Happy Easter!!!

Chocolate!

Thank you Easter Bunny

What do you mean I can't eat the chocolate?

Our church away from home

Easter morning in Guangzhou

My very first Easter service

Little did we know services would last 2 hours!

Happy Easter

God Bless You

The news that Christ has risen is alive and well here in Guangzhou China. Well once again I have fallen behind on my blogging duties but instead of trying to catch you up in chronological order I thought I would post about our Easter morning here. We woke up this morning and found that the Easter bunny had paid a visit to our room. Aubree had a new outfit, some chocolates (we are letting her know that you can actually eat them as it would not be good for her at this age) and a special Barbie doll that is holding a little Chinese baby girl with a little sign that says "Going Home". We took a moment to make a Skype call back home to say Hi to the kids and grandma has we wanted to be the first to wish the a Happy Easter. We were very happy to hear that they all carried out the family tradition of coloring eggs together. Lila and I are really starting to become homesick now and Friday can't come soon enough. After the call we went down to enjoy breakfast only to find the very large Chinese tour group staying in the hotel had descended on the buffet as they had done the day before so we decided to wait. I made a run to Starbucks as I received and inside tip from one of the other dads that it wasn't very far away. Eventually, the dining hall cleared out and we had a very nice breakfast. Aubree can really put away the food as we have started to ween her off some of the bottles she had been accustom too with her foster mother. She ate oatmeal, banana bread (a whole slice!), some egg and some watermelon. We then had to hurry up to our room to get dressed for church as we were heading over with another family in our group.

The church happened to be just a block away from the hotel so we walked down together and gathered outside with a very large crowd waiting for the service in progress to end. The name of the church is Christ Church Shamian (we are on Shamian Island). Eventually we entered the one room church and it was a packed house. There were mostly Chinese folks in the congregation but several westerners. It was obvious that most of the westerners were either there completing an adoption like us or they were back visiting with their adopted children from 10 to 15 years ago. We have seen several families here that are on heritage tours to bring their older adoptive children back to China for a glimpse at their history. We even met a couple last night in the lobby that were American but had been living in Ireland for the past 20 years. They had their 12 year-old adopted Chinese daughter Kimmi with them and they were back for a heritage tour. Kimmi wanted to hold Aubree but settled for playing with her while Lila held her. Aubree really started taking to Kimmi and it was very special to see them interact. The father asked me where we were from and when we told him he could not believe it. He told us his sister lives in Omaha and also has an adopted daughter from China. (This was our official Wow! It's a small world moment).

The church service was close to two hours but enjoyable. It was the only service of the morning that was bilingual in English and Chinese. It was amazing to see all of these Chinese people sharing in the good news, considering Christianity is definitely a minority religion in China. Lila and I got a chuckle as the pastor told a familiar joke in Chinese that was translated by a lady standing next to him at the pulpit. It was the joke about the couple traveling in Jerusalem when the wife suddenly past away. The local officials asked the man if they wanted to bury her there in Jerusalem as it would be less expensive than transporting her body back home for burial. The man decided to have her transported back home much to the dismay of the officials. They asked him why he would pay more to have her transported home. Of course, we knew the punch line and it was funny to hear the Chinese speaking part of the congregation reacting to the punchline before it was interpreted for us English speaking folks. For those of you not familiar with this joke the man stated the reason why he didn't want to bury his wife in Jerusalem was that he had heard 2000 years ago a man was buried there and after three days he rose from the dead and he didn't want to take the risk of that happening with his wife. We were treated to Holy Communion and I know for as long as I live this communion will be remembered as a very special one to me. We sang some familiar songs like "He Arose" and the children's choir sang "Amazing Grace" in Chinese, which I captured on video and have included a clip. They also sang another song but this time in English was truly amazing. There was an older youth choir that performed a couple of songs, in addition, to a band of string instruments that performed a couple of beautiful pieces.

We wish all of our family and friends a very happy Easter, we miss you all and look forward to being home soon.