It All Started With A Dream!

Shortly after I became Executive Director in 1992 I began earnestly seeking God's will for Christian Action. The following summer, I had a very vivid dream where a newborn baby in a hospital in China was rejected by her mother. A man in a white gown told me that they didn’t have any resources to keep the baby and she would probably die if no one wanted her. I ran back to my church in distress and asked a good friend to adopt this baby girl. He and his wife had already adopted two boys from Hong Kong and were truly Christians in action. To my deepest disappointment and anguish, he refused, saying it was “too far and too difficult.” I woke up in floods of tears. My heart was so troubled and restless. I had been committing the direction of CA to God; could this be His answer?

When I saw my friend at church in HK and told him about my dream, his face turned red. He said he and his wife had already considered adopting a baby girl from China, but dropped the idea because it was “too far and too difficult”! Was God telling me to do something about these abandoned babies? Guess what? Nigel Oakes, a UK Board member, who I mentioned in a previous post, and his wife Alice are the above couple. Moved by God, they have supported and prayed for God’s work in Qinghai ever since we started caring for orphans and abandoned babies.

A while later, a church member, Danae Turner, called to ask if CA could help a Chinese Australian woman take a baby girl home. The woman had visited her friend in China who had a sister working in a nearby hospital. A newborn baby girl had been abandoned there, and was not expected to survive without care. The Australian brought the infant to Hong Kong. When I saw this abandoned baby in our office it was like seeing the baby in my dream - except that in this case someone had saved her life! My heart was filled with joy that she had been given a chance to live. I was awed that God had divinely arranged this sequence of events, and I truly believed that He was pointing Christian Action towards playing a role in the lives of vulnerable infants in China.

We sent a researcher, Anne Myrddin-Evans, to China and after five months I joined her and we visited an orphanage in Guangxi. What I learned and witnessed there more than convinced me that the dream was a calling from God. There was an enormous need to help those deprived children. Back in HK, when I stood before my church and asked for prayers, God’s grief for these little ones overwhelmed me; I experienced the intensity of sin and my own helplessness at the magnitude of this problem. I had no important contacts or impressive training; there was no money and I could not read Chinese. Further, I had barely set foot in China, briefly visiting Shenzhen and now Nanning. I could only trust and rely on God to lead us forward.

Many members of the congregation supported my vision of starting this ministry in China. CA's Board Members, led by Rev. John Aldis, also gave me their full support and the blessing to expand. I was grateful to God for the support of my church and for moving the hearts of the Board Members so that I could lead the agency forward in a potentially difficult ministry in China. Just before his retirement, Rev. John Aldis became the chairman of Christian Action UK, continuing his support of this special ministry.

We have followed God’s leading and now Christian Action is co-managing two Child Welfare Homes and a Rehabilitation Centre as joint partners with the Civil Affairs Bureaus in Xining and Huangnan, in Qinghai Province. Over the next three years we will also be helping with the establishment of several new orphanages and rehabilitation facilities across this barren, windswept province. We continue to receive favour and acceptance from the Qinghai government as God blesses our efforts.

We know that we have saved many babies in Xining. Our service has enabled children to play, to learn, and to live their lives as normally and independently as they should. Like Meizi, Jamie, and Yang Yang, many infants without hope have now become part of loving families and have the promise of a brighter and happier future! To God be the glory for all He has done!