Completed Love

I’m not even going to comment on the fact that its been, well... all year long since we did a post.  I’m just moving on.  Let me catch you up on somethings.  Life has been full, fun, serious, hard, busy, joyful, fast, slow, vibrant, restful, exhausting, sunny, rainy, and full of celebration.  Hopefully that resembles a lot of your lives as well.

I wanted to write about a passage that for years I haven’t dwelled on because its over used, abused, is all over crafty southern Christian home’s walls, and so had seemed to have lost its power to me.  But recently it just came up in my mind and so I went to it.  I love it when the scriptures are fresh and a passage that is so familiar seems new all over again.  For me this time it was 1 Corinthians 13.  The Love chapter.  But its more than just about love.  Its about dealing with life, suffering around you, brokeness of your own and others in your life.  Its about handling hard situations, responding well, and forgiving.  Just look at it:

1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. 

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant

5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;

6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.

7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 

8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.

9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part,

10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.

11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. 

13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. 

So if I have prophetic gifts, have knowledge, faith in abundance but not love...then I have nothing.  If I can get things done, have opinions or great ideas, can lead, or have other skills...but not love, then I have nothing.  Thats a really strong statement to make.  You don’t have anything if you don’t have love.  It means that above all those things that could be edifying and helpful within the church that to have love is much better.  I can see how my heart would quickly have pride if I had any one of those things in abundance.  But love keeps us meek, humble, and dependent upon Jesus.

But what about my responses to others?  Love confronts our responses and says that if we have love we’ll be patient, kind, humble, meek, pleasant, respectful, and joyful.  We won’t be rejoicing in brokeness around us but only when the truth of Christ goes forth.  Instead of leaving one alone to suffer or to defend yourself love bears all things.  Instead of assuming others are out to hurt you or to assume the worse, love calls us to believe all things.  It hopes and endures.  How can it hope and endure?  It can do both because the Apostle John tells us in 1 John that love comes from God.  The world isn’t able to love fully.  Even we can’t love completely because of our sin....but one day we will.  One day we will be made complete in the love of God.  

So after having meditated on this chapter for the last few days I had to repent about a few things.  Thank God for the power of his Word to have its effect upon our hearts.  My desire is not only to love better but to be consistent in loving better.  I want to look back at my love now and see the graciousness of God as He’s sanctified me.  I want to genuinely love people as well.  That’s what I’ve had to repent of.  I don’t love all that great.  But hopefully the Spirit will give me growth in this area.  How about you?  How are you loving?  Are you believing all things, bearing all things?  Are you patient or irritable, humble or arrogant?  We may have all the theological zeal and passion for God in the world, but without love it means nothing.  I pray that all of us then will abound more and more in love.  Love God Love People.

Breakfast in a bag

This is one of our favorite breakfast meals.  Partly because its cheap.  Partly because its quick.  They sell it right outside the gate of our apt complex.  Pork and sticky rice.  Each person gets their own bag.  This morning, just for fun, Spencer also got each of a stick of bamboo sticky rice - sticky rice steamed inside a stick of bamboo.  All together 3 kuai/person.  6.5 kuai = $1.   Not too bad.  

Breakfast is the hardest meal for me here.  One, there is no cereal.  Two, there are no pre-made refrigerated cinnamon rolls or biscuits.   No muffin mixes either.  So, in order to fix a decent meal for my fam I have to get up pretty early to let dough rise.  I also make yoghurt, kefir, bisquick, pancake mix and granola.  We can get bacon from the capital city and I occasionally make sausage and put it in the freezer.  When I am feeling like I've got plenty of margin, I make bagels and english muffins.  Tons of them and put them in the freezer.  There are just a few juices available here - none of them healthy.  Mostly sugar.  So, we do a bunch of green smoothies.  We get by.  But every now and then it is very nice to just run out and get a quick cheap meal with no hassel.  

Here is the homeschool room.  Eben gets the desk with the computer because some of his work requires it now.  The girls are to the right, up against the brick wall/bookshelf that divides our bedroom.  

