Hello,

Well, this is it folks.  The Gauvains are all packed up.  We are saying good bye to old friends and 11 years of China.  Our plane leaves tomorrow, and we’ll be on our way to a new adventure.  We are so humbled when we look at what we leave behind, and the amazing team that will be managing the day to day operations.   As I said before, we are not leaving Bethel.  I remain the CEO of the Foundation and Delphine and I will come back regularly to check on things in China.   No doubt it will be a new challenge for us to learn how to manage operations in two countries and long distance management, but ain’t that what life is about? growing, learning, changing.  It’s about the journey, not the destination.  We are excited by this journey and look forward to all the surprises and opportunity ahead of us.

The latest addition to the team is Judy Liu who will start on september 1st.  Judy has a Phd in Orientation and Mobility and Specialized education from the US, but she is from Taiwan.  Which means she is fluent in English and Mandarine! She has loads of experience and is a beautiful addition to what a few years ago was Delphine’s dream, to have a full diversified and qualified education team to care for all our Children. 

Here is a picture of the BBQ staff and the Doudian managers taken last week:

We went to Doudian on Thursday to have a big farewell party with everybody.  As usual, Delphine and I brought a little bit of chaos in this well organized and routine based world as we ended the day with a general water fight that spread to every department of the village.  We literally carried Ning (the director) out of the meeting room into the swimming pool.  Delphine and I just love to go crazy on them!

Delphine and Guillaume doing what they do best: teasing each other
Matthew splashing a scared volunteer.  This is usually what we do with volunteer who are not performing well... so beware!

Renovations at “Lighthouse “ in Changping have begun.  We are looking forward to the Grand opening!

Our kids in the Beijing City Life project continue to train for their mini-marathon, and I hear they have made so much progress, we are very proud of them.  We want to thank all the volunteers who take time to train with them.

We are planning to make these Tshirts:

Bethel is proud to announce our partnership with Global Giving( http://www.globalgiving.org). Global Giving is an online fundraising platform that will allow us to easily raise awareness and broaden our horizon of support. Our new foster care project for multi-disable children has been approved and will go 'live' at 0:00 AM on this September 1st. So see our project page click here:  http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/fostercare-for-blind-orphans-china/. A spot on Global Giving is a privilege and not a right. In order to have a spot on Global Giving Bethel has to face what is called "The Open Challenge".

We must raise $4,000 from at least 50 unique donors between September 1 - September 30, 2012 in order to secure a permanent spot on Global Giving. Once that goal has been achieved Bethel will receive long-term membership and we will be able to post projects and receive funds for years to come. You can help us reach that $4.000 goal. If you know someone that has way to much money or a heart that is spilling over with charity...tell them about our Challenge and get them to hit that 'donate' button. Alternative If you are currently sponsoring a Bethel child, you can also consider diverting you September pledge through Global Giving.

The “AWWWWHHH” Picture of the week...

Bethel has some new sponsorship guidelines and we are updating our sponsorship program. Sponsorship is an opportunity for friends of Bethel to give towards the daily living costs of each child in the 'Love is Blind' foster care program. We like to connect sponsors with our children, and give them updates about how their Bethel child is doing. Our older children love to hear from their sponsors!
Six new children have arrived at Bethel recently. Even in a few weeks, they are getting used to life in Bethel. To sponsor any of our new arrivals, please email sponsorship@bethelchina.org and we will give you some more information.

Our school children don't have classes for the summer so they have been doing some fun activities. They had a summer camp one week, and last week they went on a field trip to Beijing city. They went to IKEA for lunch and then went to a big indoor play area and made all their ayis and teachers climb in the ball pond and go on the slides. The children made a lot of friends and one lady who saw them gave them some money to buy them desserts. What a treat!

New kids on the block

Chloe (from UK) who is now helping Matthew with development, fundraising, PR, etc... has been updating our Facebook page with a lot of really cool pictures lately: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bethel-China-Foundation/29802723052

Ok folks, you’ll hear from us sooner or later!

Have a great week,
Guillaume & Delphine