Getting Back to Normal

Joel has been back from the hospital for about a week now.  His surgery was a success.  Now I am just trying to make him mind.  :-) 

We are into full swing of Spring Festival.  The kids have two weeks off of school.  We have one week together here and then Joel is taking the two oldest kids to Thailand to see some friends at a homeschool-get-together.  I am sure that they will have a lot of fun.

These past couple weeks and for a couple more we are painting our English Training Center.  The people that were here before us did a great job teaching but never did much decorating.  I had this grand idea of making the waiting area (a large room) into an airport waiting area and then making each classroom a different country.  I am excited about the progress so far, but we still have a lot to do. 

BEFORE

AFTER

So far we have painted the waiting area but have not hung up any of the additional decorations.  And we have not done much of anything to the classrooms.  We are also decorating the teacher lounge (no longer a teacher lounge) into a family-themed room where we will hold all of our marriage/family/parenting meetings.  We have finished painting that room as well, but we haven't done anything else.  (Thanks, Dad, for having patience to teach me how to paint when I was younger.)

Right now we are getting ready to go and do some more work there.  We are hoping to finish at least the largest classroom before the kids come back from Spring Festival.  Then the other classrooms can be done during the weekdays after the holiday--maybe finishing one classroom a week until we get all done.  

Here are some random picture from the last week.

A Cut in a Foreign Land

Do you remember how I said that I think sometimes God gives us little experiences that prepare us for even bigger ones?  And do you remember my story of Isaac passing out?  Well....

Last Tuesday we were preparing to go to our training center to do some painting.  We first needed to go eat lunch at the homeschool apartment and then we had everything packed to go painting.  When we got to the apartment I started scooping out rice in everyone's bowls when I heard the "cry."  You know...the PAINFUL cry.  It wasn't the whiny cry or the scraped my knee cry.  Did I mention that less than a split second before that I heard glass shatter?

Stephen had picked up a small jar at the homeschool apartment (which no one knew), and he started walking when he slipped and fell.  The glass shattered in his hands when he hit the ground...and his face also hit on top of the glass.  He cut his head and both hands.  When I came around the corner of the kitchen all I saw was blood streaming down his face...already as far down as his mouth.  This was no little scrape!  We applied pressure but the blood was still coming.  After a while we finally got it to stop--in those split seconds you wonder if it will or not, but it did.  Praise the Lord!

When things like this happen in a foreign land...it is very stressful!  First of all, we don't have a car.  Second of all, we don't exactly know where to go.  Third...even though we speak Chinese...when you are stressed out it is hard to get your thoughts together even in English.

Thankfully we have already met a few doctors so we were able to call and ask them what we were supposed to do.  Also, we had already arranged a friend to come pick us up to take us painting.  By the time we got ourselves together and calmed down and walked out to the gate...our friend pulled up at the same time.  We took Stephen to the hospital, and would you believe they did not give this poor boy stitches?  They cleaned him up and gave him a band-aid.  When we got home, he pressed his head up against a railing and busted it open again.  It didn't hurt because he didn't bang it...just the pressure opened it up.  Again blood was going everywhere.  We stuck it out with the band-aids and I can happily report today that his head looks much better.  His hand took several days to go back together.  I would say that at least for 4 days I was wondering if he was going to need stitches.  Please pray for him, because I still need to keep checking to see if it is clean and not getting infected--it still has not formed a scab.  We have to keep it bandaged up in order to keep it clean--because he is a 2 year old BOY!

Some things are just so much more difficult in a foreign land.  This is one of those things.  But God always shows His provisions!!!

Recently we went to Sweet Girl's birthday party.  I took a lot of pictures--that I hope I can show you later, but I am not supposed to post pictures until after we are matched with her.  (Speaking of that, we did not receive any news before her birthday.  The only news we received is that her file has still not been sent to Beijing.  I am expecting at least a 1 to 2 month delay now--because of Chinese New Year.  So, we will keep praying!)

Before her party, we went and saw the couple who used to help watch Stephen when we were in class.  Check out the three old men (ha ha ha):

We then had lunch with our long time friends the Tanhehco's.  Then we were off to the party and saw more friends there.

Joel is in Hong Kong this week meeting up with some friends, and then he will have surgery on Thursday to repair a hernia.  Please keep him in your prayers--that all will go well with the surgery.