While most incoming college freshmen are worried about registering for classes, living arrangements and moving, Erin Ingram was helping orphans in China.

Ingram recently came back from a 10-day trip to an orphanage in Luoyang, China.

“It’s easy to forget about them because they’re halfway around the world…When you see a face for each name and each child, then it becomes real that this is a problem,” Ingram said. “A lot of us have the ability to fix it.”

After filling out an application and waiting for a month, Ingram found out she was one of the 21 students between the ages of 15 and 23, who were chosen to go on the trip with an organization called Show Hope. The students came from around the United States and met for the first time on their flight from Chicago to Beijing.

They were traveling to Maria’s Big House of Hope, an orphanage named after Christian musician Steven Curtis Chapman’s daughter who died in an accident. The orphanage works in conjunction with the Show Hope movement that was also founded by the Chapmans.

The orphanage can hold 150 children and is for children mostly newborn to age 5, some older, with disabilities from being born prematurely to having a cleft palate to Down Syndrome.

“You really see that these are children with a disability, not disabled kids,” Ingram said.

The Chinese government controls which children go to the orphanage and what kind of care they receive.

“They determine who comes to Maria’s and how long they stay there and what treatment they get,” Ingram said. “So the government in China is still in control of those kids being taken care of.”

The team of students cared for the children by bringing them books, toys and medical supplies. They also spent a lot of their time helping teach preschool and playing with them.

They could not feed the children or change their diapers because it could cause them to become attached making it difficult to separate.

The students also did handiwork and any task that needed to be completed around the building. Selling the children’s artwork was a way to raise funds for diapers.

“We helped do hand and foot paintings to raise money for diapers while we were there,” Ingram said. “Anything they asked us to help with, we stepped in and did.”

Ingram spent a lot of her time with a girl who has cerebral palsy. She learned a lot about seeing the child first and the disability second.

“They love and they play the exact same way despite health issues,” Ingram said. “For me that was huge because I went in thinking that I would have to care for them gently and they were fragile, and they’re just kids.”

She said the culture was incredibly loving and open to them as visitors. They were even given a painting in appreciation of the work they did at the orphanage.

“The whole culture, the people, are so loving,” Ingram said. “They love Americans and want to offer you things. They’re really friendly, but the Chinese people don’t realize there are that many orphans.”

They were able to worship God freely as long as they did not invite anyone to join them. The orphanage was located beside a jail and Ingram thought of the possibility of other missionaries being held there. On their last day the group stood on the roof of the orphanage and sang Amazing Grace at the top of their lungs hoping the prisoners could hear them and know someone was there for them.

Ingram had been on two mission trips previously to Honduras. She had just told a friend, two weeks before the opportunity arose, that she had no interest in going to China. Hearing about it from her mom sparked her interest so she decided to look up information and she found out applications were due the next day.

When Ingram applied for the trip she knew it was an orphanage in China, but she didn’t know the children would have disabilities. Coincidentally, she had been planning on majoring in special education, and the trip reaffirmed her decision.

She will be a freshman double majoring in special education and dance at the University of Southern Mississippi in the fall. Her dream is to one day incorporate her two passions.

“I’m hoping to create a curriculum to teach dance to special needs kids,” Ingram said. “It’s a long-term goal.”

The biggest lesson Ingram learned from her time in China was to not have doubts but to keep faith.

“For me, one of the biggest things I took away was praying without doubt and having faith that he can do it,” Ingram said.

She wants to go back, and this time, she wants to stay even longer.