No deal set for orphanage in Hu Zhou

We doubt that anything works out for an orphanage in Hu Zhou although the buildings were in excellent condition. The problem was that they primarily wanted us to take over running the facility to care for the 90 or more old people that live there. There are five or six buildings, most of them vacant. We could house at least 150 orphans and also care for the elderly, but when we got down to facts, they claim there are only about 50 orphans in the area. They were not really interested in us caring for the orphans; only wanted someone to take over the care for the elderly. They said we would not need to be concerned about their medical care; only their food. We would save a lot of money using these pre-existing buildings that only need a little paint and cleaning, but we also want to care for orphaned children. We were very disappointed that it does not seem favorable at this time. Things may change, and they may “find” orphans in the weeks ahead. We left saying to ourselves, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” It is an old saying that still has a lot of meaning, especially if you work in China.

While we were in Hu Zhou, the government worker in charge of the older people took us to some gardens. Some pictures of us at this beautiful place are included in this section. The younger, slimmer man is John. He speaks good English and has just completed his university education in Wuhan. He will go to our orphanages to train to see if he wants to run an orphanage for us. He’s a very nice young Christian man. The other man is Luke, our director at Neil Taylor Christian Care Center in Rongshui.

The streams (canals) flowing all through this area are beautiful with overhanging weeping willows. I was particularly interested in the lotus that was growing in large quantities in shallow lakes. The lotus root is one of my favorite vegetables.

We left Hu Zhou and traveled to Beijing. We were there for a few days to finalize some things with workers and business associates. Last night we left at 9:40 on a night train to Shanghai. Today, we are resting and preparing for our long journey home. We will go to the airport tomorrow afternoon and stand by hoping to get on tomorrow afternoon’s flight. We fly on donated buddy passes so we have to fly on days where seats are available. We know we can get on Sunday’s flight because there are plenty of seats left on that flight. We have completed our work for this trip and are ready to return home.