Remembering Evelynn...

On Tuesday afternoon, during the children's nap-time, we held a short memorial for sweet Evelynn, who passed away in the early hours of Sunday morning. She had only been in our care for a month, and in ICU in the hospital for her final week, so we hadn't had too much chance to get to know her, but the loss of a child is always hard.

A slideshow of pictures of Evelynn played as we listened to Grace read out her memorial card in Chinese. The memorial ends with the declaration that "still we choose to hold onto hope" and Karen announced that we have another opportunity to do just that; one of the other children being cared for by the organization that Evelynn came to us from will be arriving at New Day very soon. Another miracle and/or liver transplant to believe and wait and hope for! By beautiful 'coincidence', the flowers that were purchased for this memorial have a name that means in Chinese...'long life'. That is what we are choosing, once-again, to hope for.

There is no greater encouragement to the staff here than to be reminded of why we do what we do. We brought out the beautiful scrapbook that Sarah has been working on, showing old and recent pictures of New Day children that have been adopted. Without the hope that was given to them through the surgery and care that they received here, many of the children in this scrapbook would not be thriving in their families today. The work comes with the risk of pain and heart-ache, but it is so worth it!

We finished up with a group creative activity, which was a wonderfully practical way to remember Evelynn and celebrate her life. Sarah demonstrated how to fold, cut and curl colored paper to make beautiful hyacinth-like flowers.