Hong Kong Disney was a blast!

Hey everyone! It's 8:25am on Sunday in Hong Kong. I'm going to have to apologize for the short blog. We're minutes away from needing to check out and head out to the airport to catch our flight to Chengdu. Yesterday was a total blast at Disney! I can give you a little teaser and say that we were the Grand Marshalls at Disney yesterday and Lily charmed them all! After we get settled in our new hotel this afternoon, I'll update you on our adventures at Disneyland and what our next day or so will look like. Thanks again for all of your prayers! God has been so incredibly good to us in this process and once again I have to say that we feel blessed in abundance! Miss you all and talk to you very soon! :-)

Last full day in Hong Kong!

Hi everyone! So we're now on Saturday morning, Hong Kong time and it's our last full day here. Tomorrow we fly to Chengdu and then Monday we get our baby girl! Wow! So today, we're ambitiously going to try and take the trains to Disneyland! Say a prayer we take all of the right ones! We're excited to do something fun that Lily will especially enjoy and can't wait to post some more pictures of our exciting adventures tonight when we get back. I also got around to posting the pics that I meant to do last night so enjoy! I'll have the full set on my facebook page so be sure to check that as I've got all of the videos posted there as well.

Miss you all and thanking God for all of you and your prayers!

Tour of Hong Kong

Hi everyone. We have had quite the full day in Hong Kong today! Our tour went from about 8:45-ish to about 2:30 or so! We have been all over Hong Kong and have gotten to see amazing skyscrapers, gorgeous greenery, fishing boats, shopping at Stanley market and a ton of fog. We went to Northpoint which is on the Eastern part of Hong Kong, Victoria's Point (which is the highest part of Hong Kong), Aberdeen (the fishing village) where we did a boat tour and Stanley Market. And then, after dinner, we walked along the promenade to Avenue of the Stars and got to see the laser show that they put on every night from 8 to 8:15. I am pooped! Despite the overcast day and tons of fog, we still could appreciate the beauty of this city and can understand why so many fall in love with Hong Kong. Our miracles of the day have been that we woke up pretty refreshed and so far have not experienced any more jet lag, we have continued to stay healthy and we have rapidly started to feel more comfortable and less intimidated in a new culture! Praise God! Well, I am actually so brain-dead right now that I'm going to hand this over to Jim and he can share some things he found interesting about today. Thanks so much everyone for all of your prayers!

My (Jim) favorite part of the day was learning how important Feng Shui (pronounced Fung Shway) is in the Chinese culture. If I had to define the term, I'd say it means positive energy, or something like that. Anyway, people pay top dollar to buy vehicle license plates with the right numbers, and feng shui influences where people live, and even where they're buried. One large building has a pool on the top. It's not for swimming, but was added for feng shui value. Apparently, the builder sought the advice of a feng shui consultant who said the building looked like a cigarette and would burn up one day. So, the consultant recommended a feng shui facelift, which included the pool that no one swims in. Sounds like part of the Obama spendulus package to me.

I loved getting to the top of Victoria Point and seeing the breathtaking view of pure fog. Now I really know what it's like to have my head in the clouds. Fortunately, Donna got a great picture of the map that showed us what we could have been seeing on a clear day.

While taking a water taxi ride through the Aberdeen area, we noticed several people with their dogs on their boats. Now there's a logistical problem. What do they do when Spot needs to go potty? Just something to think about.

Thank God we didn't have to drive. I can't count the number of times I thought we were going to crash, and I wasn't even driving. In China, driving on the wrong side of the road is an art form. I'm pretty sure the guy driving our tour bus could have navigated the narrow road up to Pike's Peak at 60 mph - no problem.

Even though we've been in Hong Kong less than 48 hours, I'm amazed at how relaxed I feel. Now that we're here, I no longer feel any stress or pressure wondering how God is going to pull the details together. His provision for this journey has been miraculous, so we no longer stress over the financial end. He provided what we needed for this phase in the journey and we know He will provide for the rest of our needs, in His perfect timing.

