We hope that this adorable little baby boy will soon grow big and strong with his yummy, and nutritious, formula and loving hugs!

Christopher is in need of sponsors to support him at the Henan Healing Home. Sponsorships are typically $50 per month or $25 per month for shared sponsorships. Sponsors will receive monthly updates and photos of this sweet young boy. Good luck, Christopher!

• Sponsor Christopher at Henan Healing Home

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.

Albinism affects skin, hair, and vision.  Jesse has pure white hair and light blue eyes.  This is referred to as oculocutaneous albinism (OCA) and basically means that he has no pigment.  In people with OCA, there is typically some degree of light sensitivity, helped with sunglasses when outside.  Glasses also help, and there are many services and devices available as well.  People with albinism are successful as doctors, attorneys, models, teachers, contractors, actors, occupational therapists, and just about anything they dream of becoming. Albinism does not affect intelligence.  Check out www.albinsim.org if you want to do more research, or contact LWB to get  in touch with me.  I personally have adopted two children with albinism.

Laughing with Jesse

(Please note that you will be unable to view the video if you are reading the blog in email format; if you click directly through to the blog, the video should show up there).

When we met, Jesse was very engaging and made great eye contact at a close distance.  He was curious like any other toddler and thoroughly inspected my jewelry, hair, teeth, and clothes.  The second day we visited, he popped his head up the second he heard my voice!  As far as his cleft is concerned, he had an excellent lip repair in China.  He does still have an open palate that will need to be corrected when he is adopted.  However, this has not had a negative impact on his eating!  He also was babbling when we visited last year, and I am certain that he is talking by now!

Jesse and Chris

I recently learned that Jesse will be starting school at the Believe In Me Jinjiang School.  This will be a wonderful opportunity for him to learn and interact with his friends.  However, what Jesse needs so much more than school, a repaired palate, sunglasses, sunscreen, a hat…is a family. A family to love him.  To listen to that amazing belly laugh.  To help him grow into a man.   To help him get the palate repair and the glasses, but mostly to love him.  Is Jesse your son? I have been known to say that if someone in the Charlotte, North Carolina, area adopts him, I will provide free babysitting!  This little guy deserves a chance to grow, learn, and be loved.

~Chris Kramer, Speech and Language Specialist

Susie, the manager at the Believe in Me Jinjiang school, recently sent us this video of Jesse…in action!

She said that he is always smiling. Susie and the staff at the Believe In Me Jinjiang School are really looking forward to having him begin school there after Chinese New Year!

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.

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.

When I first met him, I was struck by his big brown eyes that followed us everywhere. We would catch him peeking around the door frame to watch us and the nurses work. When I brought sticker books and toys to play with, he investigated every one of them carefully and then handed them off to his friends to play with.  He also quickly figured out how to crank the head of the bed up and down and how to turn on and off the oxygen saturation monitor for us. We teasingly called him “Curious George” but soon we noticed the other side of him…the side that is compassionate and gentle.

Zachary had surgery before his friends and recovered quickly after his palate was repaired. He was up and exploring with his friends just hours after surgery.  After his friends had their surgeries the next day, he stuck close to them in their beds, gently patting them on their arms until they too were ready to join him in his adventures or observations of all the activity around them. He shared everything with them, including his food. He was so gentle and kind in his interactions with the babies that he seemed so much older than a two-year-old.

BFFs Yasmine and Zachary

Zachary, who is now three years old, is a curious, busy toddler who treasures his friends. We have been told that Zachary’s friends from the cleft surgery trip, Yasmine and Chloe, are soon to be adopted. Yasmine has recently joined her family in the Netherlands, and Chloe is soon to come to the United States. Another of Zachary’s friends is Grant, whose paperwork has not reached the shared list as yet.  Zachary is still waiting for that special family to see him and feel that he belongs in their family.

~Maureen Brogan, Cleft Surgery Coordinator

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.

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!

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. Many people in the village felt JD should go to an orphanage, but his elderly grandmother insisted that he was now truly her grandson. She has tried her very best to support him but is only able to earn funds by collecting wild onions and roots to sell.

We were so happy we could help arrange for his cleft lip to be repaired, and then we enrolled him in our education program so we could help him with school funds and a tutor. Since JD has been in our program, we have seen a very somber little boy bloom before our eyes. He is now doing very well in school, and his tutor has shown him how to cook and care for his grandma by doing chores such as gathering the well water and cooking (see “Pride in a Job Well Done”). We love this photo of JD and his friends finishing up his homework together. We are so grateful to our sponsors who allow orphaned and rural children the chance to better their lives through education.

Watch for our remaining top ten photos throughout December!

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!

Lucy is in need of sponsors to support her care at our Henan Healing Home. For $50 each month (or $25 per month for a shared sponsorship), you can help Lucy receive the precious love, attention, warmth, and food that she deserves and needs in order to thrive. You will receive monthly updates and photos of this beautiful baby. Please consider supporting Lucy and being a part of her story of hope and love.

