Sunday

Today we worshiped at the Christ Church Shamian. It is a special time to be in unity of spirit with those you can not even have a conversation with. We went to the English service, so some of the music and all of the sermon was interpreted. We discovered we have a little singer in the family, as Brighton was the loudest singer in the church, adorable!!! The sermon was on Total Depravity and the pastor quoted Calvin and Augustine..pretty interesting. Although the church is sponsored by the government, it was not lacking in theological vigor. While there, I donated one of my mom's awesome books "Erve and Lizzie" to their church library. The worker seemed very thankful to have it, and the library was a hot spot. It was very small, but well organized and obviously utilized. It was neat to see the Chinese people searching through the selections finding books to help them grow spiritually. Believe you me, they do not have a Lifeway that they can just run into and choose from hundreds of selections, so their little library is cherished.
In the pictures today you will see Brighton in her "Sunday go to meeting" dress, she looked adorable!! Also you will see a picture of us at Lucy's resturaunt. Lucy's has all the Western food we Americans could want, so they usually see a lot of us while we are here. The picture posted is of Brighton putting her hand on her food. The reason it was so cute is because the waitress had come and cleaned off some of the plates we had finished and everytime she would go to pick a plate off the table, Brighton would get this serious look and place her hand on her own plate in protection mode, we are enjoying new aspects of her personality everyday. Other pictures posted will show her displaying her chopstick skills, quite impressive for a 21 month old and then how I found her trying on my shoes---way to cute!!!
On our first day here, we were walking down the street and a local man ran up to Mike and was saying "I remember you, I remember you!!!." He was beside himself happy to recognize Mike. Mike remembered him and had actually mentioned earlier that he hoped to find the man's shop at some point while we were here. The cool thing about this is that he remembers Mike from our Brooklyn adoption, which was seven years ago. Mike would spend a lot of time in the man's Internet Cafe' (before we could get Internet in the rooms here). So it was a very nice reunion, to which he asked Mike, "Can I give you one of these?" and then stuck his hand up in the air for a high five. After the high fives I snapped a picture, so included in the pictures is Mike's Chinese BFF (lol)---As Mike walked away he said to Nate and me, "see I got peeps".... oh brother!!!!
Bonding boot camp is going great!!!! We are really getting close. Nate is doing great, he is such a help. I am feeling soooooo much better, thanks to prayers and Cipro. Now Mike is feeling under the weather, but he has just started Cipro so I bet he will feel better soon, prayers for him would be appreciated.
Thanks so much for your continued support and prayers, we are so blessed to have family and friends sharing this time with us.
Till tomorrow
Blessings,
Tammy
PS. My favorite picture of the day is Brighton sleeping on her daddy's chest with a tight grip on her chopsticks.