Thank you, HFC

To my wonderful family at Harvestfield Church- many, many thanks!

Through so many sweet gifts, you have blessed me and our children here at MBHOH. Just to name a few of those gifts...

SLEEPERS- This was a personal favorite and it was so fun to get to personally deliver these to our sweet babies. Here are just a few snapshots...

 

KISSES- Thank you for the hundreds of Hershey Kisses you sent for our ayi's Christmas gifts. After a day of baking (Laura was a trooper) we were able to give each of our 250 ayis a gift bag with homemade cookies and Hershey Kisses.

HATS- Thank you, Dianne Davis, for making some warm hats for my preschool kids. They loved them!

 

 

PARTY SUPPLIES- Thank you, Meg Davis, for sending Christmas goodies to decorate for our Christmas party, as well as the cookies and icing for decorating. The Ring Pops were a really big hit!

 Lastly, and most importantly, thank you church family for your support in sending my sweet friends to me this holiday season. It's still hard to believe that they were here in China with me. What a gift to be able to share my "world" with them; my home, my friends, the food, the culture, the sites, and most importantly these sweet babies that I love so very much.

Planes, trains, and automobiles...

Let's not forget buses and taxis, and the occasional scooter ride!

The past two months have been a whirlwind, to say the least. Busy, crazy, friends and on-the-go filled months. I am currently sitting at the airport in Hong Kong waiting on a flight to Beijing. I am just here for a few hours...long enough to say I've exited China and am good for 90 more days. I almost feel like I have spent more time on planes, trains, buses and other modes of transportation than in my own room. But it has been good. Busy, but good.

In the busyness of the past few months, I have not done a very good job of keeping up with my blog. So, here's a glance at the past few months in photos of going to and fro...enjoy :)

December...

In December, I met a new friend who also works in orphan care in a nearby town. She came for the weekend and we took the bus a few hours one day to visit Shaolin Temple, home to Kung Fu. The views from here were pretty amazing.

Pagodas

December also brough three much-welcomed Christmas guests to China!!

After a few days at MBHOH, Laura and I boarded the overnight train Beijing to meet up with Leanne and Robin

Quite cozy and we lucked out and got our own cabin!

Visiting The Great Wall

These views never get old. Amazing.
Well, I guess technically they are old,
so I guess I should say it doesn't get old to see them :)

What's China without pandas?

And what's Beijing without a trip to Starbucks?
I love this picture because it's some of my sweet friends from home meeting some of my new friends in China

 January...

The big adventure this month was a weekend trip to Harbin, where they host an ice festival each year. We went in time to celebrate the Chinese New Year. Happy Year of the Dragon!

Meet the sleeper bus

Harbin Tiger Reserve

Snow Park

Ice and Snow Festival

February brings two more friends to China. They are en-route right now and will arrive tonight. We will do the Beijing sites tomorrow, Great Wall on Friday, then fly to Luoyang Friday night to welcome them to our home sweet home. So excited! :)

It has been really neat to see how God has provided for me this winter in many ways that I didn't even know I needed. One of the things Mikey told me about before I came (well, maybe it was more like "warned" me about) was that the winters in Luoyang have great potential for feeling very lonely and isolating. Thankfully that has not been the case this winter. I am grateful that He has filled what could potentially have been a very difficult time with visits from friends and time spent with new friends here.

The view from here

It's often cloudy. Every now and then we get a glimpse of sunshine, or even a week of sunshine, but for the most part, it's cloudy.

We have a lounge/living room across from my bedroom on the 6th floor. It has huge windows and on a clear day you can get a great view of downtown and the surrounding areas. It's rare, but it's good. This morning as I walked out of my room, the sun was shining so brightly through those windows that it was reflecting in the hall. It caught my attention enough to go take a peek.

As I looked out the window at the clarity,  I thought about the fact that this is much like my own mind. My "view" here is different than it's ever been before, and it is good, but more often than not, it is still clouded. On certain days, I get glimpses of clarity, but on most days, it's just clouded. It's clouded by worry, anxiety, fear, selfishness, jealousy...the list goes on.

I have been in a clouded "funk" the past few weeks and although glimpses of clarity come, it's not long before I cloud them out again with an unkind thought or word, or worrying about tomorrow, or today for that matter.  As Paul says in Romans, the things you don't want to do, you do, and the things you want to do, you don't; it is sin living in me.

But maybe, just maybe, it is in that cloudiness that we are able to get clarity. If it weren't cloudy, we wouldn't know the clarity. It's in our sin that we see our need to recieve grace. If we didn't see the sin, then we wouldn't see the need for grace.

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Romans 7: 15-25