Sleepy Head

This is one of my favorite times of the day. She looks like a little angel lying there asleep, and when she is waking up she is so cute. The first month that she was home she always woke up whimpering or crying. Now she wakes up more peacefully, but oh yeah, after a few minutes the little angel has transformed as the picture on top shows.

Ronnie

And Your God Shall Be My God

Hope is an expert imitator. I walk in the kitchen and sigh, and I hear an echoing sigh right behind me. I put my hands on my hips and say, “ Now what do we need to do next”? I look down and Hope has her hands on her hips just like I do.
We sit down at the bar to eat and she bows her head waiting for me to give thanks. If I don’t start immediately she cuts her eyes up toward me and pats me on the arm. She says amen just before I am finished almost every time.

All of this and more she has learned in just over a six weeks. Of course she doesn’t know the why of any of these things she is just imitating. It makes me aware of how careful I need to be in what I say and how I live. Her understanding of our faith and why we do what we do, pray, go to church, etc. will come later.

Our blog is read by people all over the world. We know that those readers represent many different religious or even non-religious beliefs. We hope that all will continue to read our account of Hope becoming part of our family. Our intent is not to preach, just to share. There may be some who fear that Hope will have religion forced on her, and that she will lose her cultural and spiritual roots. It is true that she will lose touch with the spiritual beliefs that she might have had in China, but we could no more force faith in Christ upon her than we could capture the wind.

That is the beauty of the true Christian message. It is a belief of the spirit and the heart. Our lives will be an example to Hope and she can imitate, but there will come a time when she questions who she is, who we are, and what is true. She will go to church with us, she will hear the singing, the preaching, and it will influence her, but not convince her. Only God’s Spirit can do that. Of course that is our heart’s desire, that she would experience this peace, joy, and hope that we have, but deep down in her heart it will be her choice.

Ruth 1:16….where you go I will go, and where you live I will live, your people shall be my people, and your God my God.

Ronnie

Next Christmas

In the fall of 2006 I bought Becky a CD by Third Day entitled Christmas Offerings. The singer for the group was awaiting a China adoption and wrote a song about it, I Wish You a Merry Christmas. Becky played it continually. When in the fall of 2007 I asked why she wasn't playing the CD, she said it made her too sad. We got our referral in Dec. 2007, so next year will be Hope's first Christmas at home. We know firsthand how cold a Christmas in the orphanage was.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcPBA9-wyZE

Ronnie

Miracle from Misty

The top picture is Hope's first bath, in the sink at the hotel in Hefei. She didn't like it very well and cried aloud and spared not before it was over. The middle picture is after the battle, I mean bath. We tried several different methods in the ensuing weeks but it was always an ordeal to bathe her. Last week Misty took on the challenge in earnest and spent some extended time getting her to play around the bath tub and eventually in it. Sunnie helped out by getting in the tub first and demonstrating how to have fun bathing. After about the third day Hope was having fun in the bath. I couldn't believe my eyes when Misty poured water over her head and Hope smiled and laughed, very proud of herself. We are so thankful for the help of Misty, Carmen, and Bethany in all they do for their beloved little sister. Her neice Sunnie helps out a lot too, but opted to not be in the bath tub photo.

This I Know

Do you remember when I was telling about the trip home from China and Hope’s trip to the ER in San Francisco, when I said that I made a flying trip from the hospital back to the hotel to pack our bags and searched the room hurriedly, afraid that I would leave something behind? Well, sure enough I did, but we didn’t know it until we had been home almost two weeks.

When we got home we were so exhausted and so involved tending to Hope that we were still looking for small items for two weeks. Everything was scattered. There were some little souvenirs that I bought for the grandkids that I had given up on, and one evening Becky found them. There was one item though that we couldn’t locate and as time went on we realized that most likely it was lost.

It is a little stuffed lamb with windup music to the tune of “Jesus Loves Me”. Becky had bought it for the “little China girl” way back about the time of our approval for adoption. We considered putting it in the “care package” but it was a bit too large. We took it to China with us and it was one of the first toys that Hope played with. She loved to stand beside the bed and wind it up and then press her Mimi mascot’s (2008 Olympics) tummy and get it talking. When she was going to sleep we would wind it two or three times and she was usually out.

As we talked about where it might be, I recalled that I had unpacked it for Hope in the hotel in San Francisco about an hour before we took her to the hospital. I could not remember putting it back in the luggage, but thought surely I would have seen it when I searched the hotel room. We were really sad to think that it was lost. I suggested that Becky call the hotel and ask, just on the long shot that it was there and someone had found it and turned it in.

The next day Becky called me at work and said guess what is on its way home from San Francisco? All it took was a phone call and a credit card number to pay for the shipping. It is a small thing, but once more during our trip, we had been pleasantly surprised by the kindness of strangers in the USA and in China.

Ronnie