"Can I bring this baby, too?"

On Friday, October 11, we hired a driver to take us to a couple of places. Little Flower medical foster home and The Great Wall. Although the wall is one of the 7 wonders of the world and one of those "must see" attractions in China, the highlight of my day was our first stop. 

To protect the privacy of the children there, we did not take pictures inside. It is located inside a nice house in the Beijing area. We were shown around by a nice young man who works there. I remember seeing his pictures on their Facebook page. He spoke excellent English. He showed us all the different rooms with the preemies to infants to babies to toddlers. All with some kind of medical need. Often a need that requires surgery our constant monitoring. There must have been about 20-30 children there. They do amazing work and those children are very loved.  We saw the room where Sam stayed when he came there. He arrived in their care when he was about 4 months old. He was very sick and frail, mostly due to his heart defect. The intake pictures are heartbreaking and  the images shocked us when we first saw them. I knew from the moment we saw the pictures that the people at Little Flower had saved his life. I assumed that the orphanage where he was at the time was concerned about him and that's why they called LF to come for him. I assumed we would go there to thank them for all they had done for him... But we didn't even realize the depth of gratitude that we owe to them. Especially to a very special lady named "Lily". 

 She was holding a baby when our guide told her who we were. She smiled and carefully laid the baby down and came to talk to us. She told us that the then director at his orphanage was good about accepting help from outside sources, like foster homes. She said that she had a list of 9 babies that she was going to evaluate on that trip, one who had a serious heart defect. Sam was not on that list. She said that she while she was there evaluating the needs of the babies the orphanage had called about, she saw YiFei (our Sam). She said he was so tiny and his right ear was very swollen and red because he had lay on that side with it folded up for so long in the same position that it had become infected. She had her oxygen detector with her because of the other baby with the heart defect. She took Sams level and it was very low. She knew he needed to go to LF. So she asked if she could "bring this baby, too."  And she did. He wasn't on the list. The orphanage must not have even been too concerned about his needs. Lily picked him out. She saved him.  I was so overcome with gratitude and a whirlwind of emotions when she told me this. She was crying, I was crying... It was a moment I'll never forget. Later (after we gathered ourselves together), we took a picture with her (which is on our camera card still, I'll try to upload later). She got a little emotional again and a volunteer asked if she was okay, and she said, "YiFei is special." I couldn't agree more. 

After that we went to the Great Wall. It was pretty cool, but not the highlight of my day:)