Nov. 3

Nov. 3

Today we all woke up with lots of anticipated excitement to actually see our surroundings! We arrived here last night at about 9pm... Some people went out for a walk in the nearby village and really enjoyed that - i stayed back to try to figure out how to email and get my darn computer runnin! Anyway, we started our morning with wor....p and p....yer. It was a good time to refocus on what our work is here. I learned that since Steve's plane had arrived early in Seattle he was able to share with a lady - who happened to be the ONLY one waiting for hte same flight that we were - when Judy (Chinese) on our team arrived she finished talking with her and by the time our flight was ready to leave she had accepted L... ! Very cool:)

After our morning time (which is every morning at 8am) we toured the grounds - i hope to send pics soon.. Leah explained alot of how PHF got started and where they are going - the grounds are beautiful and ALL donated - very cool to see what the L has done. Although they are needing Him to do great things these next 2 weeks as they need alot of $ for their next phase and requirement of the gov't. All 15 of us visited a few of the houses where the children live and got to play with a few little ones - the kids 2 1/2 and older were in school (we will see them today at VBS) Some kids were overwhelmed but a few were very excited and wanted up and hugs and climed all over us. It was precious:)

We then had lunch which the nannies prepared for us - shredded potatoes, rice and chicken. I had the rice and a little potatoes:) Soon after that we were put to work- we emptied out some attic rooms in the building we are staying in. They were extremely hard to manuever around in and many hit thier heads:( Around 2pm a few of us journied to Walmart - i needed to get some last minute supplies for VBS. It is always so interesting going there! While i was able to recognize some brand names there was ALOT that was definitely native to China. i was very thankful having Judy with us she was able to ask questions on where things were located. We mostly got snacks. They had their live fish section - i was able to take 1 picture of the live turtles to eat before that lady said no pictures. We are definitely foreigners here - i haven't seen any other americans inthis area - i'm sure in Beijing we will. On the way back to PHF we stopped at a local fruit stand and got some fruit for our team.

When we returned to PHF, our team was gone taking a walk in the village (darn i missed it again!!) so, i went to the House of Love and played with the kids. It was wonderful! about 5 kids RAN to me and basically tackled me! There are twin boys that especially wanted up in my lap -as soon as i sat down i seriously had about 4 kids in mylap (the twin boys and 2 other very cute girsl) - it was hard to play with them but after a while i was able to move a few off. It was hard tofind toys for them to play with -which i found suprising - next time i amd going to snoop around some more for toys. SO i did patty cakes with them and "Riding on a Pony" bounsing on my knees game - soon DAmon came and got me to go to dinner - he too was tackled with kiddos;) We finally said our goodbyes and off to dinner.

For dinner we met with the Bakers (very cool to meet them and hear their stories) for Hot Pot! Yes! I ate it! So, far i am doing good andnot sick:) I will try to send pics of it. basically we all sat at a very big round table and each had our own little hot pot (fondue pot) and in the center of the table was a big "lazy susan" that they put the food on and we could spin it around to get the food to put in our pot. And we had to use chopsticks -i am having a hard time with this but i'm sure i will be a pro soon!

After dinner - i was extremely tired and so i was off to bed!

Today - we plan on doing more work here and then to do VBS...