Greetings from Beautiful Luoyang where the legend of the peonies and the history of the temples is reason enough to visit. Known as the city of temples, Luoyang is one of China's ancient capitol cities. The people of Luoyang are very kind and caring and have made us feel welcome already. The children here are beautiful. Today is Sunday and they are out playing and enjoying their day out of school.

Team 2 has arrived and we are making things happen! Thanks to all the many hard workers of team one who stayed on longer to transition us over smoothly. We are beginning to get our stride set and things are moving along. Our wonderful doctors and nurses are already hard at work with 14 children today. We have seen the miracles at work just in our first day.

One young mother arrived early this morning having come from quite a distance with her own mother and her beautiful little girl with cleft lip and palate. Now this may sound like business as usual, but the mother could not speak and her daughter was blind as well as a cleft child. The grandmother was so pleased that we are able to give her granddaughter the opportunity her mother had to communicate and have a chance for a good future.Every day we have come to the orphanage to find groups of parents with their children standing at the gates waiting to try to talk with our staff. We have tried to see and speak to them all, but how heart-breaking to have to say "we are over our limit of surgeries for the week". We all keep trying to add "Just one more" and so far we have found a way to make that happen. It is an unspoken sadness that within 24 hours we will have to say "no more". None of us want to be the one to draw that line. If it were up to our awesome doctors, we would go on until the last minute. Thursday night will come too quickly I know...