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!