Always something to do:)
This year for the Lantern Festival we bought the kids their own plastic Lantern for them to light the way.
(left to right) Jaxin, Eli, Anna, Thomas, Jake, Joey, Tyler and Frank
After letting them play with their lanterns we lit a big lantern that floated off into the sky….well it would have gone that high if it did not get blown into our neighbors tree which thankfully did not catch on fire:)
Our cousin Javier (in the black) and I(Ben) lit the lantern and pushed it off while the kids watched it float away.
Every other weekend our older children have school. So we try to take some extra time to spend with our younger kindergarten aged boys by going to the different parks around town. Michelle is helping Jake walk the balancing beam.
The park is only a 10 minute walk from our house. In the back Michelle and Javier are making sure no one gets left behind. Tony(black coat) is our translator and Mary (red coat) is our teacher. They along with a couple middle school aged girls who like to come and volunteer, helped us walk the kids to the park.
Each night we try to read a bed time story to the kids. One time when the local TV station came to interview us and some of the children; Gabe was asked what he liked about being here, his reply was, “I like when Daddy reads us stories every night!” Its kind of funny because as you can see in the picture…our dog George joined us to listen too.
During the winter its cold here, and what makes it really unbearable is that the children go to school in unheated schools. So to help protect them and keep them warm, they wear layers….actually most of them will wear 5 layers of clothes. The stack of clothes I am holding is just for 5 children and its their thin and thick pair of long johns.
We are hoping to get goats this spring. So we decided to build a play house/ goat house for the kids. It will be their play house until we get everything ready for the goats…then it will only be a goat house:) The kids had a blast hammering the nails and giving a helpful hand.
Now that the weather is warming up we are spending a lot more time outside. We taught the kids how to play kick ball. We played girls VS. boys but since there were more boys playing than girls, I (Ben) helped the girls team out…..and we won:)
Every Saturday Night is our movie night. All the kids come in to watch a movie and eat some snacks…usually Michelle bakes them some kind of wonderful treat. The only problem we have was that the more and more children we get, the smaller and smaller our TV becomes. So we were considering getting a projector for some time. One of our past visitors (Kari) that stayed with us for a while told her church about our movie nights when she went back home, and they donated the funds to get a projector….its so wonderful.
(left to right) Tyler, our youngest son, Michelle, Michaela, Jonathan and Ben.Jonathan (our last translator) was engaged to Michaela before he started working for us. He worked for us until Tony (our current translator) finished school. After Jonathan helped us with counseling Nicky’s wedding last month, and performing her ceremony, he asked if we would be the minister for his wedding too. We were very honored to be apart of it.
We thank you for taking the time to read about our family and the amazing things that we get to experience. We are always so grateful that we were chosen to come here and serve. Its an absolute pleasure for us to be apart of these little ones lives. We know that it takes more than just servitude, it takes a lot of prayer and financial donations for us to keep going; and we just can not thank you enough for those of you who have given to our work here in China.
Posted: February 28th, 2012 under Uncategorized.
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