Christina's Gotcha!

After a short 1 hour flight from Taiyuan to Beijing, we were met at the airport by PHF staffers Clay and Jewel Floch. They shuttled us out to Shepherd's Field where we got settled in our rooms at the Inn of Eight Happinesses and met with some of the other staff. They gave us several things, including a portfolio of Christina's schoolwork and a DVD of pictures they've taken of her over the years. After the children's naptime, Christina was brought over to the Inn to meet us. At first, she was shy and wouldn't come to us. She did however, take to Lushi! Eventually, after some talking and teasing, she began to warm up to us and the REAL Christina began to emerge. She is quite the PISTOL! She'll give Juliana and Nathan a run for their money, and she may even rival Jeremy in decibel level. She can be very demanding, several times calling out "Mother!" and is very confident in herself. Her english vocabulary has impressed us so far and she loves talking with Lushi in chinese too. At one point, we could not find them. They had taken off (sans coats) and found their way to the playground!

Little did we know when we invited ourselves a day early to PHF that they had their staff Christmas party scheduled for tonight. They invited us to join them and we had a wonderful time. Several of the children participated by singing carols, and Christina was included in this group. They sang Silent Night, We Wish You a Merry Christmas and Jesus Loves Me (in english and chinese). They were very good. After an excellent meal, we brought them both back over to the Inn and showered them. Soon, it was off to bed. The Lord has blessed us tremendously and we are so thankful. I'm so looking forward to getting them home to meet the rest of their new family!

The "Great Firewall of China" does not allow access to blogspot. I've been using a proxy server to submit these posts, but am not able to post pics. For those of you requesting more pics, so sorry! I will forward a few of the pics we took tonight in an e-mail to Caitlin, and hopefully she will get them loaded onto the blog this morning.

Its been a long day and everyone else is fast asleep. I'm off to join them. I hope you all have as great a Friday as we've just had! Good night.

John