Profile of a Winner

I wanted to introduce you all to the winner of our Mission Trip Giveaway, Anna Cardiel. Anna is a school bus driver in Tehachapi, California. She has been on 3 Visiting Orphans trips to China over the past years. She raised every cent of each trip through fundraising. Except this year she was unable.

This year she was not even able to afford to purchase the Pure Religion t-shirt so her mother purchased it just so she could be entered into the mission trip giveaway drawing!

On Anna's first trip to Chaoyang, China in 2007, she was changed immensely. Anna had never been around special needs children and honestly in her words, "was a little afraid of them". She met this little toddler baby boy named Fu Jain who had microcephalus, which is the condition when a child's head is abnormally smaller than the rest of his body. The nannies at this SWI neglected this baby boy and he was never held and had never been out of his crib. Anna said that she truly felt the love of a mother for this baby boy and took him out of his crib for the first time and outside for the first time. She said her heart broke when she had to come back to the states and leave him and insisted that the nannies take him out of his crib and outside from now on.

She returned the next year to find him WALKING! The nannies had learned by Anna's example and had loved him now. The next year Anna was unable to return to visit with Fu Jain due to the swine flu, although she was determined to go on missions to China and went to Heng Feng, China instead.

This year though, she just did not see how it could be possible that she could return. She felt she had asked too many times for funds and her faith was just lacking. So, her precious mom believed for her and purchased her t-shirt just so she could be entered into the drawing and she WON! In fact, yesterday was Fu Jain's 5 year old birthday!!! The day she won this trip to see him again!!!!

Here is Anna's response to the announcement that she won:
So UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!!! Hi I'm Anna Cardiel The winner of the Visiting
Orphans mission trip contest..YAY!!! I went to Chaoyang China 2007 on
my first mission trip never knowing what condition the orphans would be
in, special needs is not something I though I could handle. Because we
server such an awesome God Christ Jesus my heart became His and I fell
in love with the Children especially a little one, Jain. I could never
afford a trip so I did a fund raiser for that year and the next two
years. I was unable to go in 2010 due to my own finances and that was
such a heartbreak. Then this year Visiting Orphans comes up with this
contest (which NEVER in a million years did I think I would win) and at
the very last minute I entered the contest, which my mom paid for the
t-shirt, and here I sit writing a winners testimony!!!!!!!! THANK YOU
CHRIST JESUS!!!!!!! Oh thank you too Visiting Orphans for your small
part hee hee

Won't you be an Anna to an orphan this Summer?! You can join Anna in Chaoyang in 2011 by applying here!

You can see a photo of Anna here with her beloved Fu Jain in the SWI (social welfare institute, what China calls an orphanage) in Chaoyang.