Xi'an: Day #4 Church and #5 Orphanage, Massage

Always helpful to recognize some familiar things:
On the sleeper train, we were awake by 5am again (it was taking a few days to adjust to the time change), which was nice because we had a few hours to watch the scenery as it zipped by on the train. Lots of agriculture, orchards, poor housing compounds, fruit stands on the corners, and plenty of people bustling about on bikes or on foot early in the morning. It was humorous to me to hear the wake-up music at 6:45am and it was Whitney Houston's song "Give Me One Moment in Time."
Xi'an didn't have as many tourists, so it was neat to see regular city life among the Chinese. In fact, I wouldn't see another white person (outside of our group) for several more days. I had no idea how we would find my parents among the mass of people exiting the train. S0 we just followed the crowd and sure enough, it wasn't too hard to pick out the only 2 white people waving us down at the train station. We continued to follow the masses to wait for a taxi. We jumped in a couple of taxis and braced ourselves for another "amusement park" ride. There are no seatbelt laws, lots of honking - not in a rude way, but in a "watch out" kind of way- swerving around pedestrians, bikes and other cars, and pedestrians do NOT have the right of way! Taxi rides were fascinating and exciting. Many intersections not only have traffic lights, but a traffic cop standing in the middle:

So after a quick stop at my parents apartment to drop off our luggage and eat some breakfast, we got back in a taxi to go to church. The small Xi'an branch of about 20 people is held in a hotel conference room. The branch president's wife and my dad both spoke about fathers since it was Father's Day. A primary was created for the kids we brought, and the adults went to Sunday School class and we heard the same lesson I would have taught back in my home ward, followed by Relief Society. I love how the church is the same all over the world - even in Communist China! How blessed we were to be able to legally participate in church services even though proselyting to the Chinese is not allowed.

The rest of the day we spent in my parents apartment, and I didn't get any pictures of the day. However, I did get on video of that night we walked to a park and watched the locals dance in rhythm and sing together a very moving and patriotic song with a band. I loved how we could feel the passion in their music. So many people were out mingling in the parks after the sun had set.

On Monday (Day 5) I planned on waking up at 5am as usual, but I finally slept in until 8am and Nicholas slept until 10! That afternoon we took a taxi to what we call "Amanda's Orphanage." Amanda is a friend of my parents from church who takes in abandoned Chinese babies (mostly with medical deformities like cleft palates), arranges for the surgeries and their adoptions throughout the world. Here's her blog: http://www.chinesestarfishcleft.blogspot.com/ Her program survives strictly on donations as the government does not support abandoned babies.

Several of the babies were not shy and loved to be held and played with. Here is Becca and me:

This little girl enjoyed rolling a ball back and forth with Nicholas:

Then a couple kids got really interested in Nicholas' hat and kept taking it off his head and he would tease them and they would giggle and run around:

This picture isn't very clear, but I wanted to show this little 2-month old baby with a cleft palate. They have a great deal of trouble sucking with this deformity, yet need to get bigger and stronger before being able to go into surgery:

My heart goes out to them and to Amanda and her dedication to saving these children!

On our way home, mom, Rachel, and I stopped at this massage parlor for THE BEST massage of my life! As you can see in the reflection, it's a small shop, yet there's 5 tables for massage all at the same time. It's different from an American massage in that you stay fully clothed and they use this thin towel over the area being massaged. It felt wonderful and only cost $5.80!

Even though Ben and his family were with us, I felt relief to get to my parents city and to have them be our tour guides for the next week. My brother, Luke, was also living in my parents apartment while doing an internship for the summer. My dad is very comfortable with the bus system and with how life flows in China. My parents both love teaching the college students and have developed some good friendships with them and with the members of the Church in their branch. It's really hard to express how much I enjoyed mingling with the people in Xi'an yet having the safety net of my parents right there too. I would never have the courage to go on this kind of trip without someone I trusted who knew the area.