Emily Graves spoke with Mike and Deena Van't Hul, Directors of Hidden Treasures

Loaves and Fishes International have a foster home, Hidden Treasures, located just outside Fuzhou, in the small village of Shadi in China. They have two children's homes, guest cottages and four other buildings, where they care for special needs children.

Directors, Mike and Deena Van't Hul, began Hidden Treasures in 2005 for unwanted, special needs children. It was their desire that every child that came would experience the love of a mother and father, in a place they could call "home" and since 2005 they have had over 100 children in their home. To find out more, Emily Graves spoke with them both.

Emily: What is Loaves and Fishes International?

Deena: Loaves and Fishes International is a ministry that we have in China where we have a home for special-needs children. We live in a village in a city outside of Fuzhou in a small village and we care for dying and abused and neglected children that have all been abandoned.

Emily: Originally you guys are from the States, aren't you?

Deena: Yes, we were born and raised in America. Mike is from Minnesota and I'm from Florida.

Emily: So how did you guys end up in China?

Mike: Well it was quite a long journey and it started in January of 2000. We had a profound encounter with the Lord and he really changed our lives completely upside down. From that day on we just started to follow him wherever he led us and very soon after that we started to travel internationally and we visited many countries around the world and we saw the need of orphans. We really prayed into his heart for orphans and he led us to adopt and we adopted from China before we moved here and so that was really our first trip to China was to adopt our daughter in the year 2004. With that adoption, the Lord really confirmed his heart for us in this nation. His call for us really began to narrow as Deena and I really focused on hearing his voice and getting specific direction from him and things really just fell into place that we could move back then to her home country here in China in 2005.

Emily: So what was it that you loved the most about China?

Deena: We loved China because God began showing us his heart for the nation. You know when we began travelling, just doing some short-term missions, we were in different places, in Brazil and in Africa, but we would always just say to God: we want to know what you love and we want to know what you hate and we want to know everything about you: we just want to know you. As we would talk to him like that we felt like he just began to give us eyes for the nation of China and it was something that had never been on our grid before: it wasn't like we had grown up thinking: oh we want to go to China some day and help orphans: it was a brand new thing that when we began to ask God what he was thinking about, he would show us faces and show us children and show us the 10/40 window and we began to fall in love with the country. After the adoption of our daughter, we felt like our family was part-Chinese as well because this daughter who was now ours, it was her heritage as well. So we really felt so amazingly thankful that God would allow us to be a part of his plan here.

Emily: So how did you get from moving out to then starting up this children's home?

Deena: Well, that's a pretty long story - but to make it kind-of quick: when we moved to China we basically heard from the Lord and he said go to China and so we just said yes. It was kind of crazy: we didn't have any support and we didn't have a plan. We just really felt as if God was telling us to do this that he probably means now because he didn't say go in five years, he just said go to China. So we thought we would try and so we packed two suitcases a piece and gave everything else away, sold our home and moved there without a plan. When we got there the only thing that we knew how to do was to be in his presence and so we would just spend time on the floor before the Lord and say, what do you want us to do: open doors. And very quickly we began to have connections with the government orphanage. We were volunteering and it was crazy: we didn't speak any of the language - you know there's very little that you could do even in communicating with the children. The children that we were allowed to be in contact with were older and the staff didn't speak English so we sat there a lot and I braided hair and Mike threw the ball and we just did what we could. Then little by little we began hearing the cries from the baby house and at first we weren't allowed to go inside. I think that there was a lot of fear of what we were going to see and so we were forbidden to go in. But we just said, God, if this is where you want us, we need the keys to the door. And we would go back and even if they wouldn't let us in or they wouldn't let us hold a baby, we would serve them. And so we would bring fruit or we would bring bottles or we would take out the garbage and just try to serve the staff the best that we could. And over time - quite a bit of time - little by little we began to grow in favour and I just remember vividly one day I was in the baby house and I'd never been allowed to hold a baby and one was crying and she was dying and I could tell that she hadn't ever been held and so I asked, can I hold her and one of the staff looked at me and she kind of shrugged her shoulders and she said, "Ok, why not". And so I picked her up and I just felt the presence of God so strongly and immediately I heard his voice - one of the clearest times that I've heard the voice of God - and he said, "I want you to tell her that I heard her cry and that's why I sent you".

Emily: How did it feel to you knowing that at that moment God had so strongly spoken to you?

Deena: Well, the main effect that that voice that I was hearing had was just extraordinary love for the one that I was holding - and I would have laid down my life easily; I would have given everything that I had. I think that the fruit of that voice was that there was a love that had an enabling grace attached to it that not only made me feel like I wanted to do something but it gave me the power to do something.