Happy New Year

As this year draws to a close, we have grateful hearts for our supporters. Without you, our work would not be possible. We can do the "leg work" but you must dig from your pockets to make it active. All of our staff in the U.S. works very hard. We are often at our desks 10 hours a day, at night or on weekends but no one complains. We accept the challenge of each new day's work and stay with it until the task is done. It takes a lot of time to handle everything. When you love your work and feel that it is worthwhile, the tiredness you feel at the end of the day is a good tiredness. As a woman, I can compare it to cleaning house. How nice it is to feel tired when you can sit down and enjoy a clean house, the laundry done and everything in order. Accomplishing what is needed to help poor children gives us the same feeling of accomplishment. Thanks to our supporters for believing in us and the work we are doing. Thank you for sacrificing to help the poor children. Best wishes for a wonderful New Year!

If it seems too good to be true, it probably is!

We have not been able to get contracts for either of the nearly perfect buildings we found and hoped would serve as orphanages. The one that is definitely perfect will house more elderly people, which is a good thing. They are moving about 100 older people from a run-down building to this new and nice building. The building that is about half-finished is still sitting there. The officials from the Department of Education and some of the local people visited our orphanages in Pingguo and Tien Deng and had no complaints but the local people are still concerned about signing a contract with us. Often there's fear of the unknown and especially if it's with foreigners. So, the beautiful building may just sit there and deteriorate. Jackie, our worker in Xi'an has found an older building in a city southwest of Shanghai and we are working on a contract to take over that building and remodel it for our next care center. I have some pictures but they are not very good so I don't want to post them until we have better pictures to show you. No one would be impressed with what I have seen so far but I'm sure the building is sound and can be transformed into a beautiful home for children. There are about 1000 orphans in this area so our presence is greatly needed to start providing a place to live for these poor children. There are just more opportunities for us that we can keep up with.

Our son, Ronald, is doing a great job with the kitchen and dining room construction at John Connor Brown Christian Care Center. He says it will be completed by Chinese New Year and he will be ready to move to the next location. If the contract is signed for this older building, he will go there to begin renovations. He knows what we want an orphanage to look like and he agrees that we need to do our best to give these children a clean and beautiful place to live. He said he would miss the children at John Connor Brown very much. They have loved him like he's their uncle and called him "Uncle Ron." We know they have touched his heart as they touch ours when we go to visit for only a short time.