Cleft Lip Surgeries in Beijing

I am in the middle of one of my favorite things to do: looking at the transformed faces of the cleft lip babies. Dr. Lisa Buckmiller and her team started working her magic on the babies yesterday and before I left Beijing I saw River, and I just marveled. There are so many people who worked together to make this happen. I am so grateful to Dr. Bill Moody from the Philip Hayden Foundation who was able to take this on and find a place for the team to do surgery. I am also so grateful to the hospitals in Beijing who offered up their facilities and staff.
I wanted to show you the history of River at Starfish. A group of foreigners went with me to the big O to pick up some babies on May 4th this year. River was Mike's choice and he was also the one who named him. River was a month old and weighed 2.99kg or 6 and a half pounds, a small little thing. The one redeeming quality is that River could eat any time and any place and soon he started getting to Buddha Belly proportions! He is now pushing 9kg, quite a change. Soon, he was ready to go to Dr Niu (the dentist) for his orthodontic molding in preparation for surgery. He handled that well and nothing interfered with his eating. His favorite place to sleep was next to Olivia for as long as the two of them could fit into the one bouncer. He really has been the poster child of the cleft home. Yesterday, I saw the result of every one's contribution, and does he look good! There is still a little swelling because this was taken within and hour of him coming out of the OR, but you can see the results are phenomenal.
So by the time I fell into bed last night at 9pm, four Starfish babies had had surgery. River was first, but Sadie was after him and then Olivia and James. I am so eager to see what James looks like. He had a severe double cleft and I know the changes can be dramatic. We have had a few problems with the babies' health issues and I hope that we can clear that up so that more babies can have surgery. I think today it is Sophia and Tina who are on the schedule, and they both have double clefts and Dr Niu has fitted molds so their mouths are prepared for this.
Thank you to everyone who has offered their help. Getting 12 babies to Beijing was no small task. I will write more as I am able because it is a logistical nightmare knowing where everyone is and what is going on. We thank the sponsors of the babies because so far all the expenses to do with the surgeries have been covered. How grateful I am for their generosity!!
As a side note, Nava is back home from her surgery and Teresa came back from Shanghai too. It has been a month of action on all fronts.

Life, Love and Laughter,
Amanda

Starfish Children's Services
US Tax Number: 20-4682916
Xian China


At Starfish, we have taken care of 95 children to date, arranged more than 61 surgeries and had 23 international adoptions, so our little starfishes live all over the globe: the US, Netherlands, Norway and Spain and our latest adoption was to France. We currently have 47 babies under the age of 3 at two foster homes.
www.thestarfishfosterhome.org
http://chinesestarfish.blogspot.com
http://chinesestarfishcleft.blogspot.com
chinese.starfishthrower@gmail.com
Cell: 86.1348.812.4847

Mike and River

River and Olivia

River

River

River when we first met

River with his molding

River one hour post operation

Halloween Fun

Happy Halloween from the Starfish Cleft Home! Amanda is still travelling in America and will return home next week. In the meantime, one of the AMAZING Starfish volunteers captured these precious pictures. We hope you enjoy their smiles and beautiful faces!!

Tim and River

Stella

Sadie

Olivia

Stewart

Nadia

Karl

Noa

River

Matilda and Jessie

Libby

Jasmine

James

Brian

Julia

Nick

Matilda

Daniel

Aaron

Carmen

Antonia

Cameron

Clara

Clara and Stella

Clara, Stella, and Julia

An Award for Starfish

When I started Starfish in 2005, I had no idea what was coming. For the first three and a half years I hardly left Xian except to take babies to the hospital in other Chinese cities. As you might know, religion is not accepted part of life in China, and I came to China with my personal testimony of Jesus Christ. It was hard to reconcile the feelings I had with those of being in China and for the first year while I was teaching it was easy to separate my religion and my work. Things became decidedly more complicated as I started the foster home. I continued to practice my religion as the government allowed but never have I spoken openly about it, except to mention from time to time my believe in God and His integral part in my ability to be able to run the foster home. This is in large part to the respect I have to the Chinese government in obeying the laws of their country and secondly, because the church I belong to, has asked its members not discuss religious matters with local Chinese people. The babies do not belong to any church and I am extremely careful that we do not teach and preach any religion at the foster home. I guess my thinking was best summed up by a quote I saw at a friend's home in Nashville: Your life may be the only Bible some people ever read. I am not going to use this as a forum for a religious discussion, but as a preface to explain a more personal matter which also concerns Starfish.
A few months ago I was stunned to find out that Brigham Young University, where I graduated from in 1996, was honoring the work I do with a Humanitarian Service award and that I needed to travel to Utah for the two day event. To be honest I am really embarrassed by all this attention and if it was up to me I would not do it. However, there is a very important consideration to be made and that is my beloved babies. How can I be a better advocate for them? How can I tell their story and help others to have more compassion on the plight that they are in and give people the opportunity to help them? It changed my mind.
I was so amused because of the dress code required. I do not own business clothes, a requirement for the meetings and I am desperately looking for something to wear which will fit my budget. I go to church in the same clothes I wear at home which are baby proof, so I guess a new frock is in order. Any excuse to go shopping.
I also want to invite any one that would like to come to the VIP luncheon, where the award will be presented on Friday October 23 at 12:30am at BYU. There are some additional seats available for lunch and you many contact Alicia Smith if you would like to reserve a place (alicia.brown@byu.edu). Please do it soon. I am also going to be in the homecoming parade and going to the BYU football game on Saturday, something I have not done since I was a student. I am arranging a much more informal dinner at a noodle place on Friday night and if you would like to come to that, will you contact Wendy Beres at kayaknwoman@aol.com for details. Yes, I am leaving China to eat noodles in America but more importantly I will probably not be eating but talking more to people I have know most of my life and others who have played such an important part in getting me where I am today. What a wonderful opportunity for me.

