Dear Willa~
I want to share a story with you about the way some people just go around casually doing good, and leave behind them an amazing trail of changed lives.
Not long ago, I was researching the city where you are, and the SWI where you have lived since last November.
There simply is not very much information available, I'm afraid. So I have resorted to creative measures of data collection.
One thing that I did was email a woman named Amy Eldridge, who is the mother of three Chinese children and works with an organization called Love Without Boundaries.
The group works throughout China, assisting orphanages in many ways, including arranging for medical treatment, providing nutritional aid, and many other projects. As a result, LWB volunteers have traveled extensively throughout China and have personally visited many of the SWIs.
I wrote Amy and asked her if she knew anything about Zhuhai. She responded quickly, telling me that she did not, but that she would forward my question to the LWB representative in Guangdong province to find out whether the facilitator knew anything about the orphanage in Zhuhai.
A week or so later, I got this email from Amy:
Hi Elizabeth! Our facilitator called Zhuhai and found out that there are around 86 kids there. They are sending us the files on four children with cleft and one little girl with an urgent colon issue to see if we can help them with surgery. Usually once we help an orphanage we get much more detailed information, so I will let you know what else we hear. Thank you for contacting me because now five kids will get the surgery they need!Amy
Tonight, I am sitting here wondering what you are doing right now. I wonder if any of those five children are close to you. Are you eating together? Do you take your nap close to one of them?
Do you have any idea how much we already love you, and how this part of the wait seems like the longest?
Originally written Aug. 2, 2006
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