A Day at Home

David woke up with a stiff neck - he pulled the musle around the neck and shoulder. It happened three years ago. Now he couldn't move his head at all. I ran into the computer and searched for the remedy. Many people suggested putting on the ice pack and heating pad alternately. Some people suggested taking a hot shower. One thing to avoid was to try to move the head or the muscle. David lay in bed for two hours, applying the ice pack and heating pad. His mind was on the Bible class he's teaching at UTD campus tonight. He started preparing for the lesson in bed. Several hours later, he managed to get up and take a hot shower. He felt much better. I was glad to see him walking around the house before 10:00am. David jokingly calls Google "Dr. Google" since everytime we had medical or health questions, we always found answers on Google.

Both of us took a day off. I read and rested. David worked on the lesson for tonight. We had dinner at Grandy's and ordered a spicy fish dish from a Chinese restaurant. It didn't feel like a working day at all.

We arrived at the UTD Student Union Galaxy Room by 7:00pm. Only the organizer Renay was there. We helped with the setup. The students showed up gradually. I met a few ladies who volunteer to bring the food. Suddenly I heard my name. It was Peggy! She just came back from Shanghai. I was surprised to see her there. We saw a few people we met last Friday at the New Students Welcome Party. David did a great job. He talked about how to overcome worry and anxiety, which is a topic that lots of students were interested in. Many people came up to thank him for the lesson afterwards. His hard work again was paid off! We also played Pictionary. It was a lot of fun! I wished I took some pictures.

Broken Air Conditioner

Last night, I was hot after having the dinner. I thought it might be the lamb meat. Then I worked in the office room to burn a CD for Gail. It was very hot. Again I thought maybe it was because of the computer ... David came home at 8:30pm. When we hugged, he said:" You are warm. Are you having a fever?" I took out all the thermometers: 99 and 102. But I didn't feel that I had a temperature. Then we realized that our air conditioner stopped working! David checked on the cooling unit and the switches in the attic. We had to endure the heat through the night.

It wasn't so bad with the ceiling fan. Actually it was comfortable in the early morning. I hoped the air conditioner was not completely broken. The energy saving sales just ended this Monday. The technician David used last time was fully booked today. It seemed that when we don't need those coupons, they come in all the time; when we need them, we can't find them any more. Finally, we searched Google and found a company that would come later today to take a look. It has some online coupons too!

When we woke up at 5:30am, David and I both realized that our China team was in Beijing already, soaking in the new environment, settling down in the apartment, having dinner at a local restaurant ... David put on the shirt we bought in China last year to show the support. We pray that they will have a fruitful trip!

Staying and Traveling

It is the day that the majority of our China team leave for China. It is the date that shows up on our tickets too. We would have been in the air across the Pacific ocean if ... We still wish we could be on the plane today. As I was thinking about this, Peggy called. She just came back to school from Shanghai last night. She was so happy to hear the baby news and she affirmed us that we made good decision staying here. She said she was sick for a week after she went home in Shanghai because she's used to American water and food already. I asked about her head injury. She said she is fine now. The only thing she concerns about was the hospital bill. She didn't know how much it will be. I'll pray that the insurance company will take care of that.

David said Bivi said congratulations since she saw the pregnancy announcement in church bulletin last Sunday. We guess it was announced when the church prayed for the China trip because nobody's pregnancy was ever announced in church bulletin before. David told me last week that George went to the hospital to check whether one of the molds was cancerous or not. We prayed that it was not. David got email today from George that it was not!

David went to do Friendspeak with Jerry at 6:00 and Ray at 7:00pm. I planned to do some grocery shopping, burn a CD for Gail, take a walk, and do some reading. I feel much better this month. I thought of the sewing class gift coupon David gave me last Christmas. If I don't use it now, I may never have chance to take the class. But I was disappointed to find out the class that David registered for me was cancelled. I'll have to see whether there is any equivalent classes in July. David also asked me whether there's any place that I wanted to go because we may not have time to go anywhere after August for a long while. I'll think about it ... This is the lamb dish from my hometown. I made it for dinner the first time and it was delicious!

First day after Memorial

Mary asked me to translate some coffee terms for her into Chinese: small, medium, large, non-fat, latte, 2 shorts of espresso, ... I never had coffee back in China. Although I translated for her, I was not sure whether the translation was accurate. But I'm sure Gary and Danita can help her out when she gets there.

