Mom at home....

...our precious Mamsie (my mom) met Jesus face to face around 1 pm, April 23rd (Atlanta time - 1am Taiwan time). My whole family was there and by a miracle I was able to be on the phone with them the instant she left us. My heart is devastated that I wasn't by her side to say goodbye but I have to trust that God is in control of all things. Trying to cope moment by moment.

We are all traveling home tomorrow (Friday am)...Chad, Riza, the kids and I.

from my sister ~ We are eternally grateful to our Lord for His tender care of her through all of this, but even more for welcoming her home with a warm embrace. Heaven became sweeter today.

"I love the LORD, for he heard my voice; he heard my cry for mercy. ...Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints." Ps. 116:1, 15 ~

She's THREE...well almost....

Before we leave for the States we wanted to celebrate Mia's birthday with Daddy......

I Have Planned Ahead for You....

Behold, am I a God that is far off, and not a God that is near? For in the midst of difficulties, I will be your support. In the darkness, I am your Light; there is no darkness that can hide My face from the eye of faith. My beauty and My radiance are all the lovelier in the darkness.

In grief, My comfort is more poignant. In failure, My encouragement most welcome. In loneliness, the touch of My presence more tender. You are hidden in Me; and I will multiply both the wisdom and the strength in due proportion to meet the demands of every occasion.

I am the Lord your God. I know no limitations. I know no lack. I need not reserve my stores, for I always have a fresh supply. You can by no means ever exhaust My infinite resources. Let your heart run wild. Let your imagination go vagabond. No extravagance of human thought can ever plumb the depths of My planning and provision for My children.

Rejoice, therefore, and face each day with joy; for I have planned ahead for you and made all the necessary arrangements and reservations. I am your guide and benefactor. Put your hand in Mine.

from the devotional ~Come Away My Beloved~ Frances Roberts

The kids and I are on our way home. My mom is not doing well at all. But God in His infinite care is making our way smooth once again. We have tickets for Sunday and Chad's sister (our Tita Hollye) will be meeting us in Tokyo to fly the long leg with us. An answer to Chad's heart prayer. Ya-ya (pending a US visa) will be joining us in 2 weeks after some time with her own precious girls.

Please pray for my mom.

He does NOT have the power to fly....

...as he tested out this week.

Chad and I returned from dinner on Thursday night to a worried Yaya....one because Mia had stuffed a wee pebble up her nose(thankfully a good blow into a tissue dislodged it)...and two because as she was eating dinner and the kids were watching a movie she heard a loud head hitting the floor sound. Nykolas had apparently climb onto the television and promptly fallen off. Shortly thereafter he was asking to go to bed (extremely unusual). We woke him up, checked his eyes, etc. He seemed unusually drowsy still and Chad felt we should have a doctor just check him out. Off to the ER, again. The doctor felt that it was minor and we just needed to observe him closely for the next eights hours for vomiting or the inability to wake him up. As we were paying he starting throwing up....so back to the doc. She still felt it was minor but for us to wake him every two hours through the night. He vomited once more at home and other than us stirring him every few hours he slept fine. The picture is of him coming down for breakfast the next morning....with his typical "da da da ta" introducing his descent....obviously all is well.

Thanks to all of you who faithfully prayed after receiving the prayer e-mail that was sent out by Derek! It is so comforting to know that even though we are in 'Far Formosa' (aka Taiwan) our family quickly takes us before the throne!

We are being blessed with little Sarah for the next couple of weeks while her mum looks for a new nanny in her area. It is a delight to see Lili light up whenever Sarah comes in the morning or when they wake up from naps. Friends are truly a wonderful gift in life!

Buried Treasure.....

Our friends Dietrich and Dwight took us to the Taipei Public Library this past Saturday. On the bottom floor of this ten story building there are loads of children's books in ENGLISH! The perfect rainy day place to hang. We love Taipei!

Perfect day.....

After running errands, lunch at McDonalds (ok, so the day wasn't completely perfect for me because it included the golden arches), we perused a wonderful new bookstore we found.....full of beautiful childrens books. So with Cloudy with a chance of meatballs and Peter Speirs gorgeously illustrated Noah's Ark ~ off we went to a park. Ahh, if all days could be so lovely.....

