Lance and Kristen Baker

Recently we received a special gift to update the library at Promise House. The library had outdated books and many old, worn books. We wanted to give the children a library they can learn from and enjoy.

Chau and Kristen spent many afternoons over a period of two months buying all the books. The Promise House library is now the home to encyclopedias, books to learn English, books about science, comic books, picture books, fairy tales, novels… you name it, it’s there.

A few of the categories.

Chau and Kristen put a lot of work into the library.

Going through the old books.

Checking out the new books.

After all the books were purchased, Chau, Kristen, and some of the older girls cleaned out the old books, wiped shelves, and organized the new books by category and with a call number.

The long process of putting call numbers on all the books.

Just a few more books to categorize and the library will be complete. Once it’s complete, we will go over rules about how to take care of books, how to check them out, and how the library is organized. After that, the library is open! In the meantime, we can’t keep the kids out of there, they are so curious and eager to look at all the books!

Tam and Nghia found these masks in an old storage box. Too funny!

This past weekend the Da Nang Street Children’s Program put on a special two-day camping event for 6 orphanages in the Da Nang area and they invited Kristen and I to join.

Each orphanage or “family” had a special tent that they set up and decorated.  These tents were set up around a main stage which was where most of the events and activities took place.  The whole event just had such a fun vibe to it.  Kristen and I felt like camp counselors and all of the children seemed so happy.

During the day they had cooking contests, drawing contests, sang songs and did fun games for all of the children present.  Because of the heat, there was a lot of down time were we would just sit and hang out with the Promise House kids in the tent.

Lai (left) and Minh (right) made a new friend with this girl from another orphanage.

Afternoon swimming in the river.

In the evening, they had a special sort of talent show.  It started off with the lighting of a huge bonfire and we enjoyed an opening show by a Vietnamese illusionist who was really good!  For the following two hours, various groups from the different orphanages performed songs, dances and fashion shows.  The theme of the weekend had to do with protecting the environment.  The kids from Promise House did a fashion show and wore costumes that were made out of materials that should be recycled rather then thrown on the ground.  We were so proud of them, they looked so good!

Lai and Long in their newspaper outfits.

Waving to the crowd.

Girls from the Dai Loc orphanage performing a dance.

Lai from Promise House also sang a song.

I can confidently say that our night at the camp was the worst night’s sleep I have ever had.  The picture below isn’t that great but it shows the general sleeping condition.  The sides of the house were open, we had no mosquito nets, for safety the overhead light was left on all night and we didn’t have anything to sleep on.  Most of the children didn’t seem to mind and fell asleep rather quickly.  Kristen and I on the other hand… we probably slept about 3 hours total.

This is a picture from earlier in the day during nap time.  Those wooden slats don’t really help with getting a solid night’s sleep.

Despite the rough night, Kristen and I were so glad that we were able to share such a special and unique event with the children.   It was fun to have a lot of down time and sit together enjoying the day and we were so proud to see them up on stage performing.

Sorry we haven’t posted in a really long time! Life has kept us busy here.

Our good friends, Bridge and Hilary, visited us for 10 days, and we had so much fun exploring, driving, eating, and living together.

One of the things we did while they visited was host a party for the kids in honor of International Children’s Day, an important holiday here.

After much planning and preparation, we were able to have games, crafts, and prizes for all of the children. We arrived to Promise House around 1:30pm to prepare for the 2pm party, but the children were still sleeping at 2pm, so we had to wait for them to slowly wake up. In the meantime, Lance and Bridge we out to buy Nuoc Mia (sugar cane juice) to give to the kids when they woke up.

The party was a lot of fun, and we got to play a lot of games the children have never played before. The water balloon toss was especially fun, we had 3-4 rounds of it. Two boys, Vu and Long, won two times in a row, so for the third time I added soap to their balloon! They laughed at it, then continued to roll their balloon in dirt to make it easier to grip. Very smart.

Another game was a bean bag toss (well, bean bags filled with rice!). We collected boxes a few weeks before the party. Bridge and Hilary prepared the boxes for the game by cutting holes in the tops for the bags to fall into.

The final game was a drawing contest. We put the kids in pairs, gave them 3 colored pieces of chalk, and asked them to draw a pictures. The winner of the drawing got candy. The pictures were all so beautiful!

We had raffles for the kids, just like we had a Christmas. It was fun for them around Christmas time, and they seemed to really enjoy it again.

We ended the day with a beads project. When we started the project, the beads were in their bowls so nicely and the kids were so diligent. By the end of the time, beads were all over the table and floor! A few of the kids made necklaces for Hilary and Kristen.

It was a beautiful day, we’re so glad that Bridge and Hilary could spend it with us!

(Lance writing)
While Kristen and I primarily work with Promise House orphanage, we do a lot of miscellaneous things in the Orphan Voice office.  One of the things I do is work a lot with media.  This may entail collecting photos from various activities throughout the month to put on the Orphan Voice website or to send to donors to share about our work, updating the website or organizing the photo and video files in the office.

More recently, Orphan Voice has started using video as a way to show more about what we do here in Vietnam.   Orphan Voice has a number of programs: family preservation (food delivery and micro-enterprise), anti-trafficking initiatives, work with special needs children and orphan care.   I recently finished a short video introduction of Orphan Voice’s “Orphan Care” program.  You can see the video below.

(Lance writing)

Tam investigating the new game

Our friend Robin informed us that Twister was available here in Da Nang.  At first, Kristen and I only joked about trying to play Twister at Promise House but then we later realized that it would actually provide for a great English lesson (hand, foot, left, right, colors, etc.)

We tried to keep the game hidden because the children are always so excited and eager to see new things but we needed them to focus on the English lesson first!  Kristen put together some sheets/posters to help illustrate the vocabulary needed to play Twister.  Once the children realized that they needed to know the vocabulary in order to play the game, they were a little more attentive.

Eventually, we rolled out the colorful mat (which was so much smaller than I remember as a child) and with the help of our friend and translator Chau, we kept the children off of it long enough to explain the game.

Listening to the instructions

It took them a bit to get used to the rules.  At first, we forgot to explain that you had to keep your hand on the declared spot until told otherwise.  Each time we called out a hand/foot and color combination, they would just casually put that hand or foot down and probably thought, “What a silly and simple game.”  Once they realized that they had to keep their hand/foot in the same place they smiled and laughed as they realized how the level of difficultly would increase with that new rule.  We played in groups of 4-5 children and soon they were stretched out, tied in knots and falling on top of each other.

Lance and Long playing

Trieu trying not to fall over

So far so good

Here is a short video clip.

It is always so much fun when we can introduce something new to the children at Promise House.  Tony, who founded Orphan Voice, was just telling me a story today about visiting one of the children’s home before they came to Promise House.  In a small one-room house, the teenage brother was taking care of his younger brother while their mother left for weeks at a time for work.  She would come every few weeks, drop off a bag of rice and leave again.  The older brother was struggling to keep them both fed.  Many days, it was just a small fish and some rice to be stretched out for two-three meals.  They were both complaining about always being hungry.  The younger boy had a small piece of broken plastic that he carried around with him as a toy.  Most of the children you see in these pictures have a very similar pre-Promise House story which is why it is so wonderful to see them laugh and smile.