We try to get started by 9 everyday.  The older two do their independent work first while they wait for me to be available.  Ajay goes down for a nap at 1030 and we are able to get more done once he is down.  Eben and Nya go everyday 9-1.  Canaan is still only 4 and is doing PreK but very casually.  She pops in when she wants and when I want her to but if she'd rather color or if I am busy that is ok too.  I play with Ajay a little before his nap, he practices playing on his own, then he sometimes watches a short video.  It's not the quietest, stillest homeschool setting that's out there I am sure.  But, we manage.  The kids are learning!  That's what matters.  Popo fixes our lunch.  We eat a quick bite (homemade chinese - the best!) and then we can quickly get back to work.  We are usually done by 3 but the kids sometimes have some homework to do while I prepare supper.  

We went out to a Dai village today.  It was fun.  We went with friends to another friend’s house.  Here is Canaan with her sweet little friend. 

Here is a random picture of a typical dai house, dai spirit house, and dai dining room table.  This table is the one Spencer bought me for Christmas.  They are very convenient as they hang on the wall when you aren’t using them and the stools stack nicely off in one corner.  Makes for a great kid table for us when we have too many adult guests for our kids to also fit around our regular dining rm table.  This Dai house is just being built.  Not yet finished.  They will put this spirit house right outside for the spirits to live in so that the spirits wont be tempted to live inside the big house.  Buddhism mixed with animism.  

Saw this on the way home from the village.  

And it may be because it's 11 pm and I've just realized that I don't think my first attempt at cottage cheese worked (after four hours of process) or maybe bc I've now blogged for five days straight, but I kind of feel like this truck looks.  That's it...no more blogs.  If you want to see more then you have to come see our city (and us) in person!

The week before Christmas

Thursday:
This week was the week before Christmas, we did a special homeschool co-op kind of thing with the Dutch family in our town. The children put on a Christmas musical and also studied about stars. They met every afternoon for a week after they had completed their regular studies. We even still crammed in Chinese class this week. It was a busy week!

Today we all hung outside on the corner patch of grass outside our house for a while. The neighbors were out. This is the head gardner that I mentioned before. Canaan loves her and her daughter. She follows her around picking flowers, pulling weeds, and “helping out” all the time.

We went to the bird and flower mkt today. Also happens to be the dog market. We are getting a cocker spaniel for the kids for Christmas. Saw this venus fly trap type of flower. It’s fun living in the tropics.

Here is one of three “Christmas” stores in town. It is classy stuff let me tell you. And all about the Santa.

China has it’s own Christmas Eve tradition. You give fancy wrapped apples as gifts to all your friends. The apple growers put chinese character stickers on the apples while they are still on the tree. The sun ripens the apple and leaves the part under the sticker yellow. they pick the apples, peel off the sticker then you can still see the yellow chinese character on the red apple. Fun. But nothing to do with Jesus. These pics are of the mobs of people outside the major supermarket buying apples and wrapping them as gifts. You pay by pound for the apple, by sheet for the paper and by the meter for the ribbon. It’s almost like homecoming mums in the south! The more ribbons, more paper, the more this, more that - the better the gift, right?

This is Buddha. He lives down the street from our apt complex. When I go out our gate and look right, there he is.  And I guess when he looks down the street, there I am.

This is Eben on the way to Tae Kwon Do. He is a blue/green belt. He will test in just a few weeks to be a blue belt. In case you dont know, next comes red then black. It’s kind of a big deal to be a black belt. We are going to encourage him to stick with it.  He takes with another American kid here in town.  They are good friends. 

This is the public square area near Eben's Tae Kwon Do.

There was a vase vendor there today.

And just to prove how safe the bike lanes are I decided to post a picture.

And then on my way home from Tae Kwon Do I noticed this.  Someone from the fourth floor is running an extension cord out their window, down into the stairwell and is charging their motorcycle.  Not unusual, but interesting.

Tomorrow a Dai village, more homeschool.

