Thursday, Dec. 10

As you begin your day today, we are headed to bed. We are skyping our kids as often as we can but it gets tricky with the time difference. We are 13 hours ahead of you. It feels so good to finally be ahead of time for a change!!Today was a very special day as it was the last full day with Rosalie in her province. The market experience was amazing! We were able to find Rosalie an authentic dress from her ethnic group. Our guide has been so helpful helping us learn about her region. We wanted to go to the park where she was found but Liuzhou City is over 2 hours away so we did not get to go. I also wish so much that we could meet her foster mother. The orphanage gave us a photo album of photos of Rosalie; three include photos of her foster mother with her. She looks so kind and loving. It seems strange having adopted Sam with an open adoption and seeing the healthy relationship we were able to have with his birth mom to go to the opposite extreme of being told we can not even rent a car, pay a driver, and go to visit the woman who has taken such good care of Rosalie for the past 2 years. Kristin, thank you for your faithfulness to pray for this woman so diligently. After having Rosalie for only 3 full days, I can NOT imagine the void this woman is feeling with her gone. Strangely, when Rosalie looks at photos of her foster mom, she tells me in Mandarin (this is my nanny-mama and Jingxue (her Chinese name), but NO sadness in her voice, just a matter of fact comment. Oh, God is so in the midst of this. I just can not get over the bond we have with her. She is our daughter through and through.This morning we took Rosalie back to the huge park behind our hotel. She got to ride many rides and we had so much fun just laughing and playing together. After the park on the way back to the hotel, she got a little withdrawn and wanted to walk ahead of us for a while. She seemed to be in her own world. Peter and I talked as we walked behind her wondering what was going through her mind. Of course, my thoughts are, "Oh no, what if she is sad and misses her old life." Peter wondered if she is scared that we will leave her because we had such a happy time at the park. I had not thought of that. Regardless of what she was thinking, this is an adjustment. By the time we made it back to the hotel, Rosalie was her cheerful self again and kissing and hugging us, wanting us to hold her and play with her on the beds. She loves for us to tickle one another. The rest of the day was perfect. Her behavior was so much better today. We are already seeing her exercise self-control over bad habits. We have met a precious C------ family from Edmonton, Alberta, who is here adopting a little 3 year old boy who was born with club feet. His condition has been corrected and he is walking beautifully. What a cutie pie! This family and one other family are the only westerners that we know of in this city and the Canadian family is the only C------- family we know here. We have fallen in love with one another. It's hard to describe the isolation you feel when you are so set apart from everyone who passes you. It doesn't help matters that you get stared down like you have 2 heads. So to find this family has been a reprieve for certain. They are on the same floor with us. We walked with them to McDonald's tonight- about a 20 minute walk one way. Okay, tonight beat all as far as stares go!! After about 5 minutes of walking and wondering, "Really, why are we getting stared at worse than ever?"...we realized what it was. Both daddies (Peter and the Canadian father) were pushing the strollers with the Asian babies while the moms were walking behind them. You DON'T see daddies pushing strollers in this culture. So not only are the men pushing the babies, but the babies are Asian and the men are westerners with the women walking behind them. It got comical after a while especially at one intersection where (I kid you not) there were probably 500 people on bikes, motor scooters, cars, walking, and they almost wrecked staring at us cross the street. I had to pull out my video camera at this point just to film the people. It's just hilarious! We fly out to Guangzhou tomorrow and leave the hotel at 4:30 pm. Please pray for Glenn as we share a Bible with him tomorrow. Pray he will read it and come to the saving knowledge of J----!!"For I am not ashamed of the gospel of C-----, for it is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe!"

Romans 1:16

Much love to you,

Nancy