Love of a Family

Merry Christmas, everyone! I know it's a few days late, but this is the first chance I am getting to really sit down and write. I hope your Christmases were filled with remembering God's gift to you in His son and lots of joyful memories with your family and friends.


Christmas here was wonderful. Although I greatly missed my family back home, the family I have formed with Ted, Bev, and the children here made my Christmas memories extra special this year. On Christmas Eve, Jennifer, Gabrielle, Andria and I all watched "The Christmas Blessing". My mom had sent it to me in my Christmas package. It was a great surprise because every year my family gets a new Christmas movie to watch. And this year I got to bring the tradition to Taiwan. That night, I went to bed to find my first Christmas gift waiting as a surprise on my pillow. It was from Andria. She had gotten me a rope bracelet, a pearl necklace and earrings, a tank top, and random candies from the Silk Market in China. Such a cool present. :)

Christmas morning came, and I was worried it was going to be just like any other day here. Since Thanksgiving had been pretty bitter sweet, I had prepared myself for not really getting to celebrate and set my mind on service. The morning started off like a normal morning here with feedings and changings, but as one baby finished, Bev let us take them over to the other side where the celebration had been going on since 7:30am. It started with Ted reading the Christmas story out of Luke then moves on to gift unwrapping and stockings. Because Christmas fell on a Saturday, a lot of kids who grew up here, but are now in college/living/working in Taipei or around the island were able to come home and take part in all of the festivities, which made for a full house and extra hands to help hold babies!

Jennifer, Andria, and I were able to stay on the older kids' side all morning! First, all of the kids that are currently at the Home got to open their gift from their sponsors. Since the older kids are not adoptable, they have a sponsor family that writes to them and send them gifts for their birthday and Christmas. Most of the sponsor families live in the States or in Taiwan. Each of the kids opened their gift one by one. Then, we moved onto the big gift exchange, including all of the kids, current and past, the staff, and us volunteers. Again, the gifts were unwrapped one at a time. Both the person giving and the person receiving came to the front of the room. The person giving handed the other their gift and after it was opened, they got their picture taken together. It was a very sweet process.

The week before we had all drawn names out of a hat and were given a 200NT (six U.S. dollars) limit to buy a gift for that person. I drew Pei Yu. She is one of the social workers here and is only a couple of years older than me. On one of my lunch breaks, Andria and I biked into the market, and I bought her a scarf. Unfortunately, she was unable to make it on Christmas day, so I didn't get to see her open it. You Cheng, the little boy who thought he had broken his wrist (I wrote about him in an earlier post), drew my name. He is about eleven years old and his teacher, who speaks English and with whom I am friends, said he was a little unsettled when he drew my name because he had no idea what to get the "old, American, girl." He gave me a grey and red plaid scarf and fuzzy ear muffs. A very good gift! I was hoping one of the little kids would get my name. He was so cute and embarrassed handing it to me! :)

I really enjoyed opening the gifts one at a time because I got to see what everyone received and it made the celebration last longer. As I sat with Wan Ching's, one of the high school girls, arm around me and Baby Peng all warm and cuddly wrapped in her blankets and in my arms and Jya Hwei, one of the junior high girls, also sitting on my lap, watching two of the high schoolers exchange gifts and Ted beaming in the background, my eyes filled with tears as I couldn't think of a better place to spend my Christmas. I love the people here and am blessed enough to feel loved in return.

I hope you all had similar stories of love and joy, for without the love of Jesus, the love of family, and the love of friends, what is there worth having?

Other things that have happened in the past week:
- Andria left yesterday. It was so good to have her here and I was sad to see her go. Just having someone that was "mine" in a sense was so nice. She gave me someone to talk to and we shared lots of fun-filled afternoons and nights exploring the market, walking around the lake, and loving the babies. She is now headed to Australia before she goes on to Bangkok for the third leg in her Global MBA program. She put up a blog post about her time here that you might be interested in reading. She gives good insight on what our days were like over Christmas. The address is http://andriarabus.xanga.com/
- Jennifer's boyfriend and sister arrived last night and will be spending two weeks here.
- We got a new baby girl. Her name is Cheng Jie En. This made me very excited because her Chinese name Jie En is very close to my Chinese name which is Ja En. She was born on Christmas day!
- Baby Peng was taken back by her grandmother today. We really didn't want this to happen because her birth father was very violent towards the birth mother and we don't know how he will act towards Peng. We are trusting that God's hand is sovereign in this, and that His love for Baby Peng will follow and protect her wherever she goes.
- I am now into the Psalms. I loved reading Job. It is filled with so many awesome truths about God.

Prayer requests:
-The weather is getting much colder and as a result a lot of the babies have really awful colds. Pray for their health.
- I really want to be more disciplined with my time and my eating in my remaining two and a half months here.
- Safe travels for Caleb's parents and Meredith, the next volunteer coming. They will both be traveling here in the first week of January.
- God's sovereignty in my life as well as all of the lives of the babies and others here.