Preschoolers and Retired Old Men

Wednesday:
This is Canaan and her friend Yuan Jing Ling.  Her mom is the head gardener here at our apt complex.  They play together all the time even though Canaan speaks very little Chinese and half the time what she does speak she is just making up as she goes along.  The one thing Canaan does know is Chinese nursery rhymes.  She hears Nya singing them all the time.  So half the time her and Jing Ling just sit and color or sit and play with dolls while singing nursery rhymes.  It's cute.  

This is Canaan and her friend at her friend's preschool performance.  After going to their class room to see their work, there was a performance.  At the last minute they asked Canaan to be in the performance (even though I am sure the other 300 kidsd had been practicing for weeks on end.)  She carried a flag in the opening ceremony kind of thing.  Jing Ling goes to the Minority Preschool in town so the performance was really fun.  Everyone was dressed in traditional minority dresses and did traditional dances.  There were over 15 minorities represented.  

Here is Nya with her Chinese teacher.  The older two kids have class every M, T, W.  Give it time and they will be able to write from memory more characters than I can!  

I came home today to find these guys in the pagoda nearest our house.  These guys are northerners.  Rich northerners.  They come to our town from October 1st (national day) to mid April (water splashing festival) to escape the cold of Beijing and Harbin.  There are also a few Shang Hai’ers here as well.  They meet everyday around 3 in our pagoda to practice.  The women dance, the men play their instruments.  Altogether there are about 15 of them.  It’s lovely.  It’s my favorite time of the day.

While hanging out with the Northerners, I noticed the farmers in the field behind my house.  I thought maybe that wasn’t what folks would picture being behind a huge apt complex in the city.  But there are fields like this scattered all over.  You can even see the banana trees in the background.   We've had the chance recently to be going out to the farm alot where Spencer has built his aquaponics system.  It's about 15 minutes outside the city.  It's a friends farm.  They are raising fish and pigs and have several veggie plots as well.  It's been so nice to let the kids tromp around.  The other day when we dropped in they were neutering 20 piglets.  I'll just say there's a certain kind of education you get growing up on a farm that you dont get in the city.  My kids were shocked.  Stood there eyes glued of course, but in shock.  They've recovered now.  One day when we went out to the farm, they had been drying corn kernels for the pigs to eat.  It was done and they were needing to bag it up.  The kids and I helped.  Again, getting dirty and really working with your hands doesnt happen much with city/apt living.  It was good for all of us.   

This area is full of folks that practice Theravada Buddhism.  Here is a monk I caught on a motorcycle today.  We live out by the temple/school so it is not uncommon to see monks outside our gate every day. 

We went to Nya’s favorite noodle shop today.  Here she is.  I should take this time to say that there are a handleful of muslims in our town as well.  Their noodle shops are the best!  There's a teeny bit of arabic on the sign you'll notice.  

I think I mentioned earlier that we live in a Dai autonomous prefecture.  Not sure entirely what that means other than that while they still submit to the Chinese gov’t, they do have some amount of autonomy.  In our city it is required that every sign - street sign, business sign - have Dai written on it first, then Chinese under that.  You can see here that on some of the street signs they also put the pinyin (romanized pronunciation of the transliterated Chinese characters). 

Thursday will feature homeschool, tae kwon do and homecoming mums.

Electric rides and Kimchi

Tuesday:

This is my “car”.  It’s electric.  It goes about 30km/hr which is about 18 mph.  Better than walking.  I can get around easily with the three older kids and when I have to, I can strap Ajay to my front and still manage.  This is a bicycle/motorcycle culture.  Many people have electric bikes as well.  There are bike lanes all over town.  It’s mostly safe.  I promise.  And the best part is, I never have to pump gas!  I really hate to pump gas!  I just run a long extension cord out my patio and plug it in!  It charges overnight and last me about 5 days.  Very nice. 

We ate lunch at the jiaozi (dumpling) restaurant near our front gate today.  It’s convenient, cheap and quick.  Those round wooden trays stacked up have holes in the bottoms and loosely woven tops to allow the steam to travel through.  The steamed jiaozi are my favorite!  

I decided to make kimchi today.  No, it’s not a chinese dish - Korean.  But I thought this might be a good time in general to talk about life in my kitchen.   

