Speech

I spent the majority of Tuesday (1/5) and Wednesday (1/6) with Laura, the speech therapist, and served as a consultant and trainer of sorts. Laura is native Chinese and received 2 years of training from an American speech-language pathologist who volunteered at SFCV. Laura has here for about 3 years now. She and I hit it off great. During those two days I barely spent time with any of the children and the rest of the team.

I caught a cold sometime between Wednesday and Thursday =(. I stayed in Thursday morning and slept off the cold. After I woke up, I typed a summary of the training I had with Laura. I ventured out in the afternoon to look for Laura but she wasn't around. Instead, I ended up spending time with Annie, an occupational therapist (OT) from the Philippines, who has been at SFCV for the past six months. She, her son, a physical therapist and her daughter, an OT, have spent the past few years in China working with orphans through various non-government organizations. Her story is quite inspiring and challenges me to examine whether I can be like her: to follow her calling, to live a life completely different from the comfortable one I have and to depend solely on Him.

It's amazing how God orchestrates the timing of events. It is in retrospect that I appreciate His perfect plans and the preparation He took to bring me to serve at SFCV. The past sixteen months of speaking Chinese daily at my job have decreased my fear of speaking Mandarin. The past four and a half years of working as a speech therapist built up my knowledge base and my clinical skills to better serve the children. Supervising a student intern this past summer prepared me to serve as a supervisor/trainer to Laura.
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The children bring tremendous joy to all of us. Every evening at our team de-briefings, we talk about the children and the cute things they did. Since I have not spent much time with the children, I listen to the others share. As they spend time with the children, the children's personalities, peer relationships, and relationships with the a-yis are more apparent. The children are well-loved and cared for by the a-yis. We see such happiness and joy in the faces of the children. Those some have an overt physical disability, all the children are treated equally and there is total and unconditional acceptance of the child.
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Here's a picture of Philip from 5 years ago, when he was still at the other orphanage. He looks a bit older, but still with the same great smile.

- Angela