It’s still dark outside. Unbelievably, it’s quiet too. All the honking drivers must still be sleeping. It won’t be long and the streets will be busy with women in heels and cell phones, little old women in Mao jackets with straw brooms sweeping the sidewalks futilely, men chatting and smoking, and children in matching activewear on the back of bikes heading to school. We’ll be in that busyness too in a couple hours—the group of 15 Americans in matching khakis and t-shirts looking a bit confused and following a little Chinese guide without question.

Today we will be picked up by the orphanage-owned van from our hotel and go for the first day to where we will serve for the week. The foot-cover lady will likely run to meet us at the door and rush to pour us cups of hot water with leaves in it. We will watch a promotional video not unlike one a school would make to show incoming families. We’ll take a tour and see all the places they are proud to share. And, then the team will go into the rooms where they will be for the duration of the week filled with the kiddos who will become “their” babies and the ayis who will become their friends.

The team doesn’t know it yet, but it will become one of their favorite places in the world. It will be where they see Him like they never have before, a place where He will show them their own hearts in new ways.

I just heard the first honk of the morning. 5:53am and the day is beginning.

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Kelly has a passion for supporting adoptive families, specifically to encourage parents to be intentional and understand their own hearts more clearly as they seek to care for their hearts of their children. Kelly has a Master’s degree in counseling and has been working with adoptive families since she and her husband Mark founded the The Sparrow Fund. Married to Mark since 1998, they have 3 biological children and 1 daughter who was adopted as a toddler from China in 2010. You can learn more about their adoption story, how they’ve been changed by the experience of adoption, and what life for them looks like on Kelly’s personal blog, My Overthinking.