Tomorrow Daniel!

So our journey to Daniel continues. Today, as we travel we continue to see God’s favor on us. A special thank you to our friend Kelly who decided to pray specifically for an upgrade in our seats; we got one! Our original seating assignments split us into two rows. When John asked them to rearrange and put us together I guess the only place they had three seats was a necessary upgrade. Thank you Kelly and thank you Jesus! Keep praying for favor. We are right now sitting in very comfortable seats, with plenty of leg room and all the amenities.

We saw Shawn Johnson (the American Olympic gymnast) in the airport in Dallas! Of and there are a bunch of Paralympics athletes on our flight. Cosette was star struck even though she knows none of their names or faces. It is impressive their feats of athleticism, and the things they overcome in order to be Olympians.

In a moment of clarity I remembered to tell Cosette about the water! I can’t believe we forgot to talk about that! Sorry if this is indelicate but for a few weeks we started teaching Cosette how to use a squatty potty,. We have been talking about all sorts of cultural things we might encounter; including staring that could happen because of the makeup of our family. How could I have forgotten about the water? Anyway, she now knows not to drink the water. The idea of tooth brushing with bottled water was a little hard for her to swallow, forgive the pun.

Another praise; when we arrive in Beijing we have to transition to a domestic flight on our own. It’s a huge international airport and I’m sure we can figure it out, but I was a little nervous about it. Well, our seat mate, beside John, is a Chinese business woman who lives and works in Houston. She is traveling on our exact flight Beijing to Shenyang! We don’t have to navigate the airport alone. Our God is one of big and small miracles!

Tomorrow morning (Monday for us, but Sunday evening for you) we will meet Daniel, 9 a.m. I’m excited about it, but also nervous. Recently John and I were talking about what it will be like when we meet Daniel. What do you do? What do you say? He will be a complete stranger to us, and more importantly us to him. Hugs will probably overwhelm and scare him. A handshake doesn’t seem appropriate. As we talked, coming up with ideas, games we can play, etc. we both were reminded that Cosette is going to be with us and that SHE will do whatever is natural and it will be exactly the right thing. She will break the ice between us and Daniel. We don’t mean to put undue pressure on her. We haven’t spoken about this specifically to her. We just know, based on her personality that this is what she will do.

I’ve been listening to my MP3 trying to block out the hubbub of the very active plane. One song keeps playing (it’s on shuffle): “When you call on Jesus, all things are possible.” We are living proof of that truth.

This evening we walked down to McDonalds to get some food for dinner. We really love Chinese food and would have happily indulged in a Chinese meal, but we were left on our own for dinner and were too tired to even THINK about finding a restaurant. We were walking, a little aimlessly down the block and saw the golden arches. We just couldn’t pass it. We had a quick bite, a bunch of staring, a big miscommunication about chocolate shakes and we were headed back to the hotel and bed in no time.

The pictures tell you how we are feeling about now. Must sleep! Keep in touch. We appreciate your thoughts and prayers.

Tonya