Well, it's off to bed for us. Tomorrow morning we go to Disneyland and we'll need our rest if we hope to keep up with Lily. Thanks to all who are reading our blog. We appreciate your support and your prayers. God's blessings to each of you.

Good night.

Good morning!

Hi everyone. I'll make this kind of quick as we need to get ready to go on our tour shortly. Our CCAI guide, Matthew, arranged for us to take a 1/2 day tour of Hong Kong today so we'll be taking off shortly to go do that. We managed to stay up until 4pm-ish yesterday and then went to bed and slept mostly on and off until 5:45 this morning. It's Friday morning in Hong Kong and we've just come back from our breakfast buffet. Yummy! I stole...uh took some bread and fruit from our buffet and will be making some peanut butter sandwiches with some peanut butter I brought from home to have for lunch today. Since our tour is about 4-5 hours, I wanted to make sure we were able to bring something to eat. I have to say I am SO GLAD that I brought the snacks for Lily that I did. That's going to be extremely helpful as so far I haven't really found anything familiar (other than bottled water) food-wise. The hotel did have a nice combination of American foods for breakfast so that was nice. We had some questionable chicken sandwiches last night from McDonald's (of all places) but thankfully, God has protected our systems! I'd say that's another miracle - we haven't gotten sick so far! Yea God!

At any rate, we'll post some pictures later tonight of our adventures today. Thank you all for your prayers! They have so made a difference! We're starting to feel a little more comfortable and a little less intimidated by everything so that's good. And, we're all feeling pretty good today so I'm thankful for that as well! Yea God. Well, we'll talk to you all soon!

Good afternoon from Hong Kong

Hi everyone! WE MADE IT!!!! Yea God! Despite a few pretty scary-hang-on-to-Jesus-turbulence moments, we made it safe and sound. Lily did fantastic on the trip so thank you all for your prayers! She really was a trooper and despite how tired she was, the meltdowns were minimal so I'd say that was one of our miracles for the day for sure. I've also got to say that Singapore Air is a first class airline all the way! They gave us hot, wet towels for our faces right after take-off and before landing, yummy food in between, & great snacks. The seats were a little tight but our first 15 hour international flight experience couldn't have gone much better.

We arrived in Hong Kong around 7 am on Thursday - 15 hours a head of Colorado! What a trip to be essentially emailing and calling from the future! :-) At any rate, we were able to hook up w/our CCAI guide, Matthew, who took us right to the hotel and got us checked in early. He's arranged for us to take a 1/2 day bus tour tomorrow of Hong Kong which will be fun. On Saturday, we're going to be really ambitious and take the train(s) to Disneyland. Being here has been quite the culture shock, not so much race-wise but we've felt very intimidated about being in a foreign country where we have to be extremely careful of drinking their water and eating some of the foods. We literally feel like we're putting ourselves in God's hands and literally having to trust Him for His provision.

On the humorous side, we had kind of a funny experience while walking along Victoria Harbour, which is just blocks from our hotel. We had been told by our former social worker that the Chinese people are fascinated w/blond haired little girls and that they'll often just come up and pick them up, hug on them, or whatever. Well, we were walking along Avenue of the Stars which is the Hong Kong equivalent of the Hollywood walk of fame. As we were walking we came up on a large group of Chinese women who were posing for a picture. When they caught sight of Lily, they all came rushing up (like she was a movie star) and started taking pictures of her, and taking turns picking her up to pose one-on-one with her. If we hadn't been prepared for that, we would have been a little freaked out but the ladies were all very sweet and Lily, of course, was in her element! Jim had our video camera at the time, so I couldn't get this on video (this time) but I do have a few pics that I'll be posting of some of these precious women.

At any rate, we're now back in our hotel room, trying to stay awake until we can have a light dinner and go to bed so I'm going to cut this short for now. I'd like to get some of these pictures uploaded before I lose steam. We'll have more adventures to share tomorrow but for now we want to continue to thank you all for your support and prayers! This has been such an incredible journey (in more ways than one) and you have all made such an incredible difference in our lives. Enjoy the pictures and definitely email us! Thanks for the continued prayers for the final provisions and for our health and safety! We appreciate you all more than you know! Talk to you soon.

