China Journal 10-9-13 and Random China Pics

 Sweet Graham lying on our bed

 Walking the track

 4 months pregnant

 Silly Kiddos

 International Church

 Graham admiring the hotel

 Ashtyn Loved this "Girl"

 Playing make believe with daddy

5 months pregnant

Well I have officially been here one week. I honestly can’t believe I survived this long. Life is hard. HARD.  Today I had to get a physical for my visa. Crazy experience. Almost words can’t describe. Lots of  lines and people and tests. 

I almost passed out when they said I had to give blood.  If you know me…you KNOW I hate giving blood!!! It almost makes me not want to have a lot of babies…you know, cause you have to give blood a lot…no not really, I still want lots of babies  Anyways, I survived and she was actually pretty gentle. I think it was the tiny needle. Why doesn’t America have those?

Next came peeing in a cup. Now this wouldn’t be too bad, except they are squatty toilets (hole in the ground) and when I say cup I mean, tiny plastic shot glass….Do you have a visual…. Almost impossible.  Seriously impossible…oh and the shot glass had no lid  When done peeing you had to unlock the door while holding your shot glass and try to pull up your pants while straddling a hole in the ground. Then  walk  down the hall and find the number on your cup and match it with a number on  a tray…reach across the tray and drop the shot glass in…with everyone else’s pee  Remember no lid! 

Then came my ultra sound (which I was hoping they would sneak a peak at my baby, but they didn’t) Next was my sight test, which I failed. The lady actually got angry with me. But I seriously cant even begin to describe what it was like…actually I’ll try. You know those pictures that if you stare at a long time you might see something….Yeah that. It was insane. Again I failed. I actually said it was a g…and she said ,”NO NUMBER”..I still don’t know what it was  I am starting to wonder if I am color blind? Was it a color blind test? Mom? 

Then came an EKG and blood pressure test. I was able to opt out of the Xray and Vaccination cause I am pregnant…Thank you Baby Matlock #3. 

All this, with about 150 other people and no social order…. complete chaos. To make everything more stressful, I left my babies with the school front office. They had said this should take about 40 minutes..ha! I left at 9:00am and got back at 2:00pm.  I was sad and stressed. The kids were fine but happy to see me.  The nice part of the day was…. I made a friend. They sent her with me as my translator. I really like her. She is originally from Zheng Zhou but has lived in England for 13 years. She is nice and fun and speaks English. She is not a Christian, so I invited her to church. She asked me if I went to church and I thought this is my opportunity. Pray for Rieka.  

I am tired. I am thankful for things in America. I remember feeling this in Russia, but it is different here, harder. Pray for my kids…Pray for me. I haven’t written anything cause I honestly haven’t had the strength or desire to write. Life is hard.  I decided I better start writing…even though I have no desire..its still a story.

On a happy note China had birthday cake oreos…Um Amazing! And I will leave you on that note…. 

Side note: 
We are leaving for Hong Kong on Thursday (10-23-13) to extend our visas. We will be flying there, so your prayers are welcome. I will blog about that when I get back. Meanwhile here is my first journal entry...with more to come.
Side note: I am reading Jesus Calling by Sarah Young. It is an amazing devotional. I look forward to reading it every morning and actually find myself coming back through out the day to re read and study. Just thought I would share...
(Thank you to Elaine for giving us the book...It was the perfect gift)

The dorms that we live in

Ashtyn playing with her toys...Yeah we are getting creative!

Graham playing..checkout his high heel.

Jeremy gave me these flowers when we got off the plane... 
China does know how to do flowers and they were inexpensive

When God Calls...We Go... Part Two

Part Two:

It is amazing to look back and see God's hand everywhere, even when we felt like...what are we doing? Here is a bit of the backstory...When Jeremy and I came off the mission field in 2010, Jeremy  got a job at a local private high school. Jeremy loved teaching and loved this school. An interesting fact about this school is that they have an exchange program with other countries which ultimately leads to roughly a 40% population of Asian students. Jeremy had a few ESL classes. Interesting, right? After 2 years of teaching, we both realized that unfortunately being a private school teacher wasn't going to pay the bills for our growing family, so Jeremy decided to study business under a friend of ours. Without going to much into detail, this was/is a long process. There were many nights that we wondered what are we doing. Did we do the right thing leaving teaching? The end goal was to work in business in the morning and then work at a church the rest of the day... which we thought was a great plan... and it  is/was a great plan...but it doesn't mean it was God's plan.  Jeremy decided to start looking into different pastoral jobs. We were literally crying out, God we will go wherever you want us to go and do whatever you want us to do. When Jeremy came home that Wednesday afternoon and told me that Josh had called him about this crazy idea, I weirdly had this sense of peace and excitement.  God had orchestrated every detail so that we were in the perfect position. We had no commitments..no job tying us to where we were at and an open heart (well kinda..China is far) How crazy is that..To be able to literally go...when God calls.
The Sunday before the opportunity we were in church worshipping. I sometimes have a hard time singing worship songs because I truly want to mean what I sing. So we stood there and I sang out..

"So I'll stand, with arms high and heart abandoned, 

In awe of the One who gave it all. 

I'll stand my soul Lord to you surrendered all I am is Yours."

It was such a convicting time, that weekend. How could I declare this before God, worshipping him and yet then turn away because it was more comfortable (way more comfortable) here. I truly truly believed those words, "my soul Lord to you surrendered all I am is Yours" and so the plans were in motion. 

Part three coming soon...

When God Calls...We Go.

Part One:
So I am sitting here in front of the computer staring at a blank screen....I have so much to say, yet the words just aren't coming. How do I express God's goodness in our life..How do I do Him justice?
 Within a matter of days (literally days) our life has changed. We are moving to China! I am going to try and make a very long story short..so stay with me. Jeremy's brother Josh is a pastor of a church in California. There is a school that uses the church campus, so Josh was meeting with the owners of the school, for lunch. They mentioned that they still needed a teacher for their international school in China. Josh casually said that his brother would be perfect and that was pretty much that! That night Jeremy met with the owners of the school (it was a wednesday) and that night they offered him a job. We had until Sunday to decide. He would leave the next Tuesday. As you can imagine life was insane that weekend. A lot of prayer, tears, planning. I honestly think I felt every emotion a person can feel. Ultimately we both felt like God was leading us down this path..and so we decided to follow. So we packed up our life... rented out our house (to my parents)...and Jeremy left. I moved into his parents house with the kids...(we are still here).
Second part of the story to come...well let's get serious...and third and fourth and fifth..ha!