Here and There

Last week I took Emily to the Russel Creek Park to play. After spending a few minutes on the swing, we walked over to the pond and picnic area. As soon as Emily saw the ducks, she began to leap and bounce, wishing she could jump into the pond with the ducks! A few minutes later, two Chinese moms and three of their kids came over. They were prepared with the bread to feed the ducks. Emily was anxious that the ducks left her to pursue the bread. Two of the little girls were so sweet that they gave Emily two pieces of bread and one blue berry muffin (they smelled so good!) after they saw Emily screaming at the running ducks. Emily's first reaction was to eat the bread and muffin herself. After a few minutes' show and tell, she managed to feed the ducks a few pieces of bread. She had a great time!

The little girl who shared her bread with us

In this picture, I had to block Emily with one arm to prevent her following the ducks into the pond



We also had a couple of playing dates. One with Kyri, Charlie, Dawn, and Austin. The other with Kathy and Mike. Emily did great. She enjoyed eating at someone else's house and looking around at different things. Charlie was so sweet to share her toys with Emily. I was impressed by how many words she could already say. I'm also amazed at how easy Austin was. He slept on Dawn's lap while we were talking and eating (by the way, the wraps that Kyri prepared were so good that I wanted to steal the recipe some day!). Mike grew a lot since I saw him last time. I just wish I could spend more time with these precious babies and their parents.


Jerry and his mom came over Tuesday night and brought us lots of food. His mom also helped me to wash Emily's hair before they left. Dawn made a big container of delicious soup. I have been enjoying it every day. Fang and Fred invited me over for dinner Thursday night. Both Emily and I enjoyed the visit very much. Many family members and friends called to check on us. All of these help and caring thoughts made our week so much easier!


David continues doing great in Beijing. He met so many interesting people every day. (To read more about their happenings, visit http://pcchina2009.blogspot.com/) The one that he talked the most was the girl from a peanut farm in southern China. She failed the college entrance exam (in China, only 1 out of 10 people in average can go to the college) and felt lost in this world. But she didn't want to spend her life on the farm. So she came to Beijing sitting in the back row of the college classrooms, just to learn what a college students can learn, hoping that someday she can pass an English level test and have some luck finding a job. She certainly didn't have money so no one knows where she stayed at night. Her story just made David tear up. David told her about me, that I was from a poor farm in the Northwest part of China; that I had to choose between buying food and buying books every day at school; that I lived in a rental room at the construction site to prepare for my future (and the room was burglarized while I was at work on my first job); that now I have a passion to sponsor the poor village kids in China to go to school because I didn't want them to experience what I experienced as a kid ... I was a lucky one among millions of Chinese village kids. Now I have millions of more things that I never dreamed as a young kid. So when people asked me:" What are your struggles now?" I always answered without any hezitation "Nothing". To others, I may be superficial, insensitive, and private. But that was a true answer for me. Nothing today can be called "struggle" compared to what a village kid experienced 20 years ago. I've been blessed with the most wonderful family and friends, a great job and a loving church. Even without these, I still have an almighty God and an eternal life - think about that! What value does the "struggle" have when you already have the most precious thing that anyone can have in this world "the eternal life"?! This girl that David read with just brought back so much of my early memory, not a sad or bitter memory in any sense, but a memory of advance from nothing, a memory of persistant hope, plain joy, and steady growth. Someday when I had chance to dig out the old photos, I will have a post on that. I'm sure Emily will want to read it in the future. A side note about this girl was that she told David that she doesn't believe God. But a Christian lady reached out to her on the bus one day and she went to the local church with her afterwards. Apparently God is sending people to work in her life. I just pray that no matter what struggle she is having now, she will find the most precious thing that she can have in this world - the ultimate thing that makes her struggle in this world worthless ...

Pumpkin Patch

Saturday was a beautiful day! Emily got up at 7:00am. After breakfast, she began to shuffle things around the house: transferring the DVD case from the living room to the office; moving my shoes from hallway to her bedroom; ... David called when I tried to put the 18 months pumpkin outfit on her. Unfortunately it was too small. I couldn't get her both arms in. She cried. So I had to call David back after putting Emily on her playing mat.

I can't believe David already had lots of things done. As soon as he got off the plane at 2:30pm and checked in the hotel, Jaime and he went to the English Corner to recruit readers. He found out most people were interested in reading during the weekend since they were young professionals. They may have to recruit some College students to read during the week. After Leslie and Johnny arrived, they did some logistic things, set up the internet, had dinner and a prayer meeting. David was exhausted since he didn't sleep much on the plane. Hopefully he will catch up at night!

Hanging up the phone, Emily and I headed out to the pumpkin patch. Since she is still too little and we didn't want to go far, we dropped by the one off Custer and Legacy. Emily had a wonderful time there. She tried to pick up every pumpkin that she deemed suitable, touching this one and pushing that one. She even had fun playing with the straws underneath the pumpkins. Finally she picked a small pumpkin and I picked a big one to take home. Her eyes were still on those pumpkins through the car window when we drove off the pumpkin land. I already know next year she will have more fun doing this. Below are a few pictures we took.