Good morning from San Francisco!

Hi everyone. Well, the miracles for today so far are we landed safely in San Francisco, they did NOT lose our luggage & the hotel let us check in early! Yea God! We have been hanging out in our hotel since early this morning, eating, swimming and sleeping! Jim has to keep pinching me because I still can't believe that we are ON OUR WAY to get our new daughter!

I tried to upload a mini-video from this morning but am having trouble figuring it ou. I'll keep trying and let you know if I have any success. Thanks to all of you who are praying for us! We have felt your prayers and are especially thankful as this next leg - from San Francisco to Hong Kong at midnight is going to be especially brutal. Please pray that we would all (especially Lily & Jim) be able to get decent sleep on the plane. 15 hours is daunting but even in this, we are trusting God to watch over us and provide His strength. Talk to you soon!

Miracles of the day....

Hi everyone. So today, I asked God to invade my day and do what He wants to do today. I wanted to share with you all what God did today. We've been praying for Jim's co-worker who's adopting 2 little girls from Haiti and today we found out that the 2 girls are now in CO w/their forever family! Praise God for that miracle! Then we had another precious co-worker give Jim $250 towards our adoption. Once again, praise God for His incredible provision! Finally, after posting what I thought was one of my worst postings ever (lack of sleep has hampered my brain and ability to communicate), I heard from several people that they felt encouraged. Yea God! When we are weak, He is strong! I can't wait to see what God does tomorrow! We'll try and post some more once we get to San Francisco but continue to Praise Him for His faithfulness and provision. Thank you all for your prayers and support and we'll talk to you soon!

1 DAY!!!!!

Wow! I can hardly believe that we leave early in the morning! Somebody pinch me! :-) We're pretty much done w/all of our packing. We were up late last night and Saturday night refining our packing. Thank God we had started packing weeks ago! We wouldn't have had any sleep this weekend otherwise.

In addition to getting packed, we had yet another incredible time at church yesterday. We went to church, struggling again with whether or not the rest of the monies needed would come in and wondering how God would provide and were reminded AGAIN of how small our faith is and how big God is. Our Pastor said that "worry is a declaration that we don't trust God." Ouch. It's funny but I don't have a problem believing that God can do miracles for other people, but when it comes to myself, it's a whole other story. He's certainly challenging me on that one this year! We've had miracle after miracle despite all of the heartaches. I believe that this past year for us was all about a deepening in our relationship w/Jesus. Our adoption of Jasmine is exciting for sure but not even as exciting as getting to know Jesus better and deepening our characters. Our journey to Jasmine has turned into a journey to Jesus and I can't wait to see how He continues our story with Him!

One of the many miracles that we've experienced since we have attended this church is how God has been speaking to us. Each week, we've gotten filled up, healed, encouraged, supported and lifted up. Yesterday was no exception and I wanted to share with you some of how God encouraged us (yet again). We had again just an incredible time in worship and I wanted to share a couple of the songs with you. One of them is "Let God Arise" by Chris Tomlin.

"Hear the holy roar of God resound
Watch the waters part before us now
Come and see what He has done for us
Tell the world of His great love

Our God is a God who saves
Our God is a God who saves

Let God arise
Let God arise
Our God reigns now and forever
He reigns now and forever

His enemies will run for sure
The church will stand, she will endure
He holds the keys of life, our Lord
Death has no sting, no final word"

We have seen Him part those waters for us, time and time again in 2009 and now in 2010. He has saved us in so many ways and so for us, this was such a great reminder of all that God has done on our behalf and WILL continue to do. He WILL NOT leave us hanging! Praise God!

"God Be Praised" by Desperation Band was another song that really encouraged us yesterday. My favorite part is "Out of ashes You, lifted us. To the table You came and filled our cups. Every heart and soul, All we are and more, Praise the Lord." In some ways, we're continually reminded of what we came from but how God has restored and filled what was taken away. We feel so incredibly thankful for His faithfulness in our lives in every way.

