Third Birthday

This past weekend we celebrated Matthew's third birthday! It's hard to believe nearly three years have gone by since he joined our family!

We invited some of our Chinese friends and some kids over to a party on Saturday. Matthew's always had a favorite show (Elmo, Pooh, Cedarmont Kids, Karyn Henley, Chuck the Dump Truck...) and now he's really into Jake & the Neverland Pirates (a spin-off on the classic Peter Pan). As such, Cheryl & Jenna made him a treasure chest birthday cake. :D

 

For those who would not join in during the eating of the treasure chest, we also provided a mousse-ish chocolate cake we bought at a bakery (It's called Ali's Bakery.) I [Abby] think I was the only one who didn't have any treasure chest cake, simply because the mousse cake was just too good to be replaced by the likes of a cake with frosting. (I am of the odd few that do not like consuming tons of frosting. I like whipped cream and cherries and such, but frosting is just too thick for me.) 

This was a delicious chocolate mousse cake made at our favorite bakery.

Some of the invited

Matthew & Mom

~Rick

~Cheryl

~Abby

A Morning in the Life of The Lindners...Amidst an Earthquake.

The following takes place between 7:00 am and 8:00 am CST (Read with Jack Bauer's voice). The times are all approximate because nobody was looking at the clock. Events are portrayed from Jenna's perspective.

7:00 Matthew wakes up at his usual time, slapping his bare feet as he runs down the hall. He does this every single morning.

7:30 I finally dose back to sleep.

7:45 Mom announces"we are having an earthquake". I am startled awake and immediately say no we're not only to find that my bed is indeed swaying and my heart is racing.

7:45:15 Dad yells from the living room that we are having an earthquake, his warning more startling than the first.

7:45:30 Mad race begins to get a family of 8 (including the dog) down 16 flights of stairs and outside.

Viewer/Reader discretion now partially advised.

7:46 Frantically in search of pants and boulder holders (there are 4 women in our home) so I can go get the baby (Zachary, our foster boy) up. Also mentally preparing myself for the very messy diaper he presents us with every morning.

7:48 Mom is getting a bottle prepared as Dad gets Matthew dressed and grabs the Passports. Emma gets the leash on the dog and Abby grabs umbrellas (we noticed is was pouring outside).

7:49 I was successful in changing Zachary's diaper and getting him dressed. Now begins our descent.

7:51 Made it down 16 flights of stairs with 3 adults, 2 teenagers, a 3 year old, a 2 year old, stroller, umbrellas, passports, a diaper bag and are now amongst quite a few people huddled under the overhang above the apartment building entrance (I am not a morning person and don't think well that early and without my coffee so I was unable to capture a picture during the huddle, my apologies).

7:51:30 Matthew, huge smile on face, announces "Look! Everybody is here"

7:53 We have 3 baby bottles and 3 covers, 1 of which Zachary refuses to drink from...we grabbed that 1. Cranky, hungry baby...check.

7:55 Matthew comes back to the shelter of the overhang after enjoying some jumps in the puddles. He was a happy camper.

7:56 Dad comes back from the front store with news of the location of the earthquake. Gansu province, about 300 miles NW of us.

7:57 Really wishing we had time to brush our teeth, morning breath started to overtake us.

We headed back up after about 25 minutes knowing we were in no imminent danger. Pretty proud of our 4 minute evacuation considering a majority of us were awoken mid-sleep. As I began typing this post, our earthquake warner (lights above our kitchen table) started to sway. We thought it was maybe an aftershock. We had things packed and ready for descent number 2, but decided we were ok after the swaying duration lasted for only 15 seconds.

Thankful for God's protection and praying for the areas affected more severely from this earthquake.

Also thankful for my Mom's preparedness amidst the the chaos as she started handing out cheese crackers to our fellow huddle mates.

Servant Leadership Talk

I had the opportunity to teach servant leadership to a developer company. They are one of the larger companies here building new apartments for all of China. My teacher and her husband requested this. (Her husband is the general manager of this company to talk with his employees.) I based my talk on Pastor Rick's teaching on servant leadership “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:28).  Here are the points Pastor Rick talks about, 1. What servant leadership looks like. 2. What a servant leader says to others. 3. What a servant leader says to himself.  I talked to about twenty-five employees. The problem my friend is having at his company is the same one companies all over the have; issues with integrity,dishonesty and not wanting to do extra work,with employees often saying "that's not my job".

We played a variation of musical chairs, in which we removed chairs and not people. The men were on one team and the women were on another. They had so much fun; the women were the smarter ones and were able to get everyone on one chair before the guys did. I shared with them that the women just knew what to do while the men tried to think too much about how to get everyone onto one chair. They were planning it all out ahead of time and it did not work. I feel it went well; they have asked me to come back and share more.

The next topic they would like me to discuss Jesus (ye su in Chinese). I am so excited to have this opportunity. They also want my wife and daughters to go to the company and share with the women. They want them to teach the ladies how to cook western food and share their testimony. God is using us more and more on a daily basis. We told the Lord the saying our Pastor always says, "Use me and/or us".

You really. have to be ready if you use these words.

Well, we are excited. Thank you again for all of your prayers and support! :)

A few of Matthew's favorite things to do

Matthew loves riding in a Beng Beng Che, going shopping at Metro, and riding on the subway. Metro is like the Chinese version of Costco, without the $2.00 hot dogs, coke, or pizza. Just about five months ago Matthew wasn't allowed in Metro because he was under 1.2 meters. For some reason they now just let him in, yet he is still not yet 1.2 meters 

The completion of Matthew's adoption is pretty close. All of his paperwork is in Beijing and we are just waiting for the permission to travel to his province for the final steps. Thank you to God, Show Hope (http://www.showhope.org/), and The JSC Foundation (http://www.jscfoundation.org/)  for giving us the grants to make this adoption possible. Also, thank you to Elim Kids (Dr. Sam & Dr. Julie) for giving us the opportunity to foster Matthew almost three years ago.  

