Oct. 16: Saving Babies from the Trash

It was 1972 when Lou Xiaoying, a woman in China who made a living by recycling trash, found her first abandoned baby lying in a pile of junk on the street.  She took the baby girl into her modest home where she and her husband raised her.

Xiaoying told The Daily Mail, “Watching her grow and become stronger gave us such happiness, and I realized I had a real love of caring for children.  I realized if we had enough strength to collect garbage, how could we not recycle something as important as human lives.”

Thousands of parents abandon their children in China either due to extreme poverty or the country’s one-child policy.  As a result, Xiaoying would find more than 30 abandoned babies in the trash over the next 40 years.  She kept four children to raise herself, and found homes with family and friends for the others.

Now 88 and suffering from kidney failure, Xiaoying’s story is finally being widely heard, and she is being declared a hero.  Said one supporter, “She is shaming governments, schools, and people who stand by and do nothing.  She has no money or power, but she saved children from death.”

Just as you did it to one of the least of these…you did it to Me.  (Matthew 25:40)

Open my heart to the suffering of children, Father.