Maria's Big House of Hope Part 1/2.

This post is one (of many) that I am excited to write and share with you all. It’s rather long, so to help you follow along, I’ve split it into two parts: this first part is a small bit of the background of Maria’s Big House of Hope, and the second will cover the things that my team and I did while at Maria’s. Cool… let’s get to it.

Show Hope.

Show Hope was founded by Steven Curtis and Mary Beth Chapman in 2003 after they adopted one of their daughters, Shaohannah Hope, from China. If you’re looking for an amazing book to read I highly recommend Choosing to See by Mary Beth Chapman. It is mostly her life-story, but it goes into some detail about their adoptions and Show Hope. I also think that the Show Hope website does a great job of explaining what Show Hope is and does, so I’ll provide the link so you can read more for yourself. Here’s a snippet from the website that I think summarizes Show Hope very well.

“Founded by Steven Curtis Chapman and his wife Mary Beth, this nonprofit organization is helping to make a difference for the millions of orphans and waiting children around the world. Primarily they do this through Adoption Aid financial grants that help give orphans families and Special Care Centers in China that help orphans with special needs. Through programs like their Advocates, Student Initiatives, and Sponsorship, they are truly mobilizing a movement of individuals and communities who show hope to children in need.” ( http://showhope.org/about/#who-we-are ) Show Hope has helped give orphans “forever homes” for over 5,000 orphans from over 53 countries (including the U.S.). Also, over 2,000 orphans who have special needs “have received critically needed medical care through Show Hope’s Special Care Centers.” Yes, there is more than one Special Care Center in China: Maria’s Big House of Hope in Luoyang, China, is not the only one, nor was it the first. That is where New Hope Foundation comes into play.

New Hope Foundation.

Before I write anything about this incredible organization, founded by the incomparable Dr. Joyce and Robin Hill, I highly recommend you watch this 5-minute video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeVedUXQUuU .

Dr. Joyce and her husband, Robin, moved to China in 1994 and four years later they opened up their home to be a foster home for orphans who were sick. Two years after that they began work on the first Special Care Center in Bei Wu, in the Shun Yi district of Beijing. They continued to set up Special Care Centers throughout China. Eventually the Lord connected them with Show Hope, and the two foundations have been partners for years. The way I was told to think of these two organizations’ relationship is that New Hope Foundation does much of the administrative work on the Chinese end of things while Show Hope does most of the funding, as well of doing the American side of the work.

Dr. Joyce and Robin have a book about their incredible story that I have not yet read, but look forward to reading. It’s called The House of Hope written by Elisabeth Gifford ( http://www.hopefosterhome.com/the-house-of-hope/ ).

Maria’s Big House of Hope: Who/Why, What, Where, How?

Who/Why:

MBHOH was built in honor of Maria Sue Chapman, the Chapman family’s youngest adopted daughter from China, who was involved in a tragic, fatal car accident in 2008. In Mary Beth Chapman’s book, Choosing to See, she describes the significance of the flower Maria drew with only one petal colored in. I’ll leave that special story for you to read on your own.

What:

Maria’s Big House of Hope is a place for very sick children ages 0~8 years old can go to receive crucial medical care. Some children go there for palliative care as well. There can be up to approximately 170 children at Maria’s, and when I was there, they were almost at maximum capacity.

There are six floors at MBHOH. All of the floors except for the sixth floor have 2-3 rooms for children to live in. The sixth floor is where the long- and short-term staff live. Each children’s room can have up to 12 children in it at any given time, and four nannies as well. That makes the ratio of children to nanny about 3:1. The children do have their own nannies: that helps promote as “normal” of a bonding process as possible for the kiddos. Ayi (pronounced i-ee) is what the nannies are called, since it is Mandarin for “Aunt.”

Where:

Maria’s is located in Luoyang, in the Henan Province, of China. Luoyang is a very large city, with a few million people that call it home. It looks like a mixture of “modern-day” or “Westernized” China and “historic” China. There are so many shops and stores everywhere you look, and it can be quite visually overwhelming!

How:

Maria’s is funded by donations to Show Hope and is run by the long-term staff members that live there. Currently there is one full-time doctor and his family that live at Maria’s. There are three full-time, 24/7 on-call nurses that also live on the sixth floor of Maria’s. In addition, there is one family that is kind of the “do-it- and fix-it-all” family that lives a few blocks away from Maria’s.

Please keep all of these individuals and their families in your prayers as their jobs are very physically, mentally, and emotionally demanding. Plus, they’re constantly on-call which is very exhausting.

MBHOH’s Neighbors.

Maria’s Big House of Hope is in the heart of a huge city, but its neighbors are a state-run orphanage right across the courtyard, a huge prison to one side, and a mental institution on the other side. There is undoubtedly much hurt, shame, guilt, sickness, brokenness, and confusion in that very small radius of the city.

The white buildings in the above picture is about 1/2 of the entire prison. It was huge and intimidating looking. The prisoners at various times throughout the day/night would chant things that I could not understand. Perhaps that was for the best though, because I’m not sure I could have emotionally handled what they were saying. It was likely chanting about how they are bad people who have done bad things, and so on.

One night during team time we were saying how it is very likely that there are/were some Christians in that prison… maybe even pastors. But we were just a few hundred feet away worshipping without persecution. That’s all the more reason to keep fervently praying that Maria’s Big House of Hope continues to stay in favor with the Chinese government.

The picture above is of the state-run orphanage that holds about 400 children. We did not get a chance to go inside, but I’m not sure I would have been able to keep it together if we had. At night I was able to see inside some of the windows, and that was enough for me.

I never heard or saw anything going on at the mental institution, but my mind did enough imagining.

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If you’re interested in reading more about what I did while at Maria’s, then I encourage you to read the second part of this post: Maria’s Big House of Hope Part 2/2.

Audrey