Church sent out email that the Stolte's lost their baby at eighth week pregnancy. David called Robert. He said Spencer was a little angry because he prayed twice everyday for the baby. I'm sure God has a better place for him/her. I remembered when Robert called David about the pregnancy, David joked that he hoped our baby was a boy and Robert's was a girl. They would get married and Robert would pay for the wedding ... Our heart went out to them. But the comfort was that they already had three beautiful and healthy kids. They were still blessed.

Hongyu called that he was going to look for a car tomorrow and hopefully to buy one before the end of the week. He asked many questions about how to buy a car and what to look for. David wished he could go to the dealer's with him but he has a two-o'clock meeting tomorrow afternoon. He had to prepare for the meeting.

Our verses for this week are: 2 Timothy 3:16All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Hebrews 11: 1Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
6And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

We picked four verses because we were already familiar with these verses. It was not hard for us to memorize them at all.

Memorial Day

Amy and Kendall made delicious breakfast: Kendall made the blueberry pancakes; Amy made the bacon sausage and scrumbled eggs. David and I had a full stomach before we held Chloe and bidded her goodbye. Kendall's parents and grandma were on the way to their place. We left right before they arrived.

The trip back home was a smooth one. David called Leslie to say goodbye since he's leaving for HongKong tomorrow morning and then meets the other teammates in Beijing on Friday. Then David called Renay to confirm that he is going to teach on UTD campus this Friday. I'm glad that David takes on more and more teachings for the Bible study. He'll need to teach the Sunday class too. We made to Dallas in 3 hours and 10 minutes. We dropped by Mary and Ted's place to drop off a package for them to take to the Jackson's. From the emails we knew that both the Jackson's in Beijing and the LST'ers in Dallas were super busy these days to get ready for the project.

David and I bought two big watermelons before we went to Amy and Nathan's place for the Memorial party. Lori and Billy were there. We had ribs and hambergs for lunch. Then we played the game Challeng/ImaginIff. It was fun. And David won the game! We talked and ate until it was dark outside. David and I had planned to visit Sue afterwards. But it was too late and we both were tired. We headed home and got ready for the work tomorrow - the weekend is too short!

Hands-on Learning and Care Group

We thought we were a little bit late for the Sunday class. But after we got there, the class hadn't started yet. We all sat in the front row. It was a big class. The discussion was about each person's individual growth in Christ. David and I enjoyed the discussion. It was the second time for us to attend Westover COC. We were not so impressed by the preaching as much as by the 6 baptisms after the service! Their worship team was awesome too! I liked their custom of surrounding the newly baptized teenagers with their peers singing "Bind Us Together". It was very touching.

We had lunch at Firebowl. The menu looked like Peiwei. But the dish tasted much better than Peiwei. We all loved our dishes. After we came home, we fed Chloe and took a nap in the afternoon. David and I treasured our opportunity to learn from Amy and Kendall. We tried to get as much hands-on experience as we could: feeding bottles, changing diapers, taking bath, ... Amy had lots of good advice to share.

After the nap, Amy and Kendall took us to their Sunday evening Care Group. David and I already knew several people in that group: the worship leader and his family, Jessica and her sister, Laura Rich's twin sister Jenny. All the people there were very warm and welcoming. We ate, talked, and played the game "Rock Band". That was the game that I always wanted to buy for David since he loved the drumming part. The only thing that's holding me back was I was not sure whether we would have time to play it. The music got louder and louder. I stepped out of that room and chatted with a few people until the party was over. The children's minister and the outreach minister were in the group too. Amy told us it normally had the Bible study content. But tonight was a party because of the memorial weekend. I liked everyone there: energetic, fun-loving, and friendly. No wonder Amy and Kendall liked their church and small groups.

Heading Over Austin

Since David and I weren't able to make it to Austin during the Mother's Day weekend, we postponed it to the Memorial weekend. I liked it because we got to spend more time with Amy, Kendall, and Chloe. We packed, mailed out the check to the Beijing church, had a good breakfast, and we were on our way to Austin! The weather was beautiful and hot. We learned several Children's songs from the CD. David knew many of them already. We made good time to arrive Austin in 3 hours and 15 minutes. We bought some diapers for Chloe after we got there.

It was a joy to see Chloe. She is more and more beautiful each every day. Her big brown eyes scanned everywhere in front of her. Amy said she just learned to use her hands and feet. She is still exploring and processing! We had lunch at a nice Mexican restaurant. Then we headed over to an outlet mall to buy the sleeper for Chloe - she outgrew her outfit already! It was so hot and dry in Austin. We stayed the rest of the day at home: playing with Chloe, talking, and eating.