First Day with Emily

Today is the first day Emily and I spent after David left. Yesterday I worried about how Emily would do without daddy and how I could make the temporary transation easier for her. Now I can tell you that she is just the easiest baby that we can have! David and I got up at 4:30am this morning to get ready. After double-checked everything, loaded the three suitcases and one camera bag, David went in to get Emily. He was surprised that Emily opened her eyes right away when he picked her up. She wrapped the blankets tightly around her body so David didn't even have to get one. On the way to the airport, Emily was greeting the stars with delight and watching the street lights all the way. David checked in the luggage and came out to say good-bye again. After he talked to Emily in her car seat, he told me, "Well, she doesn't care!" :-)

I was surprised that Emily kept singing and talking all the way home without falling back to sleep. We had an early-than-usual breakfast and played with her toys after that. She took a nap at 9:00am. It was the golden time for me to work a little. Before David left, he cleaned the whole house, cooked a week's worth of food, did the yard work and grocery shopping so that I didn't have to do any of these! The clean house and the full refrigerator just made me miss him even more! What a wonderful husband God has blessed me with! Emily woke up at 10:45am. We played a little and then had lunch together. She ate all the fruit, vegetable, chicken and yogurt I gave her. Then we walked and played in the backyard. She took another nap at 1:30PM. After she woke up, we took a stroller ride in the neighborhood. Emily enjoyed watching a neighbor's boy practicing soccer with his dad. So when we finished walking, I sat her at the garage door and played the basketball for her in our drive way. She giggled when I hit the goal and she giggled even harder when I missed the goal... Don't you love to have this type of audient all the time? We spent some time walking the stairs in the front yard. Again she laughed hard when I occassionally lost my slippers. I wished I could record those laughters for David. Later in the afternoon she kept wanting to go out. So we spent half time in and half time out. Until 5:30pm, she had bread, vegetable, egg yolk, grapes, and some puffs for dinner and then went to bed at 7:00pm after walking, bath, and some milk.

I have been reluctant to think about these two weeks without David. But Emily made it so much easier for me to get by than I anticipated. David will arrive in Beijing in a few hours. On one hand, my heart longs to be there with him; but on the other hand, I know our day would be so much different and could be more difficult too (especially for Emily). I pray that David will have a great meeting with the Hills and have a good rest afterwards. Thank you, all our family and friends, for praying for and with us!

Lamentations 3:22-23 (New Living Translation) "The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is His faithfulness; His mercies begin afresh each morning."

(Sorry that we don't have pictures these couple of posts! We forgot to download the pictures before David packed the cameras. We'll make up later.)

News not new

News went out when church bulletin announced David's China trip while Emily's and my names were left out - yes, we got news: just two days after we booked the tickets and finalized all the travel arrangement, we found out we are expecting our second baby! After lots of considerations, we decided to keep David's travel plan. Emily and I dropped out of the trip at last minute. It was hard to bail out, not only because all the tickets were non-refundable, and we've planned for the trip for so long; but also because of the disappointment and sadness we and our family and friends felt that we won't be able see each other this time. We've done the training and planned for the activities that we were going to do with the LST readers; We've dreamed to develop brotherly relationships with the local Christians; We've anticipated to give and receive encouragement from our missionary friends ... But God had a different plan for us. Fatigue and indigestion came in right off when we found out the pregnancy. Traveling with a baby and doing LST is just not feasible for me. But we are happy that David is able to go. He will carry all our dreams and anticipations to Beijing! We set up a blog for the China trip: http://pcchina2009.blogspot.com Johnny and Leslie will be David's teammates. Please join us pray for a safe trip and health for them, and receiving hearts for the people they contact with.

It's amazing how similar the two pregnancies are: both pregnancies happened right after we planned for the LST trips for China; We had hard time to book the tickets both times; We had to cancel the non-refundable tickets at last minute both times; We bought new cars at the same pregnancy week (week6); We sold old cars at week 8 both times; Jerry's parents invited us to their house for a feast at week 7 the first pregnancy and they brought us lots of food they cooked at week 7 this time ... Just going back to read the old blogs in April last year made my jaw drop! Our Emily doesn't feel anything different yet. But her gentleness and sweet demeanor toward all her stuffed toys tell us that she will be a very loving big sister. One thing different for me is that I don't think about the new baby as much as I thought about Emily when she was in my tummy. That may be common but I want to give them the same amount of attentions. Someone said that when you have more than one baby, you learn to expand your love rather than divide it. I pray for that expanded love, attention and energy to come!

David is packing up now. He has two big suitcases and one carry-on. The biggest suitcases are full of the things people asked him to take over. We had to take some of them out to put in the second suitcase so that it won't be over-weight (We bought a scale just to weigh the suitcases). He took out some of his clothes to put other people's stuff in. He is leaving early Friday morning here and arrives saturday afternoon in Beijing time. He will be the team's official scribe for the blog. I can't wait to read what he puts on it!

Week in a nutshell

There are not many pictures for this week - I brought the camera with me but it was out of battery. Our week wasn't too eventful. David's reader Hongyu wanted to buy David's car. So they spent Thursday night at Sam's parking lot practicing driving the manual car. Friday night we stopped by Michelle and Tim's clarinet/piano recital for a little while. We loved the music they played. Unfortunately we couldn't stay since Emily's bedtime was approaching. As the result, we missed our community pool party too. Saturday we inspected our car and had the church directory picture taken. Sunday David's reader Joey invited us and Johnny to his apartment for lunch. Joey bought his dining table and chairs the day before in order for us to sit and eat. Emily loved the stairs to Joey's apartment. She giggled all the way down the stairs. Sunday's sermon was full of good tips on personal evangelism. Three persons were baptized during the early service. Paul baptized an old man who was supposed to get married on Sunday afternoon. Sadly his bride-to-be (who had led him to baptism) passed away just three days ago unexpectedly. So the baptism brought lots of tears to many people. This old man came to FriendSpeak Sunday afternoon.

This week is the China's Independance holiday (October 1st). Everyone in China has 10 days off (including the weekend). It's also the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival (the equivalent of Thanksgiving for American). So there were many Chinese celebrations around the Chinese community here. Jerry and his mom came to visit us on Wednesday and brought some food. We also had the Mooncakes that Joey bought us. Yummy!

This is the only photo I got for this week: having lunch at Joey's apartment (We used the self-timer. Wished my chair didn't block Emily from the camera)