Taiwan 2011- Part 2 (THOGL)

We were in Taipei until Wednesday afternoon. We rode along with The Edwards family to THOGL (The Home of God's Love). It's about an hour drive from Taipei to THOGL and I loved it! I could see landmarks or places that I remembered driving past last time and the closer we got to THOGL, the more excited I became. I've watched videos that adoptive parents have taken and when it shows them driving down THOGL's road and pulling into the driveway lined with tall palm trees, I always cry cuz it felt like I should be there, that I should be seeing that in person. I wasn't sure how I would react when this time it actually was ME pulling into the drive and up to the door. I thought I might cry, but I didn't. It was just pure excitement and happiness. We walked in and there was Showhwa! Holding a baby of course, which I almost crushed from hugging Showhwa so hard, lol! It was so SO good to see her after two years!


Within a few minutes it literally felt like I had never left. Everything was exactly the same, except for the babies being different. The rocking chairs looked the same, the bottles were in the same place, babies EVERYWHERE, even the little wooden stool thing was in exactly the same place. It was a comforting chaos.
I walked into the babies sleeping room to say hi to some of the workers and to see the babies that were in there. When you walk through the door, straight in front of you is a set of those "bunk bed" cribs with the doors that slide up and down. As soon as I saw that top crib I started crying. When I worked there two years ago, that was Pan's (Gavin Conklin) crib. Gavin passed away in August when he was just 2 years old. Seeing his old bed immediately brought back so many memories of him. His happy personality, his very infectious and joyous laugh (I always smile when I think about that), the late night "feedings" (he had a hole in his heart that made him so weak he didn't have the energy to eat until he had surgery to correct it). That boy was the happiest baby we had and I still miss him!

Things very quickly fell back to the normal THOGL routine that I remembered. The schedule is still the same so I felt like I jumped back in and was right at home with the feedings and the play-time. We arrived at THOGL the day before Thanksgiving so all that day and Thanksgiving morning, missionaries kept trickling in to celebrate the day together. It was really nice to see some old friends and to meet some new ones and listen to testimonies and stories of what God had done and was doing. I honestly think that was my favorite part... sitting in a group, holding a baby or two of course, and just listening to everyone talking. It just felt like home.
Thanksgiving dinner was incredible! I can't remember who made the chicken and noodles but they were by far my favorite food item there! So yummy! Someone needs to teach me how to make them. That morning the electricity was turned off for a few hours and we actually ate most of the meal without it. I'm impressed with the ladies who got all the food ready and everything set out, without electricity!
There wasn't a lot that happened at THOGL that would be interesting to anyone but me really. I mostly just took care of babies and enjoyed talking with everyone and just being there. I did walk down to the lake a couple of times, but I never did make it up to the temple on the side of the mountain like I was hoping to. There just wasn't enough time for it. (Next time!!!)

When I was in Taiwan two years ago, I didn't get the chance to go to the ocean so one afternoon we decided to take advantage of the sunny (rare) day and go for a few hours. One of the workers at THOGL drove us down there (about 30 minutes) and said he'd come pick us up in a few hours. Wouldn't you know it, about 5 minutes after he drove off... it started to rain. We could see the dark clouds coming in and it looked like it was going to be kinda nasty. We didn't have a way to get a hold of the man (he didn't speak English anyway), and "town" was at least a 15-20 minute walk. We wouldn't have minded walking into town but we knew if we left and he came back and we weren't at the beach, we'd have a problem. We decided to just stay on the main road and walk to see if we could find some type of shelter where we would still be able to see when he came back. The only thing close was an Animal Disease control building (or something like that). We had a couple of hours to kill so we kept walking to see if we could find anything else. When we got to a stop sign at an intersection, we stood on the corner trying to decide what we should do. This lady pulls up next to us, rolls down her window, and asks us in good English if we needed help. :) We told her what had happened and where we were staying and she offered to take us back to the orphanage. We had thought about calling THOGL to see if someone could come get us but we didn't know if the guy that had dropped us off had a cell phone and we were worried he would come back to the beach, not find us, and freak out. Fortunately, after a few calls back and forth between us and THOGL, they were able to get a hold of him and tell him that he didn't have to pick us up. The very nice lady took us to our road and we walked from there. We decided that she was our angel from God. Seriously. How random was it that an English speaking lady would drive out there and pass us 3 American girls standing on the side of the road and take us home?
The annoying thing was that when we got back to THOGL, the sun came out and the day turned beautiful again. Oh well... maybe I'll try the ocean again next time too.

I had a great time at THOGL and loved seeing all my old friends!! And the new babies. :)
The Saturday morning after Thanksgiving, we went back to Taipei with the Edwards Family and then took the high speed rail to Tainan to visit Ray of Hope. Blog post about that coming soon. Hopefully sooner than this one. I finally got internet access on my computer at work so it's easier for me to get online during the kids naptime.