I came to China dragging my feet. In fact, I really had no interest in coming to China at all—except for the growing restlessness I was feeling inside. John and I were living the American Dream—four kids, a minivan in the driveway, sports car in the garage, and a brand-new four-bedroom house. It was everything we'd hoped for. And yet, one day I prayed, “God, if this is all there is to life, then this is boring and it stinks.”

I guess I was looking for a change. But never in my wildest imagination did I think God would send me to China as the solution to my discontent. How could moving somewhere ten thousand miles away, to a place where I don't speak the language or understand anything about the culture, be His best for me?

My husband, John, had always wanted to work with Chinese orphans. He lured me to China by telling me we would only go for an extended visit. On this three-month tour I would home-school the kids and check it out. The deal was, if after three months I didn't feel called to China, I could veto it and he would bring us back to the States where he would resume practicing law.

Initially, we went to China to work with Tim and Pam Baker. They were trying to launch an orphanage for special-needs children under the name Philip Hayden Foundation. Philip Hayden had been one of Tim's closest friends from the time Tim and Pam first moved to China 10 years earlier. Tim worked with Phil at University Language Services where they oversaw an English language program throughout China. Together, they traveled the provinces to visit the schools that offered the language program. Tim and Phil shared a passion for orphan relief work. As they traveled for work, they also made it a point to visit local orphanages to see what they could do to help. On one of their train trips across the countryside, Philip, age 23, suffered a massive heart attack and died instantly. His autopsy revealed that he had the rare heart condition called Marfan's syndrome. Tim wanted to carry on Phil's legacy by starting a foundation named after his friend.

One month into our visit I still felt pretty cold to the whole China experiment. Of course I felt for the orphans, I loved being able to help them, and our life definitely was not boring anymore. But I just didn't have a heart for the Chinese people.

That was before I saw the burned baby.

***

I had asked our team assistant, Ann Lo, to accompany me back to the hospital where she had met up with John, Tim, and Mark the night before. I was the only foreign woman on our team who had a driver's license. Driving in China is no small feat. Many times it feels as if you are on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride—without the safety features. There's a saying I learned right after arriving in China: The Chinese would rather die tragically than live tamely. This thinking is best reflected in their driving. If you die in China, there's a good chance it will be in a car accident. I know that sounds morbid, but the Chinese drive like maniacs. It's as if there are no rules of the road. Horrific car wrecks are a daily site along the highway. Even though I love the freedom of being able to jump in my van and listen to the radio while I drive around town, I live in constant fear of being killed behind the wheel. Our micro-minivan or “mian di” was shaped like a loaf of Wonder Bread and felt like it was made of tin. I asked God for protection as I set out for Ann Lo's house and cautiously made my way through traffic, I tried to imagine what I would encounter when we arrived at the hospital. John warned me that it was pretty bad. My heart hurt just picturing the agony this little boy must be in, and with no one to soothe and comfort him.

A low-rise brick building, the hospital looked fairly westernized on the outside. Inside, however, things were neither modern nor antiseptic. The examining rooms were small and dingy. Ann led the way toward the intensive care unit, which was closed off in an attempt to keep people and germs at bay. I noticed nurses peering through the glass dividing wall, checking to see how the burned baby was doing. After Ann identified herself to the nurse, they let us into his room where he lay alone in an incubator. The room was unnaturally quiet. He lay motionless, eyes closed, covered in white lotion, presumably to cool the burning sensation over his entire body.

Forsaken. That was all I could think. How could someone so helpless be left alone in his pain with no mother to hold him? It broke my heart to see him lying there. This baby was experiencing the loneliest hours any human being could endure. This infant had been abandoned by the people who should have protected him. No one was there to stay with him through the long watches of the night. Just then the baby's eyes flickered. In a flash, his eyes opened and he looked right at me, expectantly, as if to say, “Are you my mother?”

I knew right then that I would never look back at the life I had left behind.

***

You might think it natural that I fell in love with this distressed little baby. Only a person with a heart of stone would be able to look upon his pain and not feel compassion. But what you don't know about me is that I had an irrational fear that everything in life was conspiring to kill me, or worse, my kids. I operate like a character trapped in a Woody Allen movie, neurotically imagining everything is out to get me. One of the biggest reasons I didn't want to come to China in the first place was because I was so afraid we'd all die. This fear was born in me even before Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, better known as SARS, was on the radar, which would have given me a justifiable reason not to go to China. In the United States food safety classes are required before restaurateurs can hang their OPEN sign, and sanitary gloves are worn (and changed) with every patient in a hospital, thank you very much.

But here lay a baby, naked and covered only in white ointment. And all I could think was, Who will stand in the gap for this baby ?

I knelt next to the incubator and examined little Wang Danli, or Daniel, as he had now been named. The poor little guy was trying desperately to suck his thumb, but it had been so badly burned. Every time he tried putting it into his mouth, he cried out in pain. He desperately needed some way to comfort himself. I can't take this any more . If this were my child, I would do anything to save him. In that moment, I knew what I needed to do.

Adapted from Saving Levi by Lisa Misraje Bentley, a Focus on the Family book published by Tyndale House Publishers. Copyright © 2007, Lisa Misraje Bentley. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.