Look at that darling smile!   Sixteen-month-old Hollie has plenty of personality and is very social and outgoing. In fact, she loves to be out and about in crowded places in her stroller and talks and responds with giggles and glee when adults play with her.  Hollie is part of our Sanmenxia Foster Care Program in Henan, and we love reading about how she has bonded so well with her foster family, especially her foster grandmother. Every night when Hollie goes to bed, she wants to hear her grandmother’s voice to fall asleep. If the grandmother isn’t around, she will cry for her.

Hollie has a number of medical issues; however, these have so far not impeded her physical development in any way, and her caregivers are pleased by how she has continued to progress. She zips around in her walker and eats well; her favorite foods are watermelon and pears.

According to our reports and confirmed by photos we have received, Hollie is entranced with stuffed animals and always chooses the largest one she can find!

It’s our understanding that Hollie is on the shared list and is waiting to be adopted. She would certainly be a delight to any family. Please spread the word about this precious baby girl!

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.

Colin is a charming 7-year-old boy in need of a forever family. Love Without Boundaries provided a foster family for him in 2009 in our Sanmenxia Foster Care program in Henan. We are thrilled that Colin has bonded beautifully with his foster family and is especially close to his foster grandmother, with whom he loves to take walks. If she allows him to help her, he will give up anything — even the chance to play with his friends!

Born with hydrocephalus, Colin has had surgery from which he has recovered well. However, he does have some weakness on his left side. Understandably, he has some fear of hospitals from this experience! He needs assistance to take a bath and struggles a bit with physical education at school. Despite these issues, this wonderful little boy has learned responsibility by learning to clean his room and help with other chores.

Colin is very active and likes to complete his homework quickly so he has more time to play. He can read as well as add and subtract and is particularly interested in mathematics.

If Colin were filling out a questionnaire about his favorite things, here are a few that he would list:

Favorite holiday: Children’s Day
Favorite thing to do with friends: Play with boats
Food weakness: Sweets
Favorite films: Kung-fu movies
Other interests: Singing and listening to children’s songs

Colin has done very well in a family setting and would really benefit from a forever family, as well as schooling and medical care tailored to his needs. Please spread the word about this special little boy!

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.

Aiden from Kaifeng, Henan Province, just turned eight. While he is a little shy, you wouldn’t guess it from his grin!   He’s currently a student in LWB’s Kaifeng Education program where he receives tutoring. Every day before class, he helps the teacher move the table and carry the chairs.  He also likes to help his fellow students. He helps pick up books off the ground, helps other children move their chairs and loves to help his fellow student, Grace, learn her numbers.

He can recite about five pieces of poetry such as “Early Spring” and “The Goose”.  Aiden’s recent big accomplishment is to start reading the time on the clock.  He likes to draw and can count from 1 to 100, as well as doing single digit addition and subtraction.

Aiden knows the four directions correctly.   He is respectful to his teacher and always eager to learn new things.   We look forward to getting his reports each month since we always get a big, sweet smile in his photos.

Doesn’t he look proud of his accomplishments? All he needs now is a family to share in his pride! Aiden is currently living in our Kaifeng foster care program and is on the shared list in China’s Waiting Child program with a special need of Dwarfism. Please contact adoptionassistance@lwbmail.com for more information!

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.

As many of you know, travelling in China can be an exhilarating — but exhausting — experience.  Our three intrepid travellers — Paige, Amy and Sheri — have been extremely busy and can’t wait to share their stories with us!  However, they are having some computer and internet problems in China and will therefore post tales of their travels when they return home next week.  In the meantime, here are a few photos from their adventures!

Sheri, Amy and Paige with all the babies of the Henan Cleft Healing Home!

Paige enjoying some snuggle time with Tadgh

Paige, Sheri and Amy in Kaifeng

If love is truly a verb, if help is a verb…then you have the power to do something about it. — Betty Eadie

The above quote illustrates exactly what Love Without Boundaries hopes to be able to do through our Adoption Assistance Grant program. We hope to help fulfill the lives of children and parents alike through providing monetary assistance in grants to bring orphaned children together with families who will love and care for them. This is our love in action.

