Many of our supporters will remember little Garett, who was cared for in our Anhui Healing Home. He had an extensive cleft, and he loved to smile at everyone with his eyes twinkling.
To say that Garrett lived life with gusto is the understatement of the year, and we know more than one of our nannies joked that she was completely worn out trying to keep up with him. Read more.
Cleft trips are always emotionally and physically exhausting. The months of preparation, the long plane rides, the huge, overweight suitcases that are wrestled through the airports and begged through check-in without overweight fees, the physical aliments in a foreign country, and the long, hard hours in an unfamiliar hospital all become insignificant compared to the moment that the first child comes back from the operating room. Read more.
Our 2012 Cleft Exchange in quickly approaching. In less than one month, four doctors from the United States will travel to Kaifeng, Henan and perform up to 40 cleft lip and palate surgeries. At the same time they will be working with Chinese doctors and training them in the best methods of performing quality cleft surgeries. It is our hope that through this training, more children in China will have beautiful cleft repairs for years to come.
Our last cleft exchange took place in Fuzhou in the fall of 2010 where thirty children received life-changing surgeries. Most of the orphaned children who were a part of that trip have since been adopted by their forever families. Read more.
Social media experts always advise to “keep your blogs brief” and “make it shorter”, and we have tried to do that with our blogs over the last year, but today I honestly don’t want to be brief. : -) The 2010 LWB Cleft Surgery Exchange is officially underway, and I hope you will feel as I do that every child deserves a moment in the spotlight since many have traveled so far for their surgeries. These trips involve months of planning, so many incredible donors, and a wonderful commitment by the orphanage caregivers, doctors and nurses, and so I want to make sure we report as much as possible to thank everyone who made this trip a reality.
Read more.