Life, Love and Laughter,
Amanda

Starfish Children's Services
US Tax Number: 20-4682916
Xian China

At Starfish, we have taken care of 94 children to date, arranged more than 55 surgeries and had 22 international adoptions, so our little starfishes live all over the globe: the US, Netherlands, Norway and Spain and our latest adoption was to Florida, USA. We currently have 47 babies under the age of 3 at two foster homes.

www.thestarfishfosterhome.org
http://chinesestarfish.blogspot.com
http://chinesestarfishcleft.blogspot.com
chinese.starfishthrower@gmail.com
Cell: 86.1348.812.4847

Four Year Anniversary

I slept and dreamed that life was joy.

I awoke and saw that life was service.

I acted and behold service was joy.

Rabindranath Tagore

September 13, 2005, what a day!! I will not forget the sight of having six little people who were carried into my life. I will never forget looking at them and being so excited at the prospect of helping and at the same time being terrified at having to take care of them. All of them had some sort of special need and I had no experience with any of it. Today, I am so stunned at what has happened in the intervening four years. I have had an extremely steep learning curve in areas of medicine, social work, non profit management, marketing and human resources with a whole range of other skills which I did not possess, but had to learn. I could not have predicted that I would be running a foster home taking care of almost 50 children and all that it entails. I had no idea what was coming! If I had, I might have not taken this on. I would have run and hid myself refusing to take on the pain, the work load and the hassle. At the same time I would have missed the joy and the successes that have played out in the lives of the children as they have been healed and in those who have gone on to be adopted. I find such joy in hearing from each family as they share with me the lives of these babies that found themselves all alone in a park, hospital, cemetery and river bank hoping that someone would help. I cannot imagine what that must be like, abandoned by your very own family, waiting, hoping that someone would take pity on you and help........... I guess in my heart I want to make life a little more fair for each one of them, offering HOPE in a very bleak situation. I carry a story for each one of the 94 children that have come to Starfish, all of the babies I chose to come to live with me and the condition I found them in. I revel in our ability to offer care that allowed them to overcome the medical need they had and to protect them until their families arrive. This is the purpose of Starfish. At the same time the hardest lessons have been the babies that I could not help enough. I will never forget how I pleaded with God for the life of Susan and having her die in my arms. It took me a while to get over that and as I tried to learn the lesson which was that I was not going to save every child but that I was going offer love, warmth and care while their little bodies were not able to be helped by the medical care that was available. My desire is to be able to find better medical care for the most fragile of these babies, who need some specialized care that I can find in Xian.

Kay, who understood the foster home more than intimately that any one before or since, told me once that running the foster home was the loneliest job. That may seem true, but I do not feel so lonely. I feel that God's hand is over the foster home and that He loves these children so much. I see it in the miracles that take place and the help that He sends. I feel His influence all the time and it offers me comfort, truth, wisdom and a tremendous sense of tenacity.

I want to thank each and everyone who has had some connection to the foster home. There is the synergy that works together for good. I love the mixture of the different nationalities, walks of life, different religions and the offer of the US$12 from a little boy's piggy bank to the tens of thousands of dollars from corporate and foundation donations. I am so grateful for the specialized skills from medical staff to the 91 year old Chinese woman who cannot read, but wants to volunteer anyway. I am so extremely grateful to the Starfish Staff who works so hard. They pour their love and care out on the babies and have such a huge hand in the success of our foster home. I love the volunteers that want to come back and the many who do, some who travel across the world back to Xian to be part again of the HOPE that Starfish offers. Thank you to the local volunteers, who spend hour after hour with us and who love the babies so much.

Thank you for following our story and for being Starfish Ambassadors, spreading the word and living the adventure with me. I know there are some very interesting events coming up and some that I cannot talk about yet. One of these days.....I hope it makes you keep on wanting to come back for more.

Here is to saving a life, offering love with a generous dose of laughter, acting in service and finding joy.

Amanda
Starfish Children's Services
US Tax Number: 20-4682916
Xian China
At Starfish, we have taken care of 94 children to date, arranged more than 55 surgeries and had 22 international adoptions, so our little starfishes live all over the globe: the US, Netherlands, Norway and Spain. We currently have 47 babies under the age of 3 at two foster homes.
www.thestarfishfosterhome.org
http://chinesestarfish.blogspot.com
http://chinesestarfishcleft.blogspot.com
chinese.starfishthrower@gmail.com
Cell: 86.1348.812.4847

Alice

Rebecca and Jade

Joseph

Heather

Hosea

Rose