"Across the earth we see, worshippers believe.
Hear our song,
Praise to our God, praise to our God.

From dawn to dusk we'll be, lifting up our King.
Hear our song,
Praise to our God, praise to our God.

Bringing honor to Your majesty,
There's no other like the King of all Kings.

God be praised,
All the glory to Your awesome name,
All creation rising up to say we know,
Our God reigns.

Our broken lives were changed, when You broke the night with day.
Hear our song,
Praise to our God, praise to our God.

Bringing honor to Your majesty,
There's no other like the King of all Kings.

God be praised,
All the glory to Your awesome name,
All creation rising up to say we know,
Our God reigns.

God be praised,
All the glory to Your awesome name,
Though the earth will shake and battles rage we know,
Our God reigns.

Out of ashes You, lifted us.
To the table You came and filled our cups.
Every heart and soul,
All we are and more,
Praise the Lord.

God be praised,
All the glory to Your awesome name,
All creation rising up to say we know,
Our God reigns."

The other one I wanted to share is "Savior" by Desperation Band. I've shared this before but God has really used these lyrics to really heal our hearts after leaving our old church. He reminded us once again that He is all of these things to us and will continue to be.

"I have seen with my own eyes your faithfulness, oh, God.
I refuse to believe the lies that war against my soul.
You rescued me from all my fears, and loosed the chains of
wasted years.

You're my Savior, restorer, rebuilder, rewarder.
My refuge, redeemer, defender, my healer, Savior

Now my heart is overwhelmed by all sufficient grace.
For I have found my weaknesses become your perfect strength.
You rescued me from all my fears, and loosed the chains of
was - ted years.

You're my Savior, restorer, rebuilder, rewarder.
My refuge, redeemer, defender, my healer, Savior

Behold the One who holds me in His hands.
The God who comes and turns my mourning
into dance.

You're my Savior, restorer, rebuilder, rewarder.
My refuge, redeemer, defender, my healer, Savior"

Wow! How amazing is He, that He, the God of the universe, takes so much time and effort to come alongside of us and encourage us?! How humbling and amazing!

The last thing I wanted to share is that one of the things that our pastor encouraged us to do every day this week was to invite God to invade our lives and to expect miracles. I have to say that I can't wait to see what kinds of miracles God will do this week as we depart for China! Interesting timing, don't you think?! I'll leave you all with this scripture which I think will be our theme for our trip, Philippians 4:19 "And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus." He will meet our financial needs, our emotional needs, our need for sleep and health, our spiritual needs and any other need I can't think of. Amen to that!

Thank you all for your prayers and encouragement! This continues to be an exciting adventure and we love that you are all a part of it with us. Talk to you soon!

Our Itinerary

Hi everyone! It's hard to believe we're only 3 days away from leaving for China! Yea God! I posted a copy of our itinerary below the pics of Jasmine so you all have an idea of what we'll be up to while we're there. Again, we're hoping to post updates almost every day (other than when on the plane) so you can all see what we're up to. We'll be finalizing all of our packing this weekend and then we'll be off early on Tuesday morning! We've had 2 more gifts of $125 come in towards our adoption - you all rock! We are so incredibly thankful for how God is providing in our journey to Jasmine! Between adopting Lily and now Jasmine, we have had the most amazing journeys and wouldn't change a thing with how God has knit our family together. Well, I'm off to do the last loads of laundry before we leave and then clean, clean, clean! Who says I don't know how to have fun?! :-) We love and miss you all and we'll talk to you soon!

New provision...

