Online Event Review

Introduction: Beforehand, we had no idea what Ellie and Chunlai would share.

If you read our previous post, you probably know that Ellie Ball is an extraordinary woman who devoted 11 years of her youth to volunteering in China, treating and caring for orphans with disabilities and illnesses. While working in China she met her like-minded partner, Gao Chunlai, and they married and had children. Later she was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor and had to return to the US for brain surgery. She and Chunlai are now taking part in YWAM discipleship and sports ministry training together.

What we didn’t expect was that Ellie and Chunlai would focus, once again, on the stories of the children they cared for in the orphanage – children with cleft lip and palate, hydrocephalus or spina bifida, children born with organs outside their bodies, children needing kidney transplants or with congenital heart disease.

Ellie said that apart from caring for the children, the best part of the work was giving them love and playing with them – it was truly a special kind of happiness.

In mid-2016, Ellie had to return to the United States with her family. Before her brain surgery, Ellie told her husband Chunlai that she had no regrets, because those 11 years had been joyful, happy and richly blessed.

After surgery, with her fine motor skills and depth perception impaired, Ellie went through rehabilitation. A small part of the tumor remains in her brain that the doctors could not remove. Ellie still has to take medication; the family’s living costs plus her medicine come to about US$3,200 a month.

In September 2020, Ellie and Chunlai began YWAM discipleship and sports ministry training together in Pennsylvania.

Ellie said, “It’s not my story, it’s actually God’s story.”

For the rest of us, though, this story also shines with the light of humanity – a light that rises above everything and illuminates everything.

If Ellie and Chunlai’s story moves you and you’d like to help by regularly supporting their living expenses, health insurance and Ellie’s medication while they study, here is how:

1. Mail a check: Ellie Ball, 81 Glenbrook Rd, Leola PA 17540
2. PayPal, Venmo, Zelle: ellienball@gmail.com
3. WeChat transfer: johnellie
4. Alipay: john_gao0684@sina.com

This is not only for Ellie and Chunlai, but for ourselves too. We hope that our own lives, like Ellie’s, can be free of regret – that we do what we can for ourselves, for others and for society.

If you’d like to hear Ellie and Chunlai’s moving story too, please watch the video below.

The views of Ellie and Chunlai are their own and do not represent UAC.