LWB Community

Christopher: LWB’s Featured Child of the Week

Christopher is the youngest resident at our Henan Healing Home. He was born in late November with a cleft lip and palate. Christopher developed pneumonia and was admitted to the hospital from his orphanage in Luohe. After a one week stay in the hospital, he came to our healing home in Kaifeng to receive some intensive one-on-one love and care from our loving nannies. Christopher weighed just over six pounds when he arrived just before the Lunar New Year, so we know that he has to gain significant weight and strength in order to be ready for his surgery.

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Jesse Is A Good Friend of Mine

In February 2011, I was provided with the amazing opportunity to go to Jinjiang and help train LWB Believe In Me teachers in speech and language skills.  One of the highlights of the trip was meeting Jesse. Jesse is a little guy with an infectious belly laugh (which you can see in the video below) and amazing smile. He also has both albinism and a cleft lip/palate.  Each condition on their own can be scary and together may seem daunting.  But don’t be afraid. If this is your little boy, know that neither of these conditions are related to each other and both are very manageable. Read more.

Gentle Zachary

Waiting on the shared list for his family to find him is a very special little boy named Zachary who impresses everyone he meets with his gentle, warmhearted nature. Maureen Brogan, our cleft surgery coordinator, met Zachary during our 2010 cleft surgery trip and wanted to share her impressions of this lovely boy from Fujian.

Zachary had his cleft lip and palate repaired during our 2010 cleft surgery trip and was featured in several blogs about the trip (Day Two, Day Three, and the final day). However, he has a severe protrusion of his front teeth and gum. Despite this deformity, he is a handsome boy. He needs an orthodontist or oral surgeon to start moving his jaw and upper teeth into the proper position. This procedure and the required braces are not available in China, and his best hope for a bright future is adoption. Read more.

Counting Down Our Top Ten Photos of 2011: Scotty Smiling

We first met Scotty in his rural orphanage in Guizhou Province, one of the poorest regions in China. He was so tiny and weak that his cry was almost inaudible, and his nannies explained that he wasn’t able to eat easily due to his cleft lip. We knew that he needed to be moved to one of our healing homes as quickly as possible, and so we phoned our home manager in Fujian, who asked how soon he could get there.

This photo, coming in at #5 in the voting for our Top Ten Photos of 2011, was taken just a few weeks after Scotty had arrived to our healing home. It is pretty obvious from this photo how he felt about having his own dedicated nanny, good formula, and essential cleft bottles at his disposal. We are so happy to report that Scotty went on to not only find healing, but also his very own adoptive family in late 2011! Read more.

Counting Down Our Top Ten Photos of 2011: Homework With Friends

One of our favorite times of each year is when we get to vote for LWB’s Top Ten Photos.  Literally thousands of photos come to us each year from our various programs, we never tire of seeing the faces of the children who inspire us. At this special time of year, we want to inspire you — and warm your hearts — by seeing the photos our supporters have chosen as LWB’s Top Ten Photos of 2011!

Coming in at #10:  Homework with Friends

When LWB first learned of JD, his family was barely getting by. He was born with cleft lip and lived the first ten years of his life with it unrepaired. He had been taken in by a kind-hearted man who raised him as his son, but sadly this man passed away. Read more.

Lucy: LWB’s Featured Child of the Week

Two-month-old Lucy has recently come to live at the Henan Healing Home to be strengthened and nurtured until she can have her cleft lip repaired. She was very weak when she was first found and taken to the orphanage in Xuchang. However Lucy is a fighter, and she is making great progress… which you can tell by looking at those cheeks! She also realizes that she is a lovely princess and likes to be with her nannies every moment she is awake. We know that with her spirit she will overcome all of her obstacles!

Giving the Gift of Caring and Hope

Before we know it, the holidays will soon be here. This season, you can honor someone special in your life and give the gift of healing and hope to children in need by purchasing a gift from LWB’s Holiday Gift Guide! All items in the gift guide will benefit orphaned children and will let them know that people a world away care.

We invite you to browse through our Holiday Gift Guide to learn about all the different ways to bring hope to an orphaned child. We’ve included gift opportunities for a wide variety of price ranges:
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Keeping Families Together

In 2005 one of the LWB directors was traveling to our cleft exchange in Henan Province. On the train he saw a young couple holding a baby boy with cleft lip, and the mother was quite distraught. After watching them for a while, he introduced himself and asked where they were going. It was then that the mom broke down and told him that they were from a province far out west. They did not have the funds to pay for the surgery to repair their baby’s cleft lip, and so their extended family had told them that they must abandon the child so as not to bring shame to the family. They were so ashamed by what they felt they had to do that they were traveling all the way across China to abandon him. When our director called to let us know what was happening on the train, we decided to encourage the couple bring him to the cleft exchange site so that our medical team could repair their baby’s lip. Instead of returning home to their home province in despair, they joyfully returned home with a baby who had been healed. For many years we have remained in touch with them, and the family is doing beautifully. It was experiences like this chance encounter that made us realize that perhaps we could help rural families stay together, instead of having to make the terrible and tragic decision to abandon their child in the hopes that their children would then receive medical care.

Jaimei and her parents

LWB’s Unity Fund was established to assist rural, impoverished families with medical costs they simply cannot afford for their children.
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Beautiful Souls

Sometimes we get very honest letters from people who say they find it too difficult to look at photos of babies with unrepaired cleft lip. We work with so many babies with cleft that we don’t even really see it anymore. Instead, we just see their gorgeous eyes and smiles…like Zeke, a current resident of our Anhui Cleft Healing Home (ACHH), grinning below. We’ve always felt that sharing photos helps people see the kids for the beautiful souls they are.

We recently posted Zeke’s photo on our Facebook page and asked our readers for their thoughts on seeing photos like this. We were so thrilled with and moved by the comments that we received that we wanted to share some excerpts here!

The search for a “perfect” look should never be larger than that of deepest happiness. Keep posting “non-perfect” photos of real happy babies!!

The first time I saw my son’s beautiful little face, I didn’t notice his bilateral cleft….all I saw was the face on an angel.
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Where There’s a “Will,” There’s a Way

This handsome young man is Will, formerly a resident of LWB’s Anhui Cleft Healing Home (ACHH) where his precious life was saved! After recovering enough to be discharged from ACHH, Will now lives in the area of Anhui that we’ve named “Zhang Village.”   Zhang Village is a tightly-knit community of foster families who take wonderful care of children who need a bit of extra tender love and care. Currently we are waiting on news that Will’s file has shown up on the shared list. We feel that this will happen very soon and hope a loving family will come forward for him. In the meantime, we need to help Will’s foster family pay for him to attend kindergarten so he can continue to grow and develop as he prepares for life with his forever family.
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