Hi everyone. Praise God for His great timing and provision! We had $1200 come in yesterday and today for our adoption and I finally slept last night! Only $6300 to go! Thank you all for your prayers on our behalf! We're still praying for the grant agency to come through but we'll see what God does. Either way, we're incredibly thankful and grateful that God loves us and Jasmine enough to provide for us and are trusting Him for the rest. We are truly humbled and blessed. I can't believe we're 5 days away from leaving for China! Our official pick up date of Jasmine is 2/1. 1 week from Monday, I'll be holding our new daughter in my arms and kissing her precious cheeks. It seems so surreal to even say that! I wonder all the time if she's getting lots of love from her foster mom, are they showing her our pictures, etc? How will she react when she sees us? Will she be scared, shy, upset, happy? I can't wait to see Lily's face when she sees Jasmine in person for the first time. How will she react, etc? Amazing! Our God is so good and I can't imagine our lives without Him. To give us two amazing and precious girls - what an incredible gift!

Thank you all again for all of your prayers and encouragement on our behalf! We thank God for all of you as well and may God bless each one of you in a special way for the role you have played in our adoption! We'll continue to keep you posted and talk to you soon!

Continuing to pray for a miracle

Hi all! It's hard to believe that we are 6 days from leaving! Yea God! I wonder when it will all sink in. :-) At any rate, we are continuing to cling to God for His provision for the remainder of our adoption. We found out on Monday that we were turned down for another grant so we've almost exhausted those resources. We have no idea how God is going to do the rest but we continue to choose to trust that God will not leave us high and dry. We're hoping that 1 or both of these last 2 grant agencies will come through and have compassion on our journey but we just don't know. Ultimately, we keep reminding ourselves that the money is God's job, not ours. Please continue to pray for provision for us and for our strength and faith as we are exhausted.

In the meantime, we're continuing to finish our packing, organizing paperwork, getting ready for our travel conference call with our agency, etc. We are continuing to pray for safe travels and health for all of us. Thanks so much for all your prayers and encouragement! Every single one is lifting us up and making a difference!

We continue to lift up the precious people in Haiti and ask for safety and protection from the looters as well as for the provisions to make it in the areas that need it most. We're continuing to pray that the State Dept. will bring more orphans home to their forever families and have celebrated those precious 54 that arrived yesterday! Yea God!

Well, that's the latest and greatest with us. Thanks again for all of your prayers on our behalf!

Encouragement

Ah, God is so good. As we were wrestling through all of this tonight, God laid a passage on Jim's heart that I want to share with you. Isaiah 40:30-31 says "Even youths will become weak and tired, and young men will fall in exhaustion. But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint." Praise God for His encouragement (& perfect timing) and may this encourage you as it has us tonight.

It's in!

Hi everyone! Well, we finally got our in-China travel totals in today....$4200 (not including food and some of the cash fees we need to pay). Ouch. So, as much as we were depending on God before, we're really clinging now! The good news is that we do have the cash to submit this amount to CCAI along w/our orphanage fee of $5100. The scary part is that we're about $7500 short and so God's gotta come through! We are both scared spit-less right now and would really appreciate your prayers for our faith and for God's provision for the $7500 that we need. We are trusting Him with every ounce of our beings for Him to come through in the next 11 days but we are tired and weary right now. It's been a long 2 weeks of not sleeping well and we're also dealing w/some acting out behaviors with Lily. We need some of this money to come in BEFORE we leave, as it's needed for some fees that we have to pay when we get to China. We need God to do a miracle and we are clinging to Him to do that. Please pray for us and pray for these remaining funds to come in in the next week! Go, God, go! I'll share more later but thanks so much for your prayers and encouragement. We appreciate you all and thank God for you.

Prayer for Haiti!

Hi everyone! Join us in praying for Haiti! What a horrible disaster to hit any country, let alone one so poverty stricken! We are donating to the Red Cross for disaster relief for Haiti and encourage all of you to give generously to the charity of your choice as well. It's times like this where we need to be the hands and feet of Jesus...I just wish we could give more!

No new updates to report on our adoption. We're still awaiting our in-China travel and hotel totals to come in. Apparently CCAI is working to try and join another family to our little family group (which will help bring down our in-China costs) so we're having to wait while they do that. We're praying that we have enough cash to cover those expenses and are trusting and clinging to God to bring in the final amounts that we need. We're hoping to have everything in place before we leave be we also recognize that God may have a different plan. Thank you all for your incredible support, love and prayers on our behalf! We are so humbled and thankful for all of you - you have each made a huge difference in our lives and we'll be forever grateful!

