to celebrate with them. This year, to honor those children, Love Without Boundaries is running a special Red Envelope Campaign for the children in our Believe in Me Huainan School. Won’t you join us in giving a New Year’s gift to an orphan?

Our Believe in Me schools were designed to provide the joy of education to children in orphanages who would otherwise be unable to attend school. While the children delight in learning and expanding their horizons in these schools, the sad reality is that many of the children are hungry. This orphanage is a rural facility with very meager resources. LWB has made a commitment to these children to help them with better nutrition.

The “Older Child Nutrition Program” is designed to provide kids aged 2-16 with much needed protein, which they rarely get. There are 75 students in our Believe in Me Huainan School. For less than $1 a snack, the children receive a fresh or dried protein snack, as well as fruit and milk. It may sound like a bargain, but over the course of a month this expense comes close to $1,000!

We would like to ask for your assistance to help us continue providing essential nutrition to these wonderful children (who seem pretty pleased with their snacks in the above photo!) We are asking all our supporters to give the gift of a red envelope to an orphan in China this Chinese New Year. Simply put $1 in an envelope and mail it to:

LWB
Red Envelope Campaign
PO Box 25016
Oklahoma City, OK 73125

Please include your name and email address with your donation if you would like to receive a tax receipt letter. If you prefer, you are welcome to make your online donation here.

Millie wants to remind everyone that the number 8 is considered the luckiest number. If you are feeling particularly lucky, an $8 check would go even further in filling a tummy!

Winnie is a very sweet girl who lives at the Shunde orphanage in Guangdong, where LWB has done orphanage assistance projects.   This girl is always smiling and is very outgoing.  The nannies love her because she is an excellent helper!   Cleaning the table, mopping the floor, making beds, folding clothes and feeding babies are all fun and games for Winnie.   She has a little humpback (a frontward curving of the spine that causes a bowing of the back), but it is said to not be too serious.  Winnie walks very well, although occasionally she is a little unsteady.  She expresses herself well but has difficulty articulating some of her words.

Winnie is very happy to have a new coat (even it is a little bit too large for her) and can’t wait to celebrate Chinese New Year.  Perhaps next year she will be able to celebrate the Year of the Dragon with her forever family!

Love Without Boundaries proudly advocates for adoption but is not an adoption agency. We invite you to contact adoptionassistance@lwbmail.com with questions about a child we have featured and encourage you to contact your local adoption agency for more information about China’s Waiting Child Program.

Looking for a Chinese New Year gift? Check out our Chinese New Year auction! We have lots of books for children; adoption-related and Asian story books! A beautiful quilt, “Going Home” Barbie and lots more.

The auction begins at noon PST Friday, January 21st and ends at noon PST Monday, January 24th. Items will be mailed promptly in time for CNY, which begins on February 3rd. Proceeds benefit LWB’s General Medical fund.

Don’t miss out on these great items by visiting our eBay auction. Gong Xi Fa Cai!

“I love the child I sponsor through Love Without Boundaries so much I want to know how I can send her or him a birthday present!”

One question that volunteers of Love Without Boundaries are asked frequently is how to send a birthday present to a sponsored child. Sponsors of children become quite attached to the child they receive quarterly reports of in a year. Sponsors pray for these children, hope for adoptive families for these children and above all desire that their sponsored child feel especially loved.

The answer to the above question of sending a gift is yes and no. First, LWB has been asked by officials in China to not give out the specific birthdays of children that we work with to the general public, as sometimes this information is used to pre-identify a child for adoption. Also, it’s wise to understand that birthdays are viewed differently in China than they are in the west. The Chinese celebrate birthdays considered special such as the first birthday, sixtieth and birthdays every ten years after the sixtieth that a person lives. Except for the first birthday, the effort of putting on a birthday celebration typically falls upon adult children bestowing honor and respect on their parents with special foods such as long life noodles and eggs.   Asking orphanage or LWB staff members who are already busy with taking care of the needs of many children to celebrate one child’s birthday isn’t a custom that they are familiar with. It’s one of those differences of the west that probably makes them scratch their heads and wonder why.

Furthermore, when a child enters an orphanage, everything about the child’s life, out of necessity and limited resources, becomes group oriented. Children wear orphanage clothing—not their own set of clothes from their own closet. Children eat meals served by the orphanage in group settings. Toys are for all of the children of the orphanage. To send one present for one child in an orphanage doesn’t fit the style of life an orphanage provides. Imagine sending a very special gift to just one child in any day care that you’ve ever experienced (and children in day care in the west are accustomed to going home where things are theirs and belong to only them in space that is theirs). A special toy sent to one child in a group in an orphanage would at the very least cause tension and frustration for the recipient of the gift as well as the adult care givers. Imagine also being a child who never receives an individual special present while others do. It would be easy for that child to think he or she isn’t as important or well liked. We want all of the children in our programs to feel equally valued and loved.