One of our recent grant recipients is Gideon Lu Shi, shown above.  LWB’s medical program had been helping to provide assistance to Lu Shi, as he was known prior to his adoption, for complications due to a spinal tumor. Lu Shi was quickly approaching 14 years old when he first became eligible for international adoption.  By law, only children younger than 14 years can be adopted from China. When we received word that he had a family trying desperately to adopt him before he aged out of the adoption program, everyone was hoping and praying they would be able to make it happen.  The family had already adopted  four other special needs children from China which was making it tough for them to finance his adoption.   Fortunately, Lu Shi became one of our grant recipients and is now home with his forever family!

Gideon showing off his Easter egg

Another of our grant recipients is Brent from Henan Province.  He was born with a hairy nevus on the left side of his face.   We were very fortunate to be able to get Brent an MRI and information needed to help him find a family.  The larger the nevi, the more complicated treatment can be, requiring numerous treatments or surgeries and skin grafts.   Brent’s medical need made him harder to place, and he waited many months for his family to find him.

Brent

Financially, adoption is a strain for many families; adopting a child with medical needs can make finding the financial resources doubly complicated. With LWB assistance through an adoption grant, Brent’s family became more financially prepared for his adoption and were able to bring him home just a few months ago.

You can read more on our website about some of these other children for whom we have been fortunate enough to offer grants:

Ruby

Timothy

Lillie

There are a few ways you can make a donation to Adoption Grants; you can purchase one of our Father’s Day Gift Packages or make a general donation to LWB — Other Projects.   For more information on how you can help children like Brent who wait a long time to find their family, we invite you to e-mail us at adoptionassistance@lwbmail.com.   With your help, we can continue to provide these grants to families interested in adopting children with medical needs…to make their love more possible.

Meg Gallson is the Fuyang Foster Care Assistant Coordinator and Associate Director of Adoption Advocacy. She is a social worker who lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

Love Without Boundaries functions as a virtual foundation and is run by volunteers from a variety of states and countries around the world. Most volunteers dream of one day visiting the program into which they pour their hearts and meeting some of the children they know only “virtually” through photos. One LWB volunteer, Diana Cheng, recently made time during a vacation to visit the program she coordinates, and we asked her to share some of this experience with LWB Community:

My name is Diana Cheng, and I have been a long-time supporter of Love Without Boundaries. In Fall 2009, I started volunteering for LWB as the Xinxiang Foster Care coordinator. In a short period of time, I have worked closely with our on-site manager and the LWB Foster Care Director and have gotten to “know” the children in our foster care program — if only on paper and via the computer screen. When the opportunity arose for my daughter and me to take a trip to China for spring break, we seized the opportunity to include Xinxiang in our plans in order to personally visit these beautiful children of Xinxiang.

At the end of April, we arrived in China, toured through various regions and completed our trip with an amazing visit to Xinxiang, situated in the Henan Province.   Being greeted by our LWB Foster Care Coordinator, Peter Zhao, and the Xinxiang Foster Care Coordinator, Li Jia, was lovely! We spent time at the Xinxiang SWI and also visited the five foster families that care for our seven children currently in the program.  We were warmly embraced by Director Zhang and Assistant Director Li who were kind and gracious throughout our visit and provided us with a tour of the SWI.  Among some of the rooms we visited were their health clinic, physical therapy room and classroom for older children with moderate special needs.  In addition, we were able to see the frail and vulnerable babies, toddlers and young children with varying degrees of cerebral palsy or physical other physical disabilities.  It touched us greatly.

After the SWI tour, we were able to visit with each of the foster families and provide toys to each of the seven children in our foster care program. It was truly wonderful to see the loving manner in which the foster children are cared for despite the limited means of many of our foster families; these children are thriving in their environment.  Each of the families was so appreciative of the help and support they receive from the orphanage, Love Without Boundaries, and our sponsors.  With the support of many of our friends and family, we were also able deliver much-needed milk, vitamins, whey powder and medicines for the children.

The Xinxiang orphanage is over 60 years old. This makes me particularly happy to share the news that the orphanage will be moving to a new facility by the end of this year.  I hope you’ll enjoy just of few of the many photos were took of our memorable trip.

We currently have two children from Xinxiang who need foster sponsors — Annie and Neil.  Please visit our sponsorship page to see their darling faces and learn how you can become part of this wonderful foster care program!

In a perfect world, the life of a newborn infant should be a peaceful one: eating, sleeping, snuggling warmly up against momma. A baby’s needs are met quickly, and after a little cuddle time, they fall contentedly back to sleep. That’s how it should be, but shortly after his birth, Farrell’s perfect world turned upside-down.

Near the end of January, a 10-day-old infant came into the care of the Kaifeng orphanage in Henan Province. He was severely burned below the waist, with third-degree burns covering over ten percent of his tiny body. The entire back of his left leg, from buttocks to heal is one massive scar, with additional burns on his right side as well. Nobody is sure how this happened, but the newborn was in terrible pain. The orphanage director contacted LWB to see if we could help, and our medical team immediately got to work. One of our wonderful supporters read about our tiny burn victim on the LWB Facebook page, and offered medical advice, having been through similar burns herself. She asked that his western name be “Farrell,” which means “brave.” So Farrell it is.

Although there was no special Burn Unit that we could send him to, our medical team arranged for Farrell to be treated at a hospital in the provincial capital. Our China staff checked on him daily and let us know that he had a successful skin grafting procedure on February 3rd. Thankfully, the skin grafts from Farrell’s back took very well, and he was able to be released from the hospital three weeks later. He would need intensive care to make sure his wounds did not become infected and also to keep his skin soft and moist. He would also need to have his legs stretched regularly, to prevent contracture of the skin grafts. We were grateful to be able to free up a bed at our Heartbridge Pediatric Healing Unit, and Farrell arrived on February 24th.

At one month old, there were just a few spots on his legs that hadn’t yet healed, but Farrell arrived in surprisingly good shape. Dr. Hill remarked that she could see in his eyes that he had been through a terrible ordeal, but she thought he would be okay with a diligent skin care regimen. Our newest resident, Farrell does not yet have any sponsors to help fund his care at Heartbridge. If you would like to help and follow Farrell’s brave journey, sponsorships and donations are being accepted on our website on his sponsor page.

Jan Champoux is Heartbridge Coordinator for Love Without Boundaries Foundation. She lives in Nebraska, USA with husband Rob and four children. Jan and Rob have a son and daughter in college, and also a son adopted from Korea, and a daughter adopted from China, both of whom are in the fifth grade.

Sweet William could be a fisherman in the making. This cheery three year is a favorite at his local fishing store in Kaifeng, Henan province. The locals there love him and teaching him about the sport. But what William really needs is a mom or dad of his own to teach him how to fish…and to be his forever family.

Since he was four months old, William has been in our Kaifeng foster care program. He has a lower limb difference with his feet, but this doesn’t stop him from enjoying his favorite activities — riding in his toy plasma car and playing with friends. William has such a sunny personality and lights up the world with his smile.

If anyone is interested in knowing more about this little boy, please contact us at info@lwbmail.com. He is obviously full of joy, and we think he could make a fine fishing companion!

Baby Stephen came to our Henan Cleft Healing Home weighing just 2 kg. He was a fragile little baby who had to be hospitalized immediately because he was so sick. Stephen still has a long way to go, but he has now doubled his weight. This photo illustrates how truly vulnerable so many babies with cleft are. We love that our healing homes can give these precious children a second chance.

Our dream is to establish additional healing homes throughout China to help even more children like Stephen. The Chase Community Giving contest on Facebook can help us do just that. Today is the last day to cast your vote for Love Without Boundaries. A vote for LWB is really a vote for cleft-affected children in China!

Last year, we posted some of our very favorite photos from 2009 (and believe us when we tell you that choosing favorites from among the thousands of adorable photos we get is no easy task!) We then asked friends of LWB to choose their favorites from among our top picks. Now we would like to share each photo that made our Top Ten Photos of 2009 list once again so you can see which photos stood out from the crowd.

The photo in the number 10 spot features Noah, a wonderful two-year-old in our foster care program in Henan. Our local manager had just dropped off his supply of supplemental formula for the month and was greeted with this wonderful grin. Doesn’t this photo just make you want to smile right back? Noah loves to dance and especially loves when friends come to visit. Our Orphanage
Assistance program provides high quality formula to orphaned children in multiple locations in China, providing them with the very best start in life.