Source: JobTube, Freya W., Josh B.
From rebellion to mission
Born in 1957 in Wisconsin, Tim Bakers father died of a heart attack when he was 10 years old. After graduating from high school, his mother forced him to enter a business school. However, during that period, the things he knew were how to drink, dance and fight, which led to failing in many subjects. He decided to escape from school and sign up for the army. However, hard training induced his asthma, so that the army kicked him out. When he was 20, he finally met his wife, Pamela, and started his other half of life.
The second turning point in life happened in 1982, when Tim Baker and his wife Pamela listened to a speech about giving up their personal life to help others. So he began to realize that this seemed to be God's mission.
In 1984, Tim Baker quit his job as deputy general manager of a supermarket and returned to school. He met some Chinese visiting scholars there and learned that English Teaching in China was very scarce. So in 1988, he sold his American family property and went to Fushun, Liaoning Province with his wife and three children, to teach English for a year. A year later, he decided to return to the United States to finish his master's degree in education. In 1991, he graduated and returned to China with his family. This time, he was assigned to teach at Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. In the same year, they worked as volunteers in the construction project of Tianjin orphanage and met the disabled orphans abandoned by their parents for the first time.
"I remember when I first walked into this big room, there were about 30 children, mostly lying on the ground, with the windows open, a lot of flies flying around, some of them even lying on their own excrement, all of them were in a special situation: they were disabled children." he recalled.
Instead of running away from the house, the Bakers picked up the children, cleaned them and played with them. "They are not scary, they are beautiful children, like hidden treasures." Said Tim Baker.
Thus the Bakers began to volunteer in the orphanage. In Guiyang Welfare Institute, Tim Baker met a 5-month-old disabled girl. In 1992, his wife Pamela took a slow train for more than 50 hours to Guiyang and took her back to Beijing, and named her Esther, the first child they adopted.
Pamela and Esther
After the adoption of Esther, Tim Baker has been thinking about the other children who stayed with her in the orphanage. In addition, his young teaching assistant Philip Hayden suddenly died in 1994, which made a huge impact on the Bakers. They decided to give up teaching and devote themselves to the cause of saving orphans, and to build a safe haven for children.
Shepherds Field Childrens Village
After the establishment of Philip Hyde foundation in 1995, in order to save money, the whole family left Beijing and went to Langfang, Hebei, but there was no suitable house for their children to live in. In 1999, by chance, Tim Baker borrowed a house from Zhao, a real estate developer, so they started to decorate it and built it up, bit by bit.
After that, the Bakers immediately went to the welfare home and said to the staff there: "we are going to take away any children you don't want to accept or any children you have difficulties in taking care of. We take them away and take care of them at our own expense. You don't have to pay us anything. "
And then, 80 children were brought back to Langfang, which meant the Langfang children's village was successfully established. They asked several aunts for systematic training. These aunts only looked after three or four children. They also ran their own schools, hired teachers and had special nurses to do medical treatment. They hoped that these abandoned children can feel the warmth of home there.
In 2002, the government of Dawang Guzhuang Town, Wuqing District, Tianjin gave a piece of land to Tim Baker for 50 years at a symbolic price of 1 yuan / mu, named "Shepherds Field Childrens Village". More than 95% of those children suffered from different degrees of physical disability.
They were chosen as the facility had a stable medical environment, and because the Baker's would give up on the kids. Due to the medical upkeep, Tim would often raise money to pay for their surgeries.
Tim had many obstacles. Nine-Month's-Old Wang's deep cleft lip and palate issues, two-year-old Feng's congenital scoliosis, six-months-old Gong's neck encephalomyelitis, and more. It was to cure these children's disabilities at home, so they were sent to the United States for treatment.
Never Give Up
Over the past 20 years, they have raised 900 orphans and operated on more than 4000 disabled children (far more than that in 2016). "We will not refuse any of the children we send." Said Tim Baker.
This is Philip, the youngest son adopted by Tim Baker.
Now, here is Philip with his physical disabilities cured.
Tim Baker also launched a campaign to eliminate "rabbit lips" in remote areas of China, organized a medical team, successively went to Shaanxi, Qinghai, Guizhou, Guangxi, Xinjiang and other places to operate on the orphans with cleft lips and palates. Over 1000 "rabbit lips" have been cured due to his campaign.
Tim Baker attaches great importance to his family atmosphere, and meticulously celebrates each child's birthday and interacts closely with them.
From time to time, they would also need to organize dinner activities to promote their own culture of America.
Below is a special little boy, Levi.
About 60% of his skin was burned. Even though he was alive, half of his life was burned away...
After 48 hours of a life and death situation, the little boy finally survived.
Now he is in a big family and has several foreign brothers and sisters who love him.
In the "shepherd's land", every child is special, every life is important - although, in the outside world, they have been abandoned countless times.
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