A Piece of Cake: Bread of Life Bakery Gives Orphans Skills and a Better Outlook

At this point, we’ve blasted you with Maovember happenings and information for weeks. The Beijinger’s founder and CEO has walked 701km of his 900km goal. You may have even unwittingly wandered into and participated in a Maovember event, as they’ve popped up at many of our favorite bars and restaurants throughout the city.

If you haven’t taken part in any of the Maovember events, that’s incredible. But there’s still time, and a few more chances to get involved. If you’re on the fence, perhaps a look at one of our two beneficiaries, the Bread of Life Bakery and The Library Project, will inspire you to get out there and eat, drink, and be merry.

The Bread of Life Bakery was founded by Keith and Cheryl Wyse (pictured above), who, after having two sons, decided to adopt two daughters from China: Ting and Sarah. Hoping to open their home to more Chinese children in need, their attention was drawn to several children stricken with osteogenesis imperfecta (OI) – a condition affecting bone development and commonly referred to as "brittle bone disease" due to its tendency to leave bones weak and prone to fractures.

In 2008, they opened their Agape Family Life House, a foster home for disabled and disadvantaged orphans, to care for children with various disabilities including OI. The home is capable of housing 29 children, placing them in the care of adoptive parents or raising them into adulthood.

But organizations charged with caring for children in need must grapple with the question of what qualifies as a “child,” and what to do for those entering adulthood.

Keith (who sadly passed away in January) and Cheryl turned to their faith for answers, and felt called to start a bakery in their little Agape home kitchen as a means to provide young adults with skills to support themselves in the future.

According to their website:

“Testing different recipes, translating household baking terms, and finding ingredients made the entire journey feel impossible. Many people offered advice on where to go to find simple things like cake pans and baking powder while others suggested various tweaks to the recipes. The help and guidance was much appreciated, but the bakery remained to be a huge undertaking. Months and years went by, and with every “victory” they encountered, small or large, the vision became more and more a reality. Through perseverance, developed ‘guānxì’ and an enticing menu, Keith and Cheryl were able to establish Bread of Life Bakery as a legitimate and highly sought bakery within the expat community.”

Indeed, during the holiday season, the bakery enjoys an uptick in orders for hard-to-find seasonal desserts like brownies and pumpkin and pecan pies for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Most of their business is done through private orders online, for which they deliver the goods into town twice a week.

During this year's peak season, the bakery is being forced to turn down orders because of the limited capacity of their small kitchen and a lack of necessary equipment. Those in the kitchen hope to soon acquire a new mixer and a new bread slicer to make the work go better and faster.

Contributions from Maovember will go into the bakery’s modest kitchen to help the employees better support themselves (and the children in the nearby Agape House) with an increased production capacity, and thus more income. The bakery and its adjacent foster home also hope to purchase a computer with which to teach children in the home invaluable computer skills for their future careers.

At present, the bakery’s income is able to cover nearly half the foster home's expenses – no easy feat when you consider how many of the foster home residents require special, and at times pricey, medical care.

By simply attending any of this month's Maovember events, you can help Bread of Life and the Agape Family Life Home get one step closer to their dream of becoming self-sufficient to continue helping disabled and disadvantaged children improve their lives with education, hard work, and a whole 'lotta love.

This weekend, you can also hang with the Beijing International Ice Hockey team at the Irish Volunteer (Nov 25), or check out the Mystery Wine Party tomorrow (Nov 26) at Q Bar, at which you could score a RMB 1,500 bottle of wine for a mere RMB 100.

Photos: CNN, youcaring, Mike Wester