I have a small oven - very small and 2 portable electric burners for a stove.  In this picture we are using said portable electric burner to eat hot pot for supper.  

The Mr. Melty cookies came out of the oven 5 at a time.  It took a while to make them all!  A friend told me about the Mr. Meltys.  I'm so glad she did.  They are a fun Christmas tradition addition for us now that we're living in the tropics!  No dish washer of course.  But at least in this apt, since we finished out the insides ourselves, counter tops are tall and there are plenty of cabinets.  We are almost outgrowing our fridge and we had to buy a free standing top loading freezer to hold the extra stuff (it's on the back patio).  Our best option for buying cheese is to get it from a restaurant supply store in the capital city.  We split a 50 lb block with some other foreign friends about 2-3 times a year.  So, we've got to have enough freezer space to store 25 lbs of cheese.

We are also into green smoothies lately.  The kids love them.

 Have a great day.  Tomorrow I'll put up more pics.  This is definitely a blogging records for me!  

All in a day's work: Mondays

So I thought I’d take a few shots around town just for friends and family to see life around our “new” place.  Yes, we’ve been here for over a year and a half now BUT 8 months of that time we were technically in America.  So, while we lived here for 6 months prior to getting Ajay, we had to leave quickly after getting Ajay because the Chinese government would not give him more than a 60 day visa on an Indian passport.     So, we were in America for 8 months finalizing the adoption and getting Ajay on a US passport with our last name.  It took a while!  But now we are back and settled.  Finally settled.  And finally I feel like I should give a proper introduction to everyone about our new place.  I don’t think I ever officially did that the first time around!  Ooops!

In order to keep it true to daily life, I just took my camera with me for a week and whatever we did, whatever we saw, I snapped it.  If I thought it was interesting I snapped it.  If I thought it might give a glimpse into how life was different here than in America, I snapped it.  Hope it gives a good snapshot into our life here.  Oh and by the way, I did this a few weeks ago.  Sorry it’s just now getting up.

So, here goes.....  

Monday:

This is our apartment.  We live in ShanShuiYunTian.  Mountain Water Cloud Sky.  Very lovely sounding, isn’t it.  We can in fact see some mountains out our back, see some water down to our left - a tributary of the Mekong River no less, and there are occasional clouds in the sky.  

This is the pagoda near our house.

This is my favorite twisty tree outside our house. 

This is the kids playing badminton outside our house.

This is Canaan and Ajay eating popcorn by the patio.

These are the Dai women in our town.  We live in a Dai autonomous prefecture.  The Dai are a minority people group here in China.  Only, where we live, they are the majority!  Dai = Thai.  Same same.  I caught these women at the market. 

 Here are some other things I saw at the market.   Jack fruit - the large spiky one - it’s very stinky, coconuts, tamarind.  the pink spiky one is dragon fruit.  Other than the fruit stalls, there are also stores selling just a bunch of junk.  Anything from plastic buckets, plastic stools, to rolls and rolls of really poor quality tape to, you know, penguin fans.  

The Dai women aren’t the only ones wearing skirts around here,  The Burmese men do too!  We are on the Burma border.  Lots of Burmese come here to live for a short time and sell jade.  The quality of jade in Burma is much better than the jade in China so many Chinese tourist come here to buy Burmese jade.  There is a whole street called Burmese street with many jade dealers but they are scattered all over town as well.  The Burmese speak a tiny bit of English and a tiny bit of Chinese.  It makes communicating with them difficult!  

It’s Ajays birthday.  Here I am making a cake - from scratch of course (not by choice).  Daryl- Ann helped me.  We made marshmallow fondant.  The marshmallows came from the capital city.  We called in and ordered them, the store owner then packaged them up, bought them a bus ticket and sent them our way on the bus.  Alot of work for the little guy’s big day, eh?  I am pretty fond of the fondant.  It made great red polka dots for his Dr. Seuss them.  And here are some pics of his party.  We played pin the heart on the grinch.  

And now i think i will make a quilt form the left over scraps from the birthday banner.

Tuesday's pix will be up tomorrow.