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:

* The gift of a warm coat ($10)
* A Chinese New Year’s gift for a special child ($15)
* One school uniform set for an orphaned child ($20)
* The gift of life-saving heart surgery ($50)
* Three months of sponsorship to send a child to school ($60)
* The gift of a new smile for a child with cleft lip ($100)
* One wheelchair or adaptive chair for a child with severe special needs ($250)

The first 100 donors who give $250 or more to our general fund will receive a thank you gift of a very unique, multicolored pearl necklace with a dragon toggle clasp. Think what a special gift this could be for a loved one, and what a wonderful way to remember that your gift helped children in need! Other available items are specially designed holiday cards from each of our programs. Proceeds from these cards will directly benefit our programs and the kids they help. Cards can be mailed to you for giving or directly to a recipient. There is a minimum suggested donation of $10 per card.

These are just some of the meaningful gift options available! Please look through our gift guide to see how you and your family might be interested in helping a child in need. And know that any gift you give will be appreciated not just over the holidays but throughout the entire year, and perhaps throughout a child’s life.

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. We have helped nearly 20 families (most of whom had children requiring heart surgeries) through this fund. Over half of these requests for help came in 2011. To be sure the funds are being used appropriately, we require proof of poverty by Civil Affairs in China.   In fact, our China Medical director recently commented that, “they all looked very poor.  All of them.  In some way, these kids are in worse condition than orphanage kids, except that they have parents…” As we help more families, we believe that we are going to receive more and more requests.

Yao’s dad was so happy she was able to have her healing surgery.

Yao and her grandmother, thrilled to be leaving the hospital!

The families of Jaimei, Yao and Feng all were able to receive assistance through LWB’s Unity Fund.  Yao and Jaimei are both recovering from their heart surgeries, while travel arrangements are being made for Feng and his family.

Feng is still awaiting his surgery.

We would like to introduce you to two more children in need of our help: YiYi and Rui.

YiYi and her mother

YiYi is only four months old and has a serious heart defect. Her family has wiped out their savings to pay for her recent pneumonia treatment and cannot afford her heart surgery. They were desperate and felt the only way they might be able to save their daughter’s life was to give her up so she could receive the surgery she needs. LWB has committed to helping this family stay together by providing the heart surgery YiYi needs to live.

Rui is all smiles but needs surgery on his leg.

Smiley Rui has an arteriovenus fistula in his leg and needs a very specialized surgery that his family cannot afford.  Before discovering that Rui suffered from this condition, his family spent their life savings to pay for surgery for his father who has a very similar issue.

Both YiYi and Rui are in need of funding. If you would like to support LWB’s Unity Fund and the families of YiYi and Rui, please go to our Unity Fund donation page. Your donation will keep these families together and whole.

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. I took him in my arms, buried my head into his shoulder and choking back the tears, I whispered to him “I will never, ever let you go.” Cleft babies have the biggest and best smiles….Every single one of them is a picture drawn by angels.

If these little children can be so joyous and full of life in spite of their physical needs, I have no business feeling uncomfortable!

Adam, a resident at our Henan Cleft Healing Home

We brought home our daughter with her cleft lip and palate unrepaired. The night before her lip surgery we took about 100 photos of her laughing, smiling beautiful mouth. People in the U.S. don’t have the chance to see a cleft lip because our health care is good here and it is repaired in infancy. But there are so many children in need of the surgery. Keep on making people aware.

Don’t stop posting!!! It helped us become more aware of the cleft-affected children, and we found our daughter whose picture was before her surgery. We didn’t find out until after we received pre-approval that she had it repaired. We knew she was beautiful from the minute we saw her!

My son was born with a unilateral cleft lip and palate.  I remember looking at his referral picture for the first time and thinking I had just viewed the most beautiful little face ever.  I still do.

Alicia from Anhui Cleft Healing Home

I like when people are interested in the before & after, because they can see that with a relatively simple surgery, that baby with the lip they find too painful or revolting to look at is still a beautiful baby.

It was difficult to look at our daughter’s first photos (unrepaired cleft), but it is so very important to post those photos.  Some orphanage directors will NOT release a child’s file for adoption unless their lip is repaired. I think there reasoning is that the child will not be chosen if they “look that way.”  So when folks donate for repair surgeries they are literally changing the future of a child and the blessed family that has the honor of adopting him or her.

People need to see it to know the reality. I’d never seen an unrepaired lip until I got into adoption. We need to know there are older kids who’ve gone their whole lives with unrepaired cleft lips & palates.

Shayna from Anhui Cleft Healing Home

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves! Thank you to our Facebook readers to expressing their thoughts so eloquently. These beautiful souls capture our hearts, and it is our privilege to be able to help them.

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.

We hope that this will be Will’s last year in Zhang Village, and we want to make it a great one! If you are interested in being a sponsor, please visit his sponsor page. For $20 per month, you can help Will enjoy his kindergarten year, and in return you will receive quarterly updates on his progress, including new photos. As the saying goes “Where there’s a ‘Will’ there’s a way,” — so please help Will find his way and be prepared for his future family!