Happily at Home in Harbin - A Husband's/Father's Revisitation

This is Steve hijacking the blog and the last title.

I'm writing to ask for your upward requests for us as Robin is sick and this week we enter a new semester (oh, and leftovers of sickness with the kids too). I left her for nearly a week and returned to an exhausted (I mean spent!) wife who served her usually-sick children with every drop of energy she had. She's got a bad, deep cough and starts teaching in less than 3 days. :-(

(note - this blog won't last long if she deletes my praise, so get it while it's hot!)

But her health is not the only request. Please lift up our vision: priorities and focus; our walks with Him who is our life; for hearts and minds ready to receive those led to us (even if he's from Uzbekistan, like I think happened today); and (specifically for me) for growth in humility and submission to Him.

I had a great opportunity to serve last week (it was very successful, PTL) and am thankful for how smoothly things went technologically. May it continue well!

Thanks for reading and zai jian!
(再见！)
Steve


Thankful for today: Today I'm thankful that, living overseas I have no choice but to take full responsibility for my children's spiritual upbringing. (If you don't get the hidden meaning, this site hides nothing about its meaning and makes a good point.)

Happily at Home in Harbin

Well, it has certainly been long enough since I last wrote a real blog! Thailand was great, and being back at our home here is great. We enjoyed a five day stay at the Juniper Tree in Dolphin Bay. It was a relaxing time together and the family atmosphere was wonderful. I thought it would be really hard to leave the nice warm... hot really... beach to come back to the cold dry weather. Actually, it was really nice coming back and feeling "at home" in spite of the bags to unpack, the children whose sleep was all messed up, the dusty apartment and coal dust. There was a sense that this is where we belong. Holidays have their place, but it is good when they end as well.

Unfortunately, Steve has had to leave me right off the bat for a week in Beijing helping with tech support at the office there. We will make it. :) I have wonderful Chinese friends who live in the building next door, and they are wonderful to us. I spent a couple of hours of what was supposed to be a short visit the other day and again was struck by how "at home" I felt in her presence. There is something special about friends who aren't students. I love the students and enjoy the times we have together, but we aren't in the same stage of life. This friend is a wife, mother, teacher, friend. We can really talk and share life together. That is a precious treasure in this frozen land we've found ourselves.

So, home. What a strange term. When we were at the Juniper Tree, I met this 6 year old little girl who looked Asian but sounded American. Her family serves in China, she has two other siblings and they were all seemingly born in a different country. When I asked where she was from, she said, "I'm not really sure." That seemed to sum it up quit well.

As Olivia stated when we first got back here, "We have many homes." (2 in America, 1 in China, 3 in Thailand) Wherever she finds a place to lay her head, she's home.
See ya later! 再见！

Olivia On Stage!

Enjoy the show!

Note how Olivia smiles at us, her true audience, and makes her way to the front between two bigger girls. That's Olivia...in one respect: she's a determined little girl.


See ya' later!
在见！

Direct link to share with others:
http://youtu.be/v29PsxozCtU