Ice cream, Christmas music and a corner turned.

Just a quick update so you are not left with the post from earlier.  Things are slowly getting better.  This morning we took our time getting moving.  Scott slept 10 hours, and I did fall back to sleep around 5:30 this morning until 8.  We went to breakfast here at the hotel, I played it safe and Scott tried a few exotic things.  Around noon I laid down for a nap and Scott ventured out to a 7 Eleven he discovered on a map.  I slept a good hour and half and he came back with cold water.  It's amazing what a little nourishment and sleep can do to a persons mind and emotions.  I haven't had another crying spell.  The tears are there but I actually have the ability to keep them at bay, which is good.  The Lord has been so unbelievably good to us.  Scott, having traveled to Asian countries before knows even better than I do how much grace we have been given so far.

Our guide met as at the hotel today at 2pm.  He helped us exchange money in preparation for tomorrow, helped us get a crib to our room since we had no luck as we had tried on our own.  He was going to leave us right after that, but Scott stepped up and said um we kinda need to get to a store and buy some supplies.  Our guide didn't hesitate with our request, even if he had some place to be you would have never known.  So we headed off to a grocery store and a phone store so we could get a SIM card for my phone.  Overall it was a good experience.  It made a world of difference having our guide take us around and speak on our behalf and help us.  I wish we had him around sooner and longer.  He got us back to the hotel around 4pm and left.  We were on our own...again.

We began setting up and getting things ready for Mercy's arrival.  And then around 5:00 I was beginning to feel a little more brave, so we took another walk.  We decided to head back to the shopping center our guide had taken us to earlier.  There was a lot to see there and there was a children's store that had grabbed out attention earlier.   Scott was feeling overly daring and decided he wanted to try a different route for a change of scenery.  That did not go over to well as we walked down some pretty scary, at least to me, stretches of road and had to CROSS THE STREET.  We made it.  It was like living out the game Frogger and we won, at least for now.  He got a kick out of it, I wanted to kick him.  We laugh about it now.

Our guide is picking us up at the hotel tomorrow (Monday) morning at 6:15 am.  We take a 2 hour speed train to Xingtai and we meet Mercy.  This is the moment we have been waiting for.  In less than 12 hours we will be at her orphanage meeting her face to face for the first time.  It makes the last 24 hours fade quickly as our hearts are so ready for such a time as this.  We are not sure when the next blog update will be.  It's going to be a long day tomorrow as we will spend time at her orphanage, then be taken to her abondonment spot, and still have the train ride back to Beijing, drive to our hotel and then just try to get her settled in and comfortable in our room, her new temporary home.  We will do our best to get at it as quickly as possible, but I'm pretty confident you won't see anything on your end until Monday morning your time.  Be patient with us.  We know everyone is as excited as we are for this, but her needs will come first, and we know you all understand that.

Thanks for praying and for the many encouraging emails and comments.  Keep praying because we feel it and we know God is with us, our Emmanuel.  I am ending with that because I want to share how our evening ended.  We stumbled on a Hagen Daas tonight and decided to give it a shot.  As we sat at this tiny little table eating some ice cream my ears tuned into the music playing in the background.  The first song was The First Noel, the second was a song I had never heard before, but the words spoke of Jesus the king of kings and lord of lords.  It was divine, I'm sure of that.  It was God's grace to hear music in English, but it was His abundant grace that it would be music about Jesus.

Happy Mother's Day to all those we love!