Jan. 7 - Feb. 19 Update

Well, obviously I haven't written for a while, so I'll try to recap the past weeks. The weekend of January 8, all of the Zhong Relations team members came together at our home for Christmas - yes, a belated Christmas. I love our group. Everyone shares a strong purpose for why we're all here and positive attitudes. It's always uplifting and really fun to be together.

Adam's dad and mom came to visit from Michigan on January 12. We really had a wonderful time with them talking and sharing, playing with the girls, and exploring the shopping and restaurants of the city. The girls stocked up on some new toys that they got as Christmas gifts from Grandpa and Grandma, and we got a new camera! We're thrilled! At the end of their visit we went to Wuhan and stayed at a 4.5 star hotel that was so beautiful and warm! (-; It had a great breakfast buffet and a beautiful heated indoor pool that Sophia loved. This was a real treat for us, and we also celebrated Mom's birthday there. It was sad to see Dad and Mom go, but we're so thankful that they put forth the money and big effort to come see us! They're fantastic parents, grandparents, and friends to us.

We then had a few days to recoup before our next outing, but instead Adam and Sophia got sick and Elise was teething and not sleeping at night. We made it through though and on January 29 we took an overnight train to Beijing. We got on at 9:00 pm and arrived at 7:00 am. Sophia loved this new adventure and since she loves hotels, we explained the train as having a little hotel on it that she got to sleep in. She thought that was fantastic! Amazingly, as we were filing off the train into the reception hall at the Beijing train station we ran into one of my former students from 2004! Wow! It was fun to catch up with him for a few minutes.

We successfully found a McDonald's for breakfast, and then proceeded to successfully get ourselves completely lost in Beijing as we looked for the US embassy. Thankfully our American friends were going to meet us at the embassy later, so they just picked us up in their van with their driver and finally drove us to the correct location. I was an hour late for my scheduled appointment, but thank the Lord, they let me in. I needed to get pages added to my passport.

We spent the Chinese holiday of Spring Festival visiting our wonderful friends, the Culp family. They live in Tianjin which is 2 hours east of Beijing. The Culps taught with us here in Huangshi from 2005-06 and we became such close friends that we meshed our names to make a new family name - where we then introduced ourselves as the Culpenters. Our time in their home was fun, refreshing, and very encouraging.

From there we went back to Beijing where we picked up my mom on February 3. We're so glad she was able to come visit us for 3 weeks! She's actually still here. I've been spoiled by getting a few more naps and chances to just sit and read a book as she's taken over some of the cooking and cleaning. For some reason she says she likes it! (-: Of course she loves the time with the girls, especially reading books and rocking together in the new rocking chair that my dad and mom got me for my birthday!

Yesterday we made a day-trip to Wuhan. We picked up a few last souvenirs for Mom to take back home, and shopped at the Believers Bookstore. It had so many books that we can buy in America, but all in Chinese. We bought a couple of marriage books because we'd talked with our friend Jessica (LuTingNau) about doing a couples group and she thought it was a great idea. We also got some other Believers materials that will be helpful in our life in sharing here. You know, I wish I could describe things more clearly and specifically, but to take care, it's best if I don't.

We then went to welcome the newest teacher to our Zhong Relations team. Nathan is from Michigan, a 2009 grad of SAU, and he arrived a week ago in order to teach second semester at our university in Wuhan. Mark was our only teacher previously at this school, and Nathan is his good friend. Nathan had come to our commissioning time back in August and learned what we did and now he's here! We're excited to have him.

I'll need to post again soon because there are many more things going on, but at least this was a good start. Thanks for reading and caring!