In Kevin's Own Words

Thanks for following this blog and for your prayers as Lauren and I traveled to China. I hope you also took a look at my video montage of the trip at Chaoyang 2012 and my pictures on my Facebook page. These will give you a taste of the amazing trip that God took us on. One of those pictures shows me laying on a trampoline with two boys. The boy on my left is a little guy that is new to the orphanage this year. We called him Buba, his Chinese name means "Stars." Buba has Down's Syndrome and was very cautious with this strange group of visitors early in the week. By the last day, when this picture was taken, he was very comfortable with me. If I tickled him, he wouldn't laugh, but when I tickled the other boy, Buba would laugh along with him. The scene in this picture was interrupted by the call to get on the van for the last time and leave the orphanage to head back to the US. Lest you think that a Down's Syndrome boy who doesn't speak english doesn't understand, as we got off the trampoline, he had a few silent tears flowing down his cheeks. The other boy in the picture is Chen Chen. He is about eight with moderate autism. He is very sweet, but doesn't speak, well almost. On Thursday, the team arrived as rain fell outside. Chen Chen and I headed to the play room and sat by the window looking out at the rain. This boy, who never talks, started saying "ma ma, ma ma." Then he laid his head on my chest and continued to say, "ma ma," softly and sweetly. (My Chinese isn't very good, and depending on the tonal inflections, he might have been saying "horse, horse" or "scold, scold" but my best guess is that he was using the only word that he knew for parent.) A couple of days later, as we boarded the van for the last time, Chen Chen burst into tears and ran to one of the nannies for consolation. That's how we left him. These boys and the other twenty-some kids at this little orphanage in the middle of northern China know that they are loved. They enjoyed the human connections that we were all created for. They experienced the love of Christ through an amazing team of ordinary men and women who were willing to devote twelve days of their lives to being His hands and feet. Parental Postscript: There was one other little girl that caught my eye. She is 17 years old and has red hair. She looks and sounds very much like my daughter Lauren, but there were differences. At home, Lauren -- like you and me -- could get frustrated with the trivial interruptions and minor inconveniences of life. In China, in the midst of extremely challenging conditions, a depth of character was displayed in her that is the stuff of legends. She has never been more in her element. Kids ran to her, stress rolled off of her, other team members -- adults and students alike -- looked to her, Christ shone through her -- and it was beautiful!