Late at night, David suddenly remembered that we hadn't told everyone in the Sunday class that we were out of the town tomorrow. Nobody was available for teaching on Sunday. We began to make calls and found out none of our class members was able to make it to the class - it worked out perfect!

UTD Welcome party

David's co-worker John and Mary invited us to UTD's new students welcome party tonight. He told us there would be some food. But since David and I were not able to bring anything, we decided to eat before we went there. We had orange chicken and pork stripes in garlic sauce. They were good!

During the welcome party, we met the leader of the International Christian Fellowship group that was very active on UTD campus. We also met some people from Christ Church in Plano. But we were a little bit disappointed that we didn't talk to many foreign students except a couple of Chinese on our table. One of them came to Friendspeak before for a couple of times. Another one was the guy whom we met at Heidi's graduation, her birthday party, and at John and Mary's house. David and I had printed out some flyers to hand out. We didn't hand out any. I remembered last time when I was invited by UTD Chinese student Association. They let me to talk about Friendspeak in front of the group for 10 minutes and invited me to the BBQ with all the new Chinese students. I really enjoyed that one. Later on, a country music band played the country music. I thought it might be too loud for the baby. So I stepped out of the room. When I was looking at the posters on the wall in the hallway, I heard someone calling me. They were Xuan and her boy friend from Friendspeak. David and I just thought that we hadn't seen them for a while. We chatted and David joined us too.

It was almost 10:00pm when the party finished. Renay, the guy who leads the Bible study on campus, asked David to teach next Friday. David agreed to think about it. John encouraged us to participate more in the campus activites too. We'll have to see ...

What Would Jesus Do

David prayed that God will lead us to adopt a family in China. That was on my mind the first thing after I woke up. God had prepared both of us for it. When we found out that Gary will return to Beijing on Saturday, we sent an email right away asking about the possibility of finding a sponsor candidate for us. We've been examining our financial status recently. David asked "What would Jesus do?" many many times. We ask God to give us wisdom to be a better steward for Him.

LST sent an email thanking us for introducing them to Jet World Travel. They said they booked most of this year's tickets from there since the price was better and it was faster than others. We were glad to hear that. Phil from GardenRidge and Kelsey from LST asked the China team to take some materials to Beijing. The team is leaving next Wednesday morning. They've got to act fast if they want to deliver the materials to Ted and Mary on time.

It was one of the relaxing evenings since David's reader Mike couldn't make it for Friendspeak tonight. After dinner, I continued to read the book "The Voice of A Wanderer" while David continued to read the book "Raising the Kids of True Greatness". I read the part about the sin. It was difficult for many Chinese to accept the concept of sin and sinners. It all started when Adam and Eve deliberately chose Satan (the tree of Knowledge) instead of God (the tree of Life). The result was the death, both spiritual and physical. Since all the people were born after that, we all inheritated that: sin and death. God hated sin; but He loved the sinners so that He gave His only Son to reconcile and offer the life to them. "That if you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." (Romans 10:9)

I fell asleep after the reading. After I woke up, David picked up the Chinese book that I was reading and began to read. I was thrilled that he recognized about ten percent of the Chinese characters! It won't be long for him to read a Chinese book on his own!

Clip of Cody

Fang sent us a video clip of Cody to support the Chinese 3-day National Memorial. Cody was so cute and excited. But I had difficulty figuring it out what he was saying in the video (I knew it must be Chinese). So I didn't reply to Fang until I heard from her that 1/3 of the Chinese friends she sent to only understood the last sentence while the other 2/3 were still trying to figure out. I told her I was the 1/3. She sighed! After she told me what he was saying. It began to make sense. "China, China, I love China; Beijing, Beijing, I love Beijing; China, keep up!" I'm sure David was more motivated to learn PinYin well before diving into too much Chinese (although he is already very good at it).

The security guard at the office sent me to HR to get an expecting mother parking pass. Everybody in HR was so excited to hear the news. A designated sign was set up for me before the lunch hour. I was so glad to enjoy this little previlige at the office.

David read with Jerry and Ray for Friendspeak tonight. It was the first time Ray came back after a long absence. He and Olivia only take half day class during the summer. David said they look refreshed. David was encouraged by the progress Jerry was making. After the reading sessions and picking up the mails from the rental house, it was time for bed again!