Home of Heavenly Healing

After arriving in Guangzhou, I went to a local church which was for international people who speak Chinese. Afterwards I was asked by one of the church members to come for a ride in a taxi so he could show me the countryside.

We went around the countryside and looked at all the scenery – the mountains and dams. It was along this trip that we came upon a four-storey building, and as soon as I saw it, my heart leapt and I said a prayer. “Dear God, I need to have this house. I need this for your children, in Jesus’ name.” But nothing happened at this time.

We continued to look in all sorts of places for a suitable building, and it was three months later that I moved into a building in Yuan Gang. Yuan Gang is a highly populated settlement with buildings all on top of one another and it had small, narrow roads where cars could hardly go through. I also had a couple of local Chinese people working with me trying to set up this home for babies who needed care. However, there were a number of serious issues with the couple, and I needed to get out of this house in Yuan Gang.

Then I remembered the lovely house I had seen earlier on my countryside trip, so I asked my secretary to come with me and try and find it. We hired a motorbike boy to take the three of us to try to identify which area this house was in, as I couldn’t remember. We just kept riding round and looking. The motorbike boy was getting upset with me because at every corner I would ask him to pull over, and I stood there still, quietly and said, “Lord, where is it?” The boy would speak in Chinese to me and say, “Left or right?” By this time, he was getting so upset with me, as it was taking too long for us to get there, and he was charging a fixed rate!

The last corner came, and I got off and said to the Lord, “Lord, where is this house?” and the Lord said to me, “Behind you.” I turned around and I saw the house standing there!!! We paid our motorbike boy at last, and we went down and stood outside the home looking at it. Beside the road was a lady weeding, and she asked me, “Do you like the house?” I said, “Yes, I do. It’s very nice. Is it empty?” She said “Yes, I own it. Would you like to rent it?” Of course, I said “Yes,” and she told me it would be NZ $250 a month. I agreed, and we moved in three or four days later.

At this home (which became “The Home of Heavenly Healing”) we had a lot of disabled children with special needs who were from the district and the villages around us. They lived on the second floor where the parents would pay us with food, fruit, rice, or give us whatever they could afford. The third floor housed our children with cerebral palsy, those with Down’s Syndrome, and those that were deaf. These children on the second and third floors were boarding with us full time, and the parents would visit.

The fourth floor had 15 orphans – all babies. In China, most of these children are “foundlings” – they would be left at the orphanage gate. The ground floor contained the kitchen, office, storeroom, and dining room.

I was at the Home of Heavenly Healing for 8 years when the government authorities discovered that I had orphans on the premises. This was illegal in China (unless under the umbrella of the government) but I didn’t know this at this time. I felt in my heart that something was not right, and I found a new house around the corner where I put the orphans. Shortly after this, the officials stormed the gates at 7am, demanding to see the orphans. They didn’t find any, of course, and they were pleased about this as they would “lose face” if this transgression had happened in their district.

I had staff operating the halfway house with the orphans around the corner, and I continued the boarding home with the disabled children. The officials returned and demanded that I get a license because the children were sleeping overnight. (The reasoning behind this was that the officials feared that the parents might abandon the children if this was not a licensed situation.) I tried but found the whole paperwork process (and the bribery expected) too difficult, so the parents banded together and approached the government on my behalf.

However, this did not work, and we eventually had to close the home.

I moved north to Beijing with the five small girls who were left – after all the other orphans had been adopted by foreign families.