When Kirsten and Kallie Mitchell play mommy, they don't talk about labor pains or coming home from the hospital. They discuss Chinese provinces.
The Stafford County sisters, ages 8 and 7, hold their baby dolls and ask each other which orphanage their baby came from.
They've never seen a Chinese orphanage but they will this summer.
That's when the girls, their parents and their toddler sister, Cassie, will travel to China to help orphans they've never met.
The Mitchell family will go with 32 other people to fulfill a dream that began more than four years ago for Lisa Mitchell.
The dental hygienist already had two daughters, whom she conceived after struggling with infertility, when she first thought of adopting from China.
A friend told Lisa about the girls in Chinese orphanages.
"It just plagued me," Lisa said. "So many nights I had cried myself to sleep, because I wanted a daughter, and then I thought about the little girls over there crying because they wanted a mother."
She decided right away to adopt another child.
Her husband didn't make up his mind so quickly.
But two years later, the new parents were in China adopting Cassie.
Typically, parents don't visit orphanages while they're picking up their kids. But Lisa had a rare opportunity to step inside one of the orphanages.
She only saw two rooms, but the view changed Lisa's heart.
She knew she had to help the children she was leaving behind in China.
Back home, she heard about the Philip Hayden Foundation, an organization dedicated to helping Chinese orphans with special needs. They provide children's homes and surgeries for children with medical conditions.
The foundation's Web site says that it encourages people from around the world to visit the children's homes.
Lisa took the foundation's leaders up on their offer. She decided not only to visit the homes but to bring medical supplies, too.
Then the project mushroomed. Before she knew it, Lisa was preparing to lead a group of 37 people to China.
She arranged a dental clinic at the foundation and at a rural orphanage.
While making arrangements to go to the rural orphanage, Lisa learned that many of the children there couldn't get out of bed and play because they needed child-sized wheelchairs.
Read more stories about Stafford
Date published: 6/14/2005
