Journey to Dani

...well that would be the understatement of all understatements. We had quite the day. I'm not posting many pictures on this one, we just want to tell you what happened. Before I get to our little miracle moment, the day started with a 2 1/2 hour drive to Dani's hometown Yueyang. This was quite a dose of reality. The areas outside of Yueyang is where Dani was most likely born. It is so poor. I had a lump in my throat all day. Once we got into Yueyang, we visited the orphanage that has overseen Dani. The building was pretty rough. You can tell that resources are scarce. We were able to go inside and visit the playroom that the girls would have monthly medical visits in, etc. We recognized the furniture from Dani's referral photos.

After leaving the orphanage, we went to lunch. That's where it got interesting. What happened next was God's hand at work. I'm afraid I won't be posting pics, though, as the specific details of what happened we have decided to keep private for Dani someday. We hope you will understand. Some of today we just won't be speaking of. Anyway, when we sat down to lunch I thought of Dani's finding spot. We have a name of the location, and some details regarding her abandonment and finding. There would be no way to venture off and look for the spots of 12 families in a city of 1/2 million people. But I asked our translator, Bill, how far away the location was in case we were to pass close by chance. He asked the waitress where the location was in the city. They bantered back and forth in Chinese, and Bill had a funny look on his face. He then looked at me and said...

"It right next door...I take you while they prepare food." In a city of 1/2 million people...of all of the places we could have been taken for lunch, we were placed 3 doors away from her finding place. I was numb. We literally walked out the door, took a left and walked less than 1 block, and there it was! We were able to take pictures and video of us and Dani together on her finding spot. No one else got to find theirs. We were placed right next door. We hope you'll understand our desire for privacy concerning some of what happened today, though. It was
hard to believe we were standing there, and even harder to imagine her future there, as well as what happened there on a cold January morning. I'm so glad we got to go to Yueyang.

Kids, and I'm talking to all kids reading this....you have NO idea how good you have it. We saw such poverty on the way to the orphanage, it made my heart sink. I'm not saying Dani wasn't loved and well taken care of, oh my gosh was she. We can certainly tell. But we in the United States always WANT, WANT, WANT when we don't really need. These people "need". Parents, we have a duty to try and instill a "world-view" as much as possible to our children. Perhaps 80% of the population of China lives under these conditions. "We Americans" are not the norm...we are the fortunate. Let's all thank our Father God for what and who we have in our lives before we put head to pillow tonight...AMEN.
Here's the outside of the orphanage


Behind the orphanage is this piece of land that belongs to the orphanage for gardening.


Yanhua's like a rock star. These girls just loved her. She laughed at them and they wanted her picture


Love the blankey