Shopping in Chengdu

Hi everyone! I just wanted to say thank you so much for all of your prayers and encouragement this morning after I emailed our little prayer request to you! Jing Jing’s teething and had gotten up w/a slight fever and was pretty fussy. After I emailed, she fell asleep in the Mai Tai w/Jim and slept for 2 hours! Poor little sweetie! Our guide, Anita, had told us that typically days 3 & 4 tend to be more rough because the babies begin to realize that they’re not on vacation and start to recognize that things are changing and different. We’ve noticed that first thing in the morning and bedtime are the rough times for Jing Jing so thank you for your prayers over those times for all of us! Tomorrow we’ll be flying to Guangzhou and leave around 5:45pm. It’s a 2 hour flight which means we’ll be getting in right when the girls will both be tired so we’d appreciate your prayers over that as well.
Today was our shopping day in Chengdu so, while Jim stayed w/Jing Jing in the room, Lily & I went w/our group to Jinli Street to shop for cultural souvenirs. We were able to find a few treasures that were all hand-made and specific to this city and province to have for Jasmine as she gets older. It was so much fun to walk down this street which felt like an alley from “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” The street was festively decorated for Chinese New Year with both sides lined with a canopy of red lanterns and all of the quaint shops tucked into little nooks and crannies. I wish you could have been there! There’s so much character and energy to this city that I have to say that, despite my initial intimidation, I’ve really grown to love it here. I will truly miss Chengdu after we leave. The people have been so warm and welcoming towards us that I’ll always treasure having come here. Of course, it helped to have a little blond haired celebrity in our midst! ;-) Lily continued to charm and once again we were mobbed several times with people wanting to take pictures with her and give her hugs. Reality back at home for her is going to suck! ☺ After coming back to the hotel and getting all of our Adoption documents from Anita, we all decided to go to the local bookstore to pick up a couple of baby books in Chinese & English for our kiddos. It was one of the biggest bookstores I’ve ever seen – at least 3 stories tall and filled to the brim w/every kind of topic known to man. We were able to buy a couple of baby books w/English and Chinese as well as a couple of puzzles w/both Chinese and English. They’ll all be great little treasures to have from our trip to Chengdu.

On a quick side note, we did hear back from the grant agency who turned us down last time and they have turned us down again. We have 1 more that we haven’t heard from yet but are continuing to trust God in all things. He will not let us down and we praise and thank Him for that!

We’re now settling down in our room to have dinner and get the girls off to bed so I’ll say goodnight for now. I’ll try and email tomorrow, otherwise I’ll for sure email the day after tomorrow. We love you all and seriously thank God for you! You have all been so amazing and we LOVE that we get to share this journey with you! Praise God for His incredible faithfulness and grace! He has been so good to us and we are continually grateful for Him! God is so good!