Four time a year, CCAI’s Charity Director Xia Zhong makes her way to China to check in on our Lily Orphan Care Centers (LOCCs), meet new orphanage directors, build relationships with partner orphanage staff, train CCAI’s LOCC managers and our China charity team, coordinate hosting logistics and… whatever else needs her attention.

These visits may feel very busy, but with each orphanage visit, Xia’s heart swells.

“I feel so privileged that I get to meet so many of the children that CCAI eventually goes on to adopt before they meet their families,” Zhong shared. “I get to see how wonderful they are and my heart aches, wishing I could make their adoptions immediate.”

Aside from working with orphanage staff and encouraging directors to report, create/update children’s files with haste to quicken their adoption, Xia also helps train the children participating in our hosting program, who might have a harder time finding a family through their adoption file on paper alone. Hosting greatly increases a child’s chances of being adopted by making them tangible and helping families understand their personalities. The majority of children hosted through CCAI’s China Host Program have gone on to be adopted by their host families or another family that learned about them through their host family’s advocacy.

“Hosting changes these kids’ lives,” Xia said. “One of the boys I met who was hosted last summer was very disruptive before he went to the US. I met him again on my most recent trip and he was so well behaved! The orphanage director told me he comes to her office three times a day, asking when he will be adopted. Now that he has had a taste of what it is like to be a part of a family, he behaves in hopes that someone will hear that he is a good boy and want him as their son.”

This experience wasn’t the only heart-tugging one Xia experienced on her last trip to China in September.

“Three years ago I met a baby with clubbed hands and feet and a mouth so small that his nannies had to feed him milk with an eye dropper,” Xia explained. “The nannies named him what translates to English as “swimmer” because it was likely he would never walk, so they hoped he would one day swim. There was a low chance he would survive infancy. Even with the best-tending nannies, it was difficult to give him enough food. He was very skinny. It broke my heart.

I had not heard about him in the time that followed that trip, so I assumed the worst. It was to my great surprise when I returned to his orphanage this September that he ran to me on his ankles! He gave me a hug and clung to me as if to say ‘Help me find a family.’ I held him and bawled. He is so special to me. His file is being prepared by his orphanage currently and I hope he will find a family.”

Xia’s next trip is scheduled for January 2017.

If you would like to support CCAI’s charity efforts, you may make a tax-deductible donation at http://ccaifamily.org/Charity/Donation.