In the meantime, we wait and countdown! Only 13 more days until our departure! Wow, I can't believe it's almost here! Sleep has been getting more and more difficult...perhaps God's way of preparing me? I am continually trying to keep my focus on God. On Sunday, our pastor shared that "you worship what you focus on." Ouch! How true that is! So, we're both desperately trying to focus on God and not on the how's and why's and what's. I want my worship to go to Him alone and not what He can do for me.

Well, thank you all again and I'll hopefully have some more updates in the next couple of days. Thank you all for your prayers! We need them! We love you and we'll talk to you soon!

Happy Birthday Jasmine!

Hi everyone! We just wanted to wish our precious girl a Happy 1st Birthday today! We wish we were there to celebrate with you but we'll make up for lost time when we see you. :-)

We hope the new year continues to find you all doing well. We're kind of in wait mode right now. Our agency has had groups leave for China almost every day this week so we're hoping that, with most of those groups on their way, we'll be able to hear back on our in-China reservations and expenses. We have our to-China flights and hotels booked so we're set there. We have almost everything we need for our trip and have started to pack so we're doing good there. We're also continuing to wait on all 3 grant agencies to see if any will come alongside of us as we still have $5k (approx.) left to raise. We may not hear back from any until we leave so it will, once again, be an interesting and exciting faith step!

One other thing that we've put in motion is that we will be dedicating Jasmine on March 7th at the 9am service at our church. Jeff, the pastor that has been a huge source of encouragement and wisdom for us w/our old church, has agreed to pray over us and Jasmine at that service. They do baby dedications on the first Sunday of every month and sometimes will have multiple families dedicating babies at once. We can't wait to finally be able to physically lift our daughter to God before the whole church and dedicate ourselves to raising her to love Jesus! What a privilege we've been given! :-) If you're in town, come and join us! Otherwise, we'll try and post some pics and video of that time so you all can enjoy with us! :-)

In other parts of our lives, our church has had 10 prayer meetings this week - 6:30 am & pm to usher in the new year. They've asked us to try and attend 5 but we can only go to 3 (tonight being the 3rd). It has been the MOST incredible prayer & worship times I've EVER experienced! We've prayed for the church, the city, the nation, the sick, etc. It's been so incredibly powerful and I can't wait to see what God does out of all of this. We've already seen God do some powerful miracles in our lives in 2009 and can't wait to see what He does in 2010!

Lily has had a great week back to preschool. We were able to get her a spot for next year as well so we're really excited about that. This staff has been incredible and we've really seen Lily grow emotionally by leaps and bounds, especially in this last month or two. Her teachers tell us she's very smart (but, of course!) and by attending preschool for 1 more year, emotionally she'll be ready for kindergarten by the following year. She misses the cut-off for kindergarten next year by only 15 days so maybe it's a blessing in disguise. She's also been getting excited to go to China and get her sister. It's so precious to hear her talk about the things she wants to do or show her sister! God is so good!

Well, that's the latest and greatest with us. We continue to thank God and pray for all of you and can't wait to share our precious girl with you all! Talk to you soon!

Happy New Year!!!!

Happy New Year everyone! We had a great time with some wonderful friends for New Year's Eve. We continue to see God's provision as a co-worker of Jim's annonymously left $100 at his desk on Thursday and then another precious friend gave us another $100 that night. We are so humbled and amazed at how God has provided and continue to thank Him for all of you! Additionally, He's provided (from 2 different people) a ride to the airport when we depart on 1/26 and a ride home when we get back! We are thankful for every detail He has put together!

It's hard to believe in 24 days, we'll be leaving for China! We can't wait to hold our precious little girl in our arms and eventually see that precious face smile! We are continuing to trust God for the rest of the monies needed and for all of the little details that need to come together between now and when we leave. We also can't wait to see what God has in store for us this year and pray that you and your families' are blessed beyond imagination! We love you!