Horton Hears A Who.....

Daddy was given tickets to the premier!!!! What fun to see it on the big screen....Mia and Lili's first movie! Although Lili won't remember much as she slept through it. But Mia and Nykolas still talk about it.....

New eyes....

As humans and for some reason especially Christians, we feel the need to dissect and put other people into our associate vs. don’t associate boxes, judging them by their appearance, political party or just their differences to us. People tattooed and pierced in this box, people of other nationalities in that box, Republicans in one and Democrats in another, people who have money in one and people who have no spare cash in another, people with AIDS, people without AIDS the list goes on…..neat isn’t it. I love order and peace. But what if this is merely a ‘safe’ way to go through life but not the way to really live. I mean what kind of place is our soul….a long dark unused hall full of dusty secured boxes full of other souls that could open our eyes to truths and beauty we would otherwise never see…. I mean, God created all did He not? And in that process didn’t He reflect some of His image into each and every individual?

Living this life we live has opened the door for me to be friends with people I would normally not cross paths with. One friend in particular here in Taiwan I met at church…we couldn’t be more different. She is British, I am American. She is a scientist and brilliant, I’m not either. I come from an amazingly supportive healthy family, she did not. She had traumatic adolescent years, I did not. I am carnivorous (sounds horrid when put so directly), she is most definitely not. Yet, (or maybe because of all of this) I see a beauty in her that is rare….the kind of beauty that comes from brokenness. The beauty that must have been like seeing the first flower unfold through the ashes months after the eruption of Mount Saint Helens or the breathtaking surreal moment of seeing a lovely butterfly float through a dingy foreign ER filled with people in pain. My soul rejoices when I see someone whole come through events that warrant complete disrepair.

This is a quote from Kathleen Norris writing about Benedictine monks and their study of Scripture without the scholarly tools we now have at our disposal. “Their approach was far less narcissistic than our own tends to be, in that their goal when reading the scriptures was to see Christ in every verse, and not a mirror image of ourselves.” Doesn’t that apply in our study of others as well? Don’t we tend to look for ourselves in other people because that is far more comfortable ~ instead of looking for reflections of Christ in others…..

For myself, I am praying for new eyes…..

Swimming....well splashing....

ice monster...even better than it sounds....

'Pretend Ringing' Grandan and Mamsie from a dirty, nasty public phone.....

in stitches again.....

Peaceful evening....girls finishing dinner.....a little jazz playing....Chad on his way home.....Nykolas in the bath, playing with zebras and cars (you have to be four to get the zebras and cars connection)...all was well.....a BIG splash....a bloody chin.....definite medical attention required.

Ya-ya dressed him while I grabbed passports, medical records, rain coats and Dr. Seuss books. Having never been to the hospital and knowing I would have a hard time communicating to the cab driver where I needed to go, I proceeded to ring Chad (no answer), our interpreter (no answer) and my friend (no answer). So, in the pouring down rain I flagged a cab and asked a girl on the sidewalk whether she spoke English....she did, praise the Lord!

Thankfully the ladies at the E.R. registration spoke enough English for us to get signed in and in front of a doctor. Stitches it was....painful anesthesia shots, face covering sterile cloth that freaked the poor boy out, three tries at getting the stitches in...whew! My boy was a brave one once again and thanking the doctors afterward and SO GLAD to see his daddy walk through the doors!

The memory that will stay with me: ....in the midst of the overwhelmed ER......loaded with people on cots in the hallways and corners.....the sterile sick smell that accompanies any hospital.....the old facility that didn't clean up very well (or hadn't been cleaned up very well)....soothing a very still, quiet boy with wide eyes asking me what everything was and would it hurt him(very worrisome when my boy is still and quiet)....the gentle whisper of a delicate white butterfly literally floated through the ER. Serenity. God is bigger than our pain, inconvenience, confusion or fear.

I Kings 19:11,12
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.

After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.....

(Note to my nursing friends....I highly recommend a daily release of a lovely white butterfly in hospitals and hospice care units. Not necessarily sterile but well worth the risk!)