My two and a half year old has learned a new song. For weeks she has been singing “Hello, hello, Hello, hello, we welcome you today.” She doesn’t know the other lines; she just sings this opening refrain over and over and over. Only now she sings it: “Nihao, nihao, Nihao, nihao, we welcome you today.” Her sisters know Mandarin Chinese words for the welcome part and the other parts too. Strange, exotic words that sound kind of like “zhegu” and “waumen gaoxing ti rujin.”
A few weeks ago a family from church adopted their second daughter from China. They went ahead with this adoption even after finding out they were miraculously pregnant with a son. Their daughter is nine, and until her new father arrived in the country, she had no idea she was being adopted, she spoke no English, and she had lived her entire life in an orphanage.
We learned twenty words of Mandarin, with the help of a local high school teacher, so that we could sing to her in her own language and let her know how welcome she is here. Here in her new home, here in America, here at church with us. We’ve wondered how she will fit in, and how this warm, loving family will stretch and swell to fit everyone who belongs in it now. We’ve prayed and pronounced words utterly foreign to us.
Every time we passed out the sheet music with the transliterated lyrics, I cried. Some Sundays I kept it to a discreet tear or two. Today, when we preached all our practicing, when she stood at the front of the room as fifty pretty-homogeneous Americans, all secure and well-loved, stable and confident kids and their teachers sang “Nihao, nihao” I saw her parents who had come in to check that she was doing okay, and her visiting grandmother who was holding her new little brother, I left the room.
I looked in through the glass, at the slender, shiny-haired girl, in her new pink dress, next to the other visitors in the special visitor spot, and I saw her eyes light up, her smile break then widen. It didn’t really sound much like the Chinese you hear on NPR or in movies. But some of the words must’ve been recognizable, and the simple sincerity of the children singing was as evident as their enjoyment of the loud echo parts and the untranslated ending hurrah.
I sobbed. Part of it is just me, crying at the very idea of Chick-fil-A’s sublime nugget-breading spices, and part of it is — What if every child in the world was this wanted, this welcome?
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aah, this gave me the chills reading this. We too have some new members from another country in our primary. They smile like they are so appreciative of all the new experiences…if only all of us could be happy with where we were at in life.
You gave me chills and made me cry! Oh, I wish I could have been there. And oh, how I wish I could give that to every child. I really would if I could, you know. I really would.
Shannon, I just enjoyed this wonderful experience vicariously! I, too, came down with those chills that sneak up on us when we are so touched. Thanks for sharing Sharing Time with your readers!
That is a great story. I can just imagine what she must have felt like. That is really cool that your primary did that for her.
oh that got me all teary eyed, such a wonderful primary
I’m sobbing too. What a great experience for that little girl. I have a few piano students who were adopted from Russia at about that age. It’s amazing how quickly they have assimilated to American life. And how comfortable they are being loved by a family.