Our gracious guide made a late night trip for some Chinese medicine to help Alia go to the bathroom. Just as Ali began showing signs of progress in recovering from her constipation, Brittney fell sick with a 24 hour stomach bug. Thankfully it wasn't severe, but it still wasn't a fun day for Brittney. It seems that over 80% of our group has been sick at some point during our trip...future travelers be warned, come prepared!
Here is one of Alia's many devious grins and another amazing flower display at the hotel...it smells as good as it looks!
We intentionally had both a breakfast and dinner date with our Florida friends whom we began our journey with two weeks ago in Chicago. They leave early tomorrow, two days before us, because their son is younger than two. We will greatly miss them and we have grown close through the thick and thin of adoption.
After breakfast, our group took the much awaited group photo on the stairs. This photo is a tradition with our agency and it was hard to believe that it was our turn to pose with our newly adopted children! We have three families headed to Hong Kong this afternoon and two families headed to Beijing in the early morning. These seven other families have been so gracious, helpful, and comforting during these two weeks. It has been a joy to get to know them and we are excited to continue to follow their adoption journey in the months and years ahead.
After photos on the steps, the non-sick crew headed on a final field trip to the Chen Family Academy. This place is a type of family sponsored gathering point, that the relatives contributed together to build. It became a schoolhouse and today is a museum that demonstrates the arts (painting, silk art, bone carving art, sculpture, bonsai, fans, and calligraphy) while sharing the history of China, Guangzhou, and the Chen family.
The sad part is that this location is also synonymous with a "temple" as a place not of Buddhist worship, but of ancestor worship. Several items and locations were dedicated towards worshipping their ancestors with sacrifices, prayers, and consultation of the dead. Most people within China, even government raised atheists, have ancestor worship and spirit worship (animism) practices despite claims to practicing no religion at all. I am reminded of biblical guidance to honor our father and mother (Ephesians 6:1-3) but how Satan has twisted that into worship practices of one's relatives. In the biblical times, Christians were told to honor and pray for their leaders, including the Roman emperor, but that often crossed the line into emperor worship as well (1 Peter 2:13-25). It's easy and important to point out and be aware of other cultures straying from God, but what false gods do we worship in America? Nationalism. Our bellies. Our vanity. Entertainment. Sports. Materialism. Narcissism. May we turn from our self-worship to a deeper and more life-saturated worship of a God.
As we said our goodbyes to our departing families, we grabbed another Chinese dinner of dumplings and some sweet and sour pork that was actually really close to our Americanized Chinese food, yum! We also had a sweet visit from one of our guides, Delia, who had started the journey with us in Beijing also. She generously brought a gift necklace to Brittney and a shirt to Alia. This was a special blessing to Brittney and truly left her in awe of the kind gesture. She also was very interested in keeping in touch and seeing pictures of our girls as they grow. We tried facetiming Sophia and Lydia so she could meet them but had no luck. Delia was really sad! We will miss our precious Chinese guides. They have been so helpful and loving through this process. They love seeing families provide a loving home to these orphans! Will you lift them to the Lord for salvation? One guide remarked today, saying "I wish I had religious belief." Jonathan took the opportunity to share the Good News, but unfortunately the guide only seemed to listen out of politeness. May the Lord stir their hearts to repent and believe in the true and living God of the universe! Our main guide Han recounted how he remembers storytellers (like the sculpture below) coming into his village to share stories (before his village had electricity, Han is just 37)...may there be many Christians to come into and travel throughout China to tell the greatest story ever told!
Although we've been counting down the days, and still are, today was a sad day as out of our group of 8 families, only 3 are remaining. May time go by quickly these next few days so that we can reunite with our beloved families back home also!
<3
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