So GQ

Riding the subway

View from the inside of our Beng Beng Che.

~Rick

P.S. from Abby: Hope you had a happy Fourth of July holiday. And, for those who don't celebrate Independence Day, I still hope you had a good day. :D

Lindkids in China

I mentioned in the Meat Market post that I was going to (in two to three days time) upload a seventeen minute video featuring our apartment complex. Well, that didn't happen in the time I was anticipating. I uploaded it four times before it failed in processing. The fifth time is a charm. :D It worked this last time.

This is a video of Weifeng Gardens with commentary by Emma and me. We tend to talk too fast or soft often, though, so I added subtitles to make it easier. Just for you. ;) Click the CC at the bottom right to enable subtitles. Select English - Lindkids in China subtitles, not English (automatic subtitles). The English (automatic subtitles) are VERY WRONG.

A picture is worth a thousand words, and a video file has a gazillion different pictures all grouped together, so I probably have an uncountable-zillion words in this video. That saves me a zillion lifetimes. :)

Sorry for the twelve-day wait.

(In reference to the name: Emma and I are LINDner KIDS. Lindkids.)

P.S. Some subtitles may be off by about two seconds - sorry about that. 

~Abby

The Meat Market

While I am waiting for a seventeen minute video to upload and process on Youtube (the uploading process should take somewhere around one thousand minutes, assuming it does upload) to post her, I will put this forty-eight second video taped by Baba (Rick) of a meat market where he goes to get us beef. It's available at Metro, but according to our family shopper (which, of course, would be Baba), the beef here is WAY BETTER, so I'll just go with his word for it.

Matthew relatively always tags along with Baba on his bike rides here, and Jenna has most recently decided to join him as well. Matthew is famous at the meat market. :D As I have never gone myself (1. because they always ride bikes and 2. because raw meat is disgusting), I can not describe that experience of being among all these lovely cows and pigs and such as well as Baba or Jenna could, you're only source of explanation concerning this place will be this video. Otherwise, I would fill you with five-hundred words of description.

The seventeen minute video I alluded to at the top should be up in two to three days. Hopefully.

~Abby

Update on our foster boy.

The little boy who has been with us since Weds. night is doing really well. His skin is starting to look much better, though he hates taking his medicine. He is now starting to trust us a little more. Usually when we picked him up he kept his arms wide open and now he is starting to hold onto us. When we first put him in his crib he just laid down, now when we put him down he starts crying and wants to be picked up. All of these things are really great signs. Please continue to pray for him (Zachary).







Rick

Our New Foster Child

This has been an exciting week for our family.

Two people (from a company we are working with) and I [Rick] left at six in the morning on Tuesday to fly to Gui Lin, in Hunan Province. The flight was a hour and forty-five minutes long. When we arrived in Guilin we had to find a long distance bus to get to the small village where we were heading. First off - a fifty minute taxi drive to get to the bus station. We got there at ten o'clock just to find out the next bus did not arrive until

Sightseeing 

1:30 pm.

Our sightseeing boat

So, we did a little sightseeing, had some lunch, and then boarded the bus. The bus ride was FOUR AND A HALF HOURS driving on some really poor roads and in rain. Eventually, we made it to the village and we were met by the lady who runs the orphanage. She took us to the orphanage to see the little boy.

Our long distance bus

Now I will explain about him. He has HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus). His body is covered in a major rash and on one of his feet his toenails are all white (fungus). His body is so fragile and so, so skinny. We spent a little time with him and then they brought us to the hotel. To my surprise, it was a very nice hotel (granted it looked like the only hotel around). This small village has about 260,000 people. You may say that isn't small, but, in China, that is very small.

Signing the papers to bring him back to Xi'an

Next we had dinner with the President of the orphanage, the Vice President, the treasurer, and the lady who picked us up. They put on a nice spread for us, though I did not eat everything, as some of the items were  intestines, little fried fish with all the bones and some kind of meat that was crunchy with every bite.

After dinner, we headed back to the hotel to have a good rest. We were going to meet the officials at 7:30 to eat breakfast and, at eight, start all of the paperwork to bring the little boy back to Xi'an. One of the Chinese ladies I was with thought they wanted to get everything done asap just so we would not change our minds. (There was no way that would happen.) We finished up all the paperwork and headed back to the orphanage to pick him up.

The village we were in

When I held him it was so sad. He was burning up and had no energy to hold his own self up. They had told us he has never had any food to eat and only drinks a little milk powder. He was so good on our journey! First we had the four and a half hour ride back to the airport. Thankfully the government officials provided a ride for us in a very nice car, so no bus. Then, onto the plane.

His first night here (back in Xi'an) he did okay, although he did wake up a couple of times crying. Today he drank milk and ate a little oatmeal. He was checked out by a doctor who said his rash was some sort of fungus and they put him on antibiotics. His ears are also in bad shape with an infection of some kind. Friday he will be going to the hospital that has the authority to put him on the medication for HIV. In China all of his meds.  will be free. He is going to have a long journey, but I know that God is on his side and He is using us to love and provide a home for him. Please lift this little guy up for quick healing.

The officials

Rice paddies

The family mobile

The outside of the orphanage 

~Rick