Another day in Guangzhou

Psalm 127:3-5 - Sons are a heritage from the Lord, children a reward from Him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are son's born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver if full of them.


It amazes me how many Chinese people are surprised that we are adopting boys and they really are confused as to why we would not choose a "perfect" girl. We've told them that these children need a loving home and we don't really care if they have a "disability." Really, after thinking about it, our answer is that we are called, as Christians, to care for orphans and that is why we do it. Plus, we are children of God, and have been adopted into His family, through His Son, Jesus Christ. No matter what we look like or how many bad things we've done, He still accepts us when we come to Him with a repentant heart. God cares for us and loves us. As God's children, we want to do the same thing and show these children, our children, that we love them and care for them and that they are worthy of it. We pray that God will bless us with more and more adopted children to love and care for.


Yesterday was another laid back day. We hung out in the room after breakfast. Our guide called at 10:30am to let us know that our appointment would be at 2:45pm today with the US consulate. Around noon, we decided to go down to the deli shop in the hotel and eat lunch. It was pretty good and cheap except for my ham and cheese sandwich. It was 48 yuan (about $7) while the baked pastrami sandwich and the pig in a blanket that Steve and Sheehan had were both less than a $1 and they were bigger! Weird.

After lunch, we took a walk and ended up shopping. We found a shop that is WAY off the beaten path and we felt bad for them, so we bought most of our souvenirs from them and it turns out they had pretty good prices. We go back today to pick some of them up that had to be made. Then the boys took a nap. After the nap, we walked to the Cow & Bridge Thai restaurant (or something like that). We didn’t like it as much as we thought we would. Many people had raved about it and we’d been asked many times if we’d been yet. It was expensive (for China) and tasted like everything else we’d eaten since we’ve been here…I did have chicken wings in a carved out pineapple…that was pretty cool. Maybe we were expecting it to taste like Tasty Thai in Vernon Hills…actually, I know we were. We love Tasty Thai…which probably should be named Tasty American Thai.

After dinner, we did a little more shopping and then went swimming. We talked to a man in the kiddie pool who, with his wife, adopted a 6.5 year old girl (who was swimming like a fish, but a week before wouldn’t touch the water) who is deaf. They learned sign language and then they arrived and she was deaf in only one ear and totally could hear out of the other ear and speaks Chinese. They have been in China for almost a month. They were in Beijing for 15 days and in Guangzhou for 10. Yikes! We thought our 18 day trip was long. Luckily, he owns his own business, so didn’t really have to take vacation.

After swimming, we went to bed. I slept for about 9 hours (like every other night…I think this might be why my cold has not really taken hold of me). Josiah and Sheehan both woke up in the middle of the night crying and screaming (at separate times) for about 5-10 minutes and were both inconsolable. We figure that Josiah is grieving and this is good b/c he hasn’t done much grieving, but he has woken up crying on three separate occasions over the last two days. We figure that if he grieves he’ll attach better to us b/c his grieving is indicative that he was attached to his foster mom or someone else at the orphanage. We don’t know why Sheehan was crying…maybe a nightmare? I had a really freaky nightmare and actually after Josiah woke up, I went back and had the same dream but the serial killer had a different face the 2nd time around (the first time around, he was Al Pacino). Steve ended up killing the serial killer with an ax because he had a bullet-proof body. Whacked!

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