Hosting Tong

We applied for the hosting program in September 2014.  The application process was pretty simple it included a background check, home safety check and answering a series of questions.  Once you are approved you wait for the big day when the children are available to choose from.  On the selection day you review 50 to 60 children of ages between 6 to 12 years of age with varying medical needs.  Some children have no medical needs.  You get a brief description of the child along with a photo.  If you see a child you are interested in you can call and get more information.

We were looking for a boy who was 6 or 7 years old.  Several boys fit this category.  One of kids drew us to him.  We called GWCA and received additional information and made our decision.  We are going to host Zhao Tong a 7 year old from the Dongguan Orphanage in Guangdong Province in southern China in December 2014 and January 2015.

We had not checked out of our hotel room, as our flight to Omaha was five hours away so we headed back to our hotel room with Tong in tow.  When we arrived at the hotel, the Tong disabilities issues started to unveil themselves.  First off, Tong was wearing a winter coat that was zipped up to his neck.  Under the coat he had on two sweaters, a long sleeve t-shirt and two short sleeve t shirts.  As we peeled off the layers and we got closer to getting down to one layer we found that he was soaking wet with sweat.  He also had on insulated jeans, long underwear and regular underwear.  We quickly realized Tongs difficulty moving was directly related to the suitcase worth of clothes he was wearing. We told the orphange that it was going to be cold and snowy in Omaha, I guess they believed us.

We put some dry clothes on him and put him in bed for a two hour nap before we headed back to Omaha.  We woke Tong up and headed to the airplane, we even caught him skipping along.  It was obvious the clothes were the issue and we let out a huge sigh of relief.

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Tong quickly learned some key words in English, “NO” was very easy for him and he used it frequently.  He also jumped on the diet coke bandwagon with “cola”.  He had “cookie” down in less than a day and he loved to add his finality to our dinner prayer with the loudest “Amen” we have ever heard.   We think he might have translated this to mean “let’s eat”.   He quickly taught us his favorite phrase “wan wanju” translated “play with toys”.  One of our biggest surprises came when we gave him a piece of paper and a pencil.  He promptly returned the paper with the English letters A to Z written in proper sequence 15 times.  We learned he has an infatuation with the English alphabet, his favorite letter is “L”.  We found a DVD about the alphabet and when the DVD came to the letter “L” he would get all excited.  We had an electronic game that was shaped like an apple that has all 26 letters as keys.  While our other kids played on their iPads he had his own apple type electronic game.

One of the first days in Omaha we gave him a coloring book and some colors.  He colored the page then wrote “Conrad” at the top of the page.   This became common place every time he did something with a pencil, colors or markers he wrote “Conrad” on each page.  In fact one day he wrote “Conrad” 25 to 30 times on a piece of paper then repeated this on four more sheets of paper.  What was he trying to tell us?  At first we were a little concerned that Conrad was some subtle message he was trying to send us like “redrum” from the little boy in “The Shining” .  We tried writing it backwards but it didn’t make sense ”darnoc”.  After some additional investigation we found a Christmas card in his backpack that was for our family signed Conrad.  We then talked to his chaperone and learned that in some orphanages they give the Children an English names to practice when they are writing in English, I guess he was just showing off.

The hosted children are not told that they are coming over to America to be adopted.  They are told they are coming to the US for a vacation and to learn English. We decided we wanted to make sure Tong had the full experience while he was here.  We set out on a plan to do as many Omaha fun things as we could fit in.

We went to the Omaha Zoo where Tong became infatuated with the penguins.  He did not want to leave their exhibit, he could have stood there all day watching them.   We think he enjoyed the rest of the animals but nowhere near his love for the penguins.

We took him swimming at Lifetime Fitness where they have a zero depth pool.  Jeff carried him out to the deeper water and Tong immediately put the death grip on Jeff and wanted nothing to do with being in the water if he could not touch with his feet.  After about 30 minutes sitting in a chair he finally got enough courage to go back in the zero depth section.  This is something we will have to work on with him to fit into this water loving family.

We took him ice skating out at Mahoney State Park which was ok except for the fact he wanted nothing to do with wearing ice skates or being on the ice.  Luckily there is huge indoor playground which he loved and spent hours climbing, sliding etc.

We went to Okoboji /Minnesota for the Christmas holidays.  We stayed at our condo in Okoboji and went to Big Twin Lake (Trimont MN – Janell’s family) and Amber Lake (Fairmont MN –  Jeff’s Family)  When we picked Tong up in Chicago we had already decorated our Christmas trees in Omaha so we put up and decorated a Christmas tree in Okoboji with Tong. He had his own special way of decorating which included putting all the ornaments on one branch.

While we were at Big Twin we took out the ATV’s and gave him a ride which he loved.  We had a light snowfall one day and he liked catching snowflakes.  He is not a big fan of the cold though and quickly learned that word “COLDDDDDDDDDDDDD.”

We made Christmas cutout cookies with him which he loved both making and eating.  We also played a lot of card and board games with our whole family.  We would help him out on some occasions and a lot of time he played just fine on his own.  We got him to ride a bike with training wheels and he loved to swing on our swing set.  He also loved playing the piano.  He would press the keys very gently and smile

Our whole family had a great time with him.  Justine got to spend a long week with him and Jenna was at home almost the entire time.

Things did not start off as well as we would have hoped.  There was little interaction between Tong and our youngest two kids especially Jayden.  As we approached the third week we started to wonder if this was going to work.  Tong was having a great time and we had a great time with him but the relationship between Jamie, Jayden and Tong was not as we had hoped.

On that weekend we went to the Omaha Children’s Museum and things just started coming together.  We saw our two younger kids interacting with Tong.  We then went to the Spaghetti Factory for lunch.  Going out to eat with our family can be a disaster, but not this time.  Tong did great, Jayden was helpful we started to see how Tong fit into our family.

When we got home that afternoon Janell received a note from a friend in the mail.  The note included the following bible verse,  Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world James 1:27.

Well, our decision was made.

As the next week drew to a close we got a little sadder every day, we knew we had to send Tong back to his orphanage in China.  The day before Tong was supposed to fly with Janell to Chicago to meet the rest of the hosting group for the return trip, his chaperone called.  He told Tong that he was going back to the orphanage.  Tong gave the phone to us went upstairs packed his backpack and came down ready to go.

We really didn’t know what to think.  Tong didn’t really have any emotion as we said goodbye to him as he and Janell headed to the airport.   Did he have any feelings about us?   They flew to Chicago and met the rest of the Hosting kids that were headed back to China.  Janell waited with the group for about an hour and then it was time for her to catch her flight back to Omaha.  She went to Tong gave him a hug, said good-bye and started to walk away.  He suddenly realized what was happening, he grabbed her and started to cry and yelled “No Mama”, and then she started to cry.  One of the volunteers with the group helped pry Janell loose from Tong’s grasp.  Janell reluctantly headed to her gate, crying, hearing Tong’s wailing as she walked away.

Ok God, if we weren’t sure about our decision before, we were now.