Atlanta to Pingliang - a long, long trip!

We spent almost all day on July 20th at the Atlanta airport. Flying on buddy passes does not guarantee us a seat. We thought first that we had a better chance on the segment to Narita, Japan, to go through NY but the plane to NY filled up, We changed our flight to Seattle and then stood by for the next three flights to Seattle, only to watch them all fill with sold out seats. Our friend, Harvey Boyd, who worked for Delta, checked out flights through Memphis to Seattle but they were all sold out. He told us we might take a chance and standby on the flight directly to Narita from Atlanta. It showed that it was full but we were able to get seats in coach. It was a long 14 hours but we were just pleased to be on our way. We had a few hours in the Narita airport before we took a near-empty flight to Shanghai. We took the high speed train from the airport to the end of the line and then got a taxi to the hotel. From the time we left home until we opened our hotel door in Shanghai, it was 30 hours. It was very hard to keep from sleeping on the last leg of the trip but I was afraid a nap then would keep me from going to sleep once we got to the hotel.

The next day we headed out to Expo. It has been open since April but there are now approximately 500,000 attending each day. We took the subway and bought our one-day ticket. Leigh Ann wanted to see the Chinese pavilion but we learned very quickly you need a reservation to get in to see it. Reservations were also needed for the Taiwan and Macau buildings. We asked how we made a reservation to see these and were told that every morning at 9:00 a.m. you can make the reservations for those buildings. Our ticket let us inside any other pavilion but they were scattered over several miles and the temperature was about 95 degrees. We waited in an outside line in the hot sun for almost an hour for the Hong Kong building and it was about a 10 minute walk through without anything spectacular to see. After the New Zealand exhibit, we decided it was not worth the effort and headed back to the subway to go back to the hotel.

The next day we took a taxi to the train station and took an all-night train (13 hours) to Pingxiang. Ronald and Mark, one of our workers, met us at the train station. We stopped at a nice hotel and ate breakfast at a nice buffet. It was a 30 minute drive from there to Luxi. We checked in at the hotel and left our luggage so we could head out to see the new care center.

Ronald started the remodeling of the 3-story building the first of May. He will have almost all of it completed in two weeks. It was in the final painting stage, the kitchen equipment is ready to be installed and the rest of the electrical work will be completed in a week. The bathrooms on the first floor are almost completed (they are ready on the other two floors).

This building was originally an office building so there were no showers and only one toilet stall at the end of each floor. It was later used to house old people. Now, there are baths for boys and girls on each floor. Floors will be cleaned and the beds will be assembled and rooms will be completed for the children. About the middle of August, children will begin moving in. What a lovely home it will be for some very poor, unhappy children.

Our only concern is the old people from the other two buildings on the same campus will wander in and out of the building. They put a temporary fence around the building to keep them out but it may be necessary to build a permanent fence for the children’s protection.

The government workers took us to lunch. It was a restaurant in the countryside (very dirty which gives us a little apprehension about the cleanliness of the food preparation). The meal was fair (if you like fish soup and chicken soup with all the parts included). We had smoked pork slices barely cooked, black-eyed peas with hot green peppers, bitter melon, pumpkin, steamed eggs, glutinous dumplings with water chestnuts and canned herbal tea. They wanted us to tour the beautiful gardens (which looked like they had grown up without any tender care for a very long time). The government officials offered to send two cars and drivers to drive us two hours to see some hot springs. Ron politely declined saying he still had much to go over with the workers.

We ate a quiet dinner at a local restaurant with just the four of us. Ronald has eaten there many times with the workers and the waitress spoke some English so ordering was not too difficult.

Today, the workers came to have family services at the hotel and then we went to lunch together. Many of the dishes they ordered at another local restaurant were not what we would have ordered but we managed to eat enough. The little appetizer that was brought first to the table was pickled seaweed. Ronald found a dead fly in it. The waitress brought some roasted peanuts out to replace the seaweed after we showed her the fly. We didn't find anything in the rest of the food but we didn't look very much. Sometimes it is best not to know. We had sweet and sour pork (with bone and fat), beef and potatoes (beef was actually tender like a roast), steamed fish (this one didn't have the head on which is unusual for China), eggplant (spicy with ground beef and hot peppers), cauliflower, greens and fried rice. The three male workers with us put away the food like it was their last meal.

We left this care center the next morning and took an 8-hour train ride to the Jackson Family Christian Care Center in Zigong. I will add Leigh Ann’s write up about the trip there. (Leigh Ann is our daughter and she works in the U.S. handling all the reports for this care center).

From Zigong, we took a 20 hour train to Xi’an. We got on at 10 a.m. one day and arrived in Xi’an the next morning about 6 a.m. We grabbed a bite at McDonalds (including an iced coffee) and boarded a bus for Pingliang, Gansu. It was a 5 hour ride due to a traffic accident that sent us on a detour road over the mountains. The road was narrow and rough and had broken pavement or no pavement part of the way.

We checked into our hotel and went to lunch with Jackie, our worker from Xi’an, who is in charge of the medical mission. Today, our medical team arrives from the U.S. We will have a “welcome” meeting tonight as well as a big dinner.
Tomorrow the surgeries will begin at 7 a.m. We have over 60 children already scheduled for surgery. About five children have arrived from our care centers for either cleft lip or cleft palate surgery.


The mission will end on August 15 and then we return to the U.S. Keep us in your prayers for a successful mission.