LWB does encourage celebrations and extra gifts for sponsored children in the form of a group gift for either a child’s class at school, foster family or group within the orphanage that a child lives with. Gifts can be inexpensive. A donation of $25 would purchase a number of items to benefit a child in any LWB program such as:

• · A healthy snack of fruit, nuts and a drink for the child and their school or orphanage mates
• · Antibiotics for children in medical care or for one of LWB’s healing homes
• · Developmental toys for a foster home or a group of children in an orphanage
• · Formula for all infants of the orphanage
• · Paper and pencils for an entire class of Mama’s Wish students

Larger donations are gladly accepted for children as well. LWB has a wish list of group gifts that can be purchased for a sponsored child’s orphanage, foster home or classroom. Gift cards can be purchased in honor of a child’s birthday and the donation sent to any program so that the funds can be directed at the most pressing need. Furthermore, Chinese New Year and Children’s Day on June 1st are commonly accepted gift giving occasions for children in China. Donations toward group gifts on those special days would bring joy to many children.

Students at Believe In Me — Jingzhou enjoy a donation of developmental toys

Love Without Boundaries was founded and lives upon the belief that every child counts on their birthday and every day of the year. With you, we celebrate a child’s maturing and growing in healthy ways. We also work hard to remember to celebrate in a way that respects the culture they live in as well as the specific home environment in which they are being raised.

Linda Mitchell is a wife and mom to four, blog contributor for Love Without Boundaries and volunteer at her kid’s school, student of School Library Media, K-1st Sunday School Teacher…..and creative writer when she can get a word in edgewise.

Chinese New Year 2010 comes in with a roar — it’s the Year of the Tiger! We at LWB want to wish all of our friends and supporters “Xin nian kuai le!” — happy new year — and share a few photos of some of our precious children who are also celebrating the most important of Chinese holidays.

Chinese children are typically given a new outfit to help celebrate the new year and to symbolize new beginnings, and Ben and Jon from Huainan Foster Care are modeling their cozy new clothes in the above photo. Red is the color of celebration and happiness in China, and so many new year items are the color of red to symbolize the joy of a new year. We’re not so sure Ben and Jon look too joyful about having their photo taken in their new outfits, but we imagine they’re going to love the food that comes along with the celebration!

The babies at the Henan Cleft Healing Home also received new clothes and have lined up with their nannies to wish everyone “Xin nian kuai le”. Happy Year of the Tiger from all of us at LWB!

Harvest is a special time of year to people around the world. In China, the Moon Festival is second only to Chinese New Year in importance and is a special time for families to gather together, gaze at the full moon….and eat mooncakes!

Mooncakes are made to resemble the full moon and symbolize reunion. Eating tasty mooncakes is just about every child’s favorite part of the Moon Festival.

Look at Joanna from our foster care program in Zhaotong. She certainly is enjoying hers….and is savoring every bite!

What do school children all over the world love more than recess, weekends, and school holidays combined? Field trips, of course!

So when the 2nd grade students of Mesa Verde Elementary School in Farmington, New Mexico were looking for a service learning project they could really relate to, they chose to raise funds for a field trip for the students of the Believe in Me School at the orphanage in Huainan.

After the 2nd graders spent time learning about Chinese culture, they planned a Chinese New Year Family Night for their school, which was held on January 27th. Students and their families participated in dragon dances, and Chinese arts, crafts, and games. Everyone had a great time, and the 2nd graders were very surprised to learn they had surpassed their fundraising goal for the Believe in Me students’ field trip.

The teachers in Huainan chose a trip to a local park which had a petting zoo and a beach, followed by lunch at McDonald’s. The students enjoyed a hike through a bamboo forest, playing in the sand, looking at horses, and their first taste of French fries! Their excitement and enjoyment was evident in the big smiles on everyone’s faces, from the moment they boarded the bus, to the time the final French fry was consumed.

When photos from the Believe in Me students’ field trip arrived in New Mexico at the end of the school year, the entire school pored over them, looking for similarities between the park visited by the children from the orphanage and their own local parks, and especially between the McDonalds restaurant in China, and the ones in the Farmington. As one second grader put it, “It was fun to help kids who are just like us – hungry for Happy Meals!”

Wendy Thacker is the Believe in Me Huainan Assistant Coordinator, lives in Bloomfield, NM. She is an elementary school teacher and mom to two daughters from China: Maya, age 7, from Huainan, and Quinn, age 4, from Yangdong, Guangdong Province.

I wanted to update everyone on our little Samuel. A few weeks ago I told you about this little boy’s strong spirit in a blog titled “Fighting for His Life… Again”.

Well, our little guy is improving every day.

The doctors are slowly weaning him off the respirator and hope he will be able to breathe unassisted soon. This is wonderful news, but I can’t stop thinking about this little guy. Perhaps it is because my oldest son’s name is Samuel, but mostly I think it is because I thought he was alone and didn’t really have anyone who cared about him. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

First of all, so many people cared about Samuel and helped with funding his surgery; the hospital has helped tremendously with his bill; we have heard from many people from around the world who are saying prayers for this little guy; and today we learned that the nurses who take care of Samuel bought him new clothes—a very important part of the New Year tradition. He looks adorable in his new ensemble. Samuel is not alone; many, many, many people care about him—what a wonderful way to start a New Year!

Xin Nián Kuài Lè, Samuel!

Kate Finco
Medical Co-Director