Day One

CHINA LITTLE FLOWER (CLF)

CLF runs Eric's foster home, along with 4 other foster homes and a baby home. Today we visited CLF's baby home, had lunch with Eric's foster family in their humble home, and also visited Eric's school. Unfortunately, Eric is sick with a fever today, so he did not join us on those outings. His foster mom and one of his foster brothers have been sick too. So now we have been thoroughly exposed to some kind of contagious sickness. As I said, we "shared" a meal with them...and I mean we really "shared' a meal! Trying to be gracious, there wasn't much we could do. Oh, please pray that we will not get sick! This would be very bad timing to get sick, with all the travel we yet have coming up! The director/founder of CLF spent a couple of hours with us this morning, showing us around the baby home and telling us a lot about their amazing work...about the sad stories these children have...and about Eric's past. And furthermore, the babies recently had scabies and are still under treatment, so we weren't allowed to hold any of them! I could have held them all! Oh, and we also had an unplanned "interview" today... several friends (of Eric's foster family) stopped by while we were at Eric's house for lunch, and one of them was a timely visit from one of these friends that could speak English well enough translate for us. Prior to that we were there with no translator, so we had been doing the best we could. We had a nice visit with her help, but then she went on to question us to make sure we were a good fit for Eric. (It was kind of funny but also heartening.) All of these precious people love Eric and want to make sure he is going to a good home. We also keep hearing that Eric is a favorite in his foster home and is very close to his foster mom. His foster parents are older and had planned on retiring a few months ago, but extended their work once they learned Eric was matched. They purposely decided to stay long enough to see him into his new family. (He has been with them 6 years!) That meant a lot to us! They are really precious people. By extending their stay, it allowed Eric to not have to go through yet another transition.

Picture Labels

1-Standing in front of Eric's school

2-Having lunch with part of Eric's foster family

3-Some of Eric's classmates from his 6th grade class (Theresa and Ming)