Adventure Begun...

First post from a foreign land. Prep done, hard work just beginning. Tears of joy and sadness. Unbelievable excitement, unbridled fear. Thankful for where we've come from, ready to know where we now are. Brain overload, the retreat of family. And how overwhelmingly thankful I am to the Lord for giving us this assignment!

After a long flight of corralling preschoolers and battling a sinus infection, we arrived at our new home last Wednesday. If I didn't realize I had the most amazing husband in the entire world before this, (which I thought I had), I now know for sure. On top of the stressful new position, in the time we were apart he set up the perfect home for us complete with an espresso maker and treadmill (thanks to some creative shopping and an ex-pat family moving)! All we had to do was walk in and unpack our bags. I love you sweetheart, thank you for all your hard work!!

Now that I'm back to blogging, I'll take processing all of this slow, but want to share todays learning-curve moment. We've decided that we need to hire someone to help with general household stuff and have begun interviewing Ayi's (pronounced I.E.). Today we had two ladies come in, neither of which speak English. Tony headed up the conversations, but with the second woman got called away for an urgent work something. So I got to finish the interview. Somehow we were able to communicate through the few Chinese words I know, lots of smiles and holding the children. And she may be the one that will fit into our family. Helpless is not even a strong enough word to describe how much I wish I already knew the language, but now at the end of the day I'm pretty happy with how it all went. I just pray for the brain capacity to take all this in, patience to not get frustrated and the vision to see the amazing things that are happening each moment. Thank you Lord that we are finally here!!