Day 6: Love Manor

Molly is feeling better.  The medicine is really helping her. She has been such a trooper. We are so proud of her!  And so thankful for God's provision of a doctor and of medicine.

Today, we went to Love Manor, Jack's orphanage.  Michael, our guide, told him in Chinese that we were going to say goodbye to his friends.  We knew this might be a hard and confusing day for him.  We learned many things about Jack today and there were so many sweet moments.  It is a day that I will be pondering in my heart for a long long time.

 me and my boy when we first got there

 These ladies came up right away calling his name and wanting to hold him.  He seemed happy to see them. :)

 I loved this moment.  We were taken to Jack's classroom.  That is my brave boy walking in to see his friends for the last time. 

They were so happy to see him and started calling his name.

 The teacher said this was one of his favorite friends.  

 He went right to his seat at the table. I felt like my heart was going to explode seeing him in his place. I am so happy we got to see this.

 The whole time I was wondering what he was thinking.

We asked his teacher to write him a note for us to show him when he is older. She did and it is the sweetest note!!  A treasure worth more than anything we could ever buy our son.

We spent about 20 minutes in that room loving on the other kids. I wanted to stay all day and give out hugs.  They all wanted us to hold them and touch them.... and we were so happy to do that!  If I could have brought this whole group of children home, I would have!  My heart!  I'm going to post some pictures of them at the end of this blog post, so please look at these sweet faces when you get there, but for now I will keep going with our day...

 Next we went to his "dormitory."  

 These ladies were his nannies!

 Very thankful these women cared for my boy until I could get there!

He almost fell off the couch he was sitting on and got scared.  He reached for me and let me comfort him even though his nannies were right there. This is a great sign of attachment and I loved snuggling him, reassuring him, and loving on him in that moment.

 Leah and Molly did great!  They felt a little shy in the classroom of children. Mainly I think they were just soaking it in. I pray that this day soaks into their hearts and that God uses it to mold and shape them.  They will be processing it all for a while.

 Daddy & Jack

I also asked the nannies to write him a note and they did.  We sat here at these couches and talked for a while, asking every question we could think of about our son.

And this is the moment my son had to say goodbye to the only people and place he has ever known.

We left there and headed back to our hotel to eat some lunch. After lunch, our calm, sweet, snuggly boy had a complete fit.  A temper tantrum at its worst.  Screaming, kicking, thrashing, hitting.  It was so so so sad.  We think he was grieving.  In some way he understood he had just said goodbye and that is hard.  Finally, Matt was able to calm him down and get him to sleep for a nap.  Praise God that when he got up from his nap, he was back to his sweet self.  We know that we may see more grieving, more fits - and we will love him through it all - patiently pursuing his heart.  We pray God will give us persistence to truly deeply win the heart of this boy for His glory.

Now, some pictures of the Love Manor kiddos!  Love Manor is made for 15,000 orphans. I think that right now there are only 500 though.  We only saw Jack's class of kids so there are hundreds more we didn't see. But I fell head over heels for this group of kids.  They are precious ones!  I will hold their sweet faces in my heart for a long time.