LWB Community

Healing Home Grads

Just as June is the month for many high school and college grads around the world, it’s also been a time of celebration for many babies in our healing homes. The last few weeks we have been called by so many orphanages with really sick babies needing one-on-one care, and so it was time for some of the children in our homes to move onto LWB foster care to make way for new arrivals.  When little Noah came into our hands as a preemie, he weighed just under four pounds at one month old.   Now topping the scales at over 16 pounds, he is settling into life with his new foster mom. Read more.

Prayers for Baby Faith

At the end of February, we were contacted by a rural orphanage in Anhui.  They had just taken in a  newborn baby girl with a spinal tumor that had most likely ruptured during her birth.  Our medical program team moved her immediately to a hospital in Shanghai, and surgery was performed right away.  We knew that she would need many prayers, as once a tumor has broken open, the risk of serious infection is high.  We were cautiously optimistic when she came through surgery well, and her first reports were positive. Read more.

Frankie from True Children’s Healing Home

Frankie came to LWB’s True Children’s Healing Home in September, after a long journey from his home province of Shaanxi. At six months old he weighed less than ten pounds and was in need of a great deal of careful nurturing, but his sparkling eyes told us that we would soon be seeing a strong and active Frankie.

The TCHH caregivers immediately set about filling Frankie’s tummy with nutritious formula and filling his little soul with love and attention. Frankie began to thrive. Within a few weeks he had started crawling, and by November he was brave enough to approach the bigger babies and take their toys away!
Read more.

Wisdom Wednesdays: The First 60 Days Home

After the long wait of the adoption process, we all anticipate bringing home our child forever. An orphan no more, we dream of settling in as a family, having siblings instantly fall in love with each other and for the new scenery of home to take root in the child’s heart.  We brought our daughter Joya home nearly a year ago when she was 26 months old.  When people ask me what has been hard about our adoption experience, I truthfully express that the first 60 days at home were the darkest and most trying times. Now on the other side of that time, hindsight makes it easier for me to see what particular parts were so difficult.

Read more.

The Power of Love: An Update on Yong

It is with the most joyous of hearts that we announce that the full amount needed for Yong’s surgery has been raised. Yong has waited years for the medical treatment he needs – and your caring and compassion for this beautiful boy have made his surgery a reality in just five short days.

Read more.

Be a Part of Yong’s Story

Five-year-old Yong entered orphanage care in Guizhou in 2011  one month before his fourth birthday. When he was found, he had a large facial tumor, and the staff at the orphanage wanted to get him the help he needed. They took Yong to hospitals in Guizhou, Yunnan, and even Shanghai – but they were told the mass was just too complex. Three months ago, his tumor began growing rapidly and started to impact his ability to swallow and chew. Knowing that there was a real possibility that the tumor could soon close off Yong’s airway, LWB was asked if there was any way he could get medical treatment overseas. Read more.

Wisdom Wednesdays: Eating Issues, Part One

“She’ll eat when she’s hungry. She’s not going to starve herself!”

When we traveled to China to adopt our younger daughter in 2005, we went armed with this conventional wisdom, a variety of bottles and toddler foods, and the confidence that we could overcome any feeding difficulties with patience and persistence.  When we headed home three weeks later, we left behind the unused bottles and toddler food, our confidence, and most of all, our naive faith in the conventional wisdom that children will eat when they’re hungry. Read more.

Bryant: LWB’s Featured Child of the Week

Bryant is two and a half years old and still waits for surgery to repair his Tetralogy of Fallot heart defect. Typically this surgery is done at about a year old, but we just learned of him late last year. His orphanage has agreed to our help, but funds are needed to cover his heart catheterization to determine the best plan forward, as well as for his subsequent surgery. In the meantime Bryant is having difficulty gaining weight, and we need to move forward sooner rather than later to give him the best possible chance at a healthy life. Read more.

Tiny Angels

Over Christmas, we received the heartbreaking news that three of the beautiful babies we were helping passed away. All three of these little angels had been born with heart issues, and as I have written about in the past – winter is by far the hardest time for orphaned babies with medical needs.

Today, I am giving thanks for the lives of Kaira, Quinn, and Jamison. Their lives mattered, and we are so saddened by the loss of all that was yet to be for them.

Jamison

Jamison – we learned of your loss first, and we are grieving that you were just days away from traveling to Shanghai for your surgery. We were praying so hard for you, little boy, and are so saddened that your heart simply couldn’t go on. Read more.

Impact Investing – What’s Behind the Curtain?

Is it possible to put a pricetag on the life of a child?  Unfortunately, thanks to many new metrics systems, I think some people are starting to do just that, even if they have the best of intentions.  At givewell.org for example, they encourage people to give to charities who can save a life for the least amount possible.  They state on their website:

We consider anything under $2,000 per life saved (or equivalent, according to one’s subjective values about how to compare other sorts of impacts to lives saved) to be excellent cost-effectiveness. We consider anything over $20,000 per life saved (or equivalent) to be excessive for the cause of international aid, as it implies more than an order of magnitude higher costs than the strongest programs.

Read more.