Reunion Picnic Brings Back Memories and an Old Friend

What a surprise for me to meet Lesli and Kyra Webb on July 14 at our reunion. Lesli adopted Kyra in Children's Hope early years. She is still the same as I remembered her in 1993, but Kyra was then a cute little baby, and is now a sweet teen. The three times I met this family was first on their adoption trip, then in the St. Louis office in 1994, and the third time, now.

In 1993, Children’s Hope had only two staff members, Dwyatt and myself, and I was the coordinator for all families traveling to China. Lesli and her husband Mike went to Suzhou for Kyra, and since they were the only family for that month, I was their personal coordinator. I remember the fun memory of our trip like it was yesterday! Leslie told me all about St. Louis before I even knew of such a city.

It was very good to see this family again!

I Have a Dream

Kevin and I moved our family to Beijing two and a half years ago, in November 2004. A big reason for that, for me, was to be part of the Tomorrow Project launched by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, aimed to provide surgeries for all orphan children in need.

Up until now, 31,000 children’s lives have been saved through the Tomorrow Project, and 1,800 of them were helped through us, Children’s Hope/China.

I should say, we did a great job.

Now as an ongoing program, all orphan children in need will be able to receive the lifesaving surgeries through the Tomorrow Project. Better yet, from the recent director’s forum, we heard the program will expand to orphans not currently residing in state-run orphanages. This means not only the 60,000 orphanage children, but also the total number of orphans in China (570,000), will be eligible for the program.

It’s going to be a huge job!

After almost eight years of aiding the medical needs of children in China, I can’t help to have a dream, that one day...all Chinese children in medical need will be able to receive surgeries and treatment.

I dream one day, in the near future, every child in China will be covered by medical insurance, so the families of sick children will not exhaust all their assets and still need to beg the hospital to take in their children for lack of deposit.

And I dream one day, the children’s hospitals are children friendly and not so crowded that one child has to wait four hours in a cold hallway for a doctor’s appointment.

But for now, I have a smaller dream--a Children’s Hope Charity Hospital in China. We have doctors and hospitals interested in our dream and we are working on the funding, the logistical details for the plan.